Format for mac and pc
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So, to make a portable hard drive work well on both Mac and PC, we need to find out proper file systems that are compatible with those 2 platforms and format your hard drive into any of these file systems. To Format Your WD Elements With A Partition For Mac And PC 1. Windows uses NTFS and FAT32 while Mac uses HFS and they’re incompatible with each other. The partition you want to share with both Mac and Windows you partition as ExFAT. It’s won’t appear when you plug your Elements drive into your PC. This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Robin. Your Windows personal computer can’t see that partition. Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar.įrom the Scheme menu, select Master Boot Record.Ĭlick Erase and follow prompts to confirm. A single high resolution file can easily go over 4 GB, so Fat32 may not the best format. The limitation affects both Mac and PC users. And even though connecting the preformatted hard drive for Windows will work fine on Mac, it is important highly recommendable you format the hard drive exclusively for Mac compatible file. FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB per file. Formatting hard disk for Mac is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which nearly all come preformatted for Windows rather than Mac OS. FAT32 is often used among general users, but FAT32 has limitations that can affect filmmakers. Launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). This will allow you to use the hard drive on both a Mac and PC. While first ensuring you have a copy of any data on a drive you want to format as ExFAT, as formatting will erase the drive’s contents, follow these steps: Instead, pick ExFAT, its replacement (and still quite old), best used on drives of 32GB or larger capacity.
FORMAT FOR MAC AND PC HOW TO
The other formatsContents 1 How to Format USB Drive for. Designed for an earlier time, it can’t handle files larger than 4GB. USB Format For Mac And PC To share a USB drive between a Mac and a Windows PC, there are two disk formats to choose from: exFAT and FAT32. If you’re both Mac users, swell with Mac and Windows in the mix, you might be tempted to pick FAT32 when formatting that thumb drive.īut FAT32 is distinctly out of date. Use HFS+ if: the storage device is connected to Macs.
FORMAT FOR MAC AND PC INSTALL
Install the Paragon driver for Mac for compatibility with Macs. Use NTFS if: the storage device is connected to Windows PCs. But it still crops up whenever you’re trying to put files on a USB thumb drive to hand off to someone else. A FAT32 partition can reach up to 32GB when formatted on a Windows PC.
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For those of us who rarely transfer files physically across devices, file-format capability may be a distant memory.