What Format Does Hard Drive Need To Be For Mac And Windows

This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system. This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS.*END A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and Mac OSX. This is useful if a drive is being used under both to move files between the two environments.

Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) format. For a hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a PC and Mac computer, it must be formatted to or file format.

To share a USB drive between a Mac and a Windows PC, there are two disk formats to choose from: exFAT and FAT32. The other formats -- Microsoft's NTFS and Apple's Mac OS Extended -- don't work well on the other operating system. How to Format a Hard Drive on Mac to Work on Mac and PC. In this Article: Opening Disk Utility Selecting the ExFAT Format Formatting the Disk Community Q&A References. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both Mac and Windows by using the ExFAT file system.

FAT32 has several limitations, including a 4 GB per-file limit. This is a file system limitation that affects both Mac's and PC's, and the only workaround is to format the drive to exFAT. For more information about what these limitations are please see. The easiest way to format the drive to or is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility or Windows' built-in Disk Management.

Critical: Never attempt to connect any external drive to multiple computers at the same time. This could quickly damage the drive's partition and corrupt the data on the drive. ExFAT in macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and above There are two easy ways to format a drive to use is by using Mac OSX's built-in Disk Utility; using Erase (Step 4) or Partition (Step 7). For instructions on how to do this, please see the instructions below: • Connect the WD drive to the Mac computer.

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• Double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner of the desktop screen. Choose Applications from the left-side panel.

While in there, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility. • Disk Utility will now be open. In the left-side pane, choose the drive that is to be partitioned and formatted.

Typically there are two listings for each drive unless more than one partition exists on a particular drive. Choose the drive listing that is farthest to the left for the drive that will be formatted.

It is usually directly above the name of the drive. In the example below, the one to be selected would be WD My Passport 07BA Media.

Erase• After selecting the appropriate drive, additional options will become available on the top part of the Disk Utility window. Click on Erase. • The Erase window will now appear.

Windows for mac software. Assign the name that will be given to the drive, and click on Erase. • When the Erasing process is completed, click on Done. Partition• Click on Partition on the top menu of the Disk Utility window. • The Partition window will now appear. Click next to Format to display a drop-down menu, and select exFAT. This is the format that the drive will be formatted to.

• Confirm that the name of the drive is correct in the Partition area, and update it if necessary. When ready, click Apply. • Disk Utility will begin the formatting and repartitioning process. This may take several minutes.

Note: If an error message is received stating that the drive is unable to be unmounted, this means that there is a program or service currently reading or writing data on the drive. Determine what program is accessing the drive and shut it down before trying to format the drive again. If the error message persists, restarting the computer may resolve the issue. If additional assistance is required, please.