Can I use same external hard drive for Mac and PC?

OS X and Windows include native support for FAT32 file systems, so if you’re sharing an external hard drive between a Mac and PC, format it with FAT32. However, if your drive is larger than 2TB and you plan to store files larger than 4GB, use exFAT instead.

What is the best format for external hard drive Mac and PC?

exFAT

How do I make my external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC without formatting?

The Best Format for External Hard Drives

If you want to format your external hard drive to work with Mac and Windows computers, you should use exFAT. With exFAT, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years.

Will a hard drive formatted for Mac work on PC?

Newer Seagate and LaCie branded external drives come preformatted with the exFAT file system, which allows it to be used on both Mac and Windows without reformatting the drive. If you need to use your drive on both Mac and PC then it’s best to format exFAT.

How do I make USB compatible with Mac and PC?

A hard drive formatted for use in a Mac has either an HFS or HFS+ file system. For this reason, a Mac-formatted hard drive is not directly compatible, nor readable by a Windows computer. The HFS and HFS+ file systems are not readable by Windows.

Why can’t I write to USB drive on Mac?

Here’s how:
  1. Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility.
  2. Select the drive you want to format.
  3. Click the Erase button.
  4. Click the Format menu, then choose either MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT.
  5. Enter a name for the volume (no more than 11 characters).
  6. Click Erase, then click Done.

What is the format for Mac hard drive?

If the issue still persists please change device file system: Make sure the device is on the Mac side. Insert the USB flash drive into your Mac’s USB port. Click “Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.” Alternatively, enter “Disk Utility” in the search bar and click “Disk Utility” to launch the application.

Is there a hard drive that works with Mac and PC?

Can a Mac read a Windows USB drive?

Windows uses NTFS while Mac OS uses HFS, and they’re incompatible with each other. However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem.

How do I format a Mac hard drive for Windows?

An ExFAT External Hard Drive Is The Middle Ground

Luckily there’s a compatible middle ground and that middle ground is an ExFAT file system. Formatted as ExFAT you can share a whole external hard drive between a Mac and a Windows PC. An ExFAT external hard drive means you can freely interchange files.

How do you clear a Mac?

Macs can easily read PC-formatted hard disk drives. Your old external Windows PC drive will work great on the Mac. Apple has built OS X Yosemite and some previous OS X releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine.

How do I make my Mac USB to NTFS?

If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems.

How do I format a flash drive for both Mac and Windows?

Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. Release the keys after about 20 seconds. This clears user settings from memory and restores certain security features that might have been altered.

What is the best format for USB drive on Mac?

Double click the new hard drive icon on the desktop. The contents of the external NTFS-formatted hard drive are displayed. Drag files from the hard drive to copy them to the local Mac hard drive, or double click them to read them directly from the hard drive.