To format your external drive hard drive in windows which works with both platforms, first plugin your drive with windows machine. The format apple support for mac owners for time machine is mac os extended journaled. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. How to open mac format usb devce in windows youtube. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. So if you are formatting a drive that has already been used, be sure to copy any files you will ever want to see again onto a computer or backup drive. To format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. This method should work on all apple computers and with all recent versions of mac os. How to access a mac drive from a windows or linux system. Neither mac os nor windows recognize each others volume formats. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive.
How to format external ssd for mac time machine mashtips. Optimize your mac s storage using disk utility software. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system. By default, they format disks with the mac only os x extended file system. Your internal macintosh drive is also formatted in this format. Dont click the format disk button or windows will erase the contents of the drive click cancel. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start.
For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. This cnet tv video gives you stepbystep instructions on how to set up your external hard drive so it can be used on a windows machine and on your mac. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Because fat32 supports only up to 4 gb large files, it should be used only with flash drives. Mac formatted external hard drives are often priced higher than their windows counterparts and are not as widely available. Today, apfs is used on macs, iphones, ipads, and apple tvs. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Well show you everything you need to know about the.
How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Finally, when all preferences are set, click the erase button. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. If youre installing os x or linux, you usually just need to choose the option to install from scratch, which will erase your drive.
A hard disk drive will take longer to format than a flash drive. How to access mac osx extended formatted hard drive in windows. Remember, this will erase all the files on the drive. Open disk management tool by rightclicking on start menu icon and then select disk management. Read only ntfs from native mac os x to readwrite format ntfs from mac os x, here are some alternatives. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. The formatting process duration depends on size and type of the drive. The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems.
How to wipe a hard drive in windows 10 and macos techradar. In this video we look at the process of formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or ssd on an apple computer. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next. In the disk utility inspector window, you will see all. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. Video showing how to format drive for mac and windows. However, you might choose instead a format you can use easily with os x, windows, and linux. Just select the one you want to format and click on the erase tab. Disk utility on mac supports several file system formats. All data has to be put in a file format that the operating system can read off the hard drive. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. You will learn how to format the external hard disk which has deafult ntfs format, to make it compatible with mac os. Be absolutely sure you have your files off the drive and that youve selected the correct drive you want to format.
Note that exfat is only compatible with versions of windows later than vista. Just launch the disk utility, rightclick or controlclick the drive containing your apfs partition, and select erase. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Thats all because its been initialized with windows nt file system ntfs, which is primarily for pcs. Yet when you connect a mac formatted drive to windows, youll be informed that you need to format the disk in drive x. Format new ssd as os x extended journaled from pc ask. Formatieren einer festplatte fur windowscomputer apple support. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. Ive just got a new hard drive but my mac wont accept it as boot drive unless its formatted in a macos readable format its simply not readable. In the windows installer, wait until you get to the screen with. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. This is a great thing to do when you first purchase a drive or when you are looking to. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac, you should erase your entire disk.
The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at the same time and type in disk utility to find the program. Then select disk utility from the utilities window and click continue. The format is good for handling the files between both os under 4gb size. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. A drive formatted in this fashion can be swapped between a mac and windows pc. However, when we connect a ntfs formatted disk to mac, mac os x doesnt allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a ntfs drive.
Then proceed to highlight your computers hard drive. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed on the lefthand sidebar. From the volume format menu, choose mac os extended. Most mac users will be better off formatting external drives with exfat, ensuring they work well on both windows and mac os x without any extra work. Its recommended to use this format whenever you need to use an external drive with os x. If you are using a mac, you can run the builtin disk utility to quickly format a hard drive or external hard drive under mac os. Open finder and choose applications utilities disk utility to launch the app on your mac. For windows, it offers quick format feature when you rightclick the hard drive on the computer.
You can repurpose any hard drive to work with your mac. Partition a hard drive for macos time machine and windows. External hard disks and usb drives are generally formatted with the windows fat32 file system. There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. You can, however, format a windows hard drive from a mac if you connect the windows hard drive to the mac and format it through disk utility, or the command line as described above. If you are trying to format mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the name field. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive.
How to install os x after formatting your hard drive. Format external hard disk drive for mac os and windows using. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Choose another file system from the format box and click erase. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. Apple mac machines support a different file system. Step 2 on the left side of the utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. What disk utility looks like in lion through yosemite.
But, if you plan on using an external drive with both macs and pcs, you should format the disk with the exfat file system instead. The usb drivers come with the fat format by default. Choose view show all devices from the menu bar in disk utility. Step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system. However, the formatted data can be recovered by data. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Now in this interface, you will see a format option. If you are having a hard time using the command line, try the disk utility app, which is simpler and uses the gui.
Fat32 is the crossplatform format for windows and mac os x. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. This will completely wipe the drive, deleting all the files on it and converting it to whatever file system you choose. Step 1 connect the external hard drive you want to format to your mac, then start the disk utility app that you can find under applications utilities. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Both windows and mac os offer builtin disk formatting tool. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable ssd and wanted to use it on your mac. But somehow, macos doesnt allow you to write data to the drive. How to format a drive with the apfs file system on macos. If you need to format external hard drive mac or windows, you may also consider the exfat files system.
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