Probably, your external hard drive works on pc but not Mac. In the Utilities folder, double-.If you are reading this article, I bet you have the same problem. Select Go > Utilities in the Finder menu bar. In this example, I am using my old Seagate drive.Mac Make sure the storage device is connected to and mounted on the computer. If you have data on the drive and do not want to lose it then read the paragraph about not losing data below. Windows wants to format Mac driveYou have to if it comes with an NTFS format, because Mac OS X can only read but not write to hard drives using that format (at least out of the box.Find drive format in Finder How to Format External Hard Drive For Mac and PC in Mac: Warning: This section assumes that you are planning to format a brand new drive.It’s the oldest Microsoft file format originally developed for MS-DOS. FAT32FAT stands for File Allocation Table. FormatFrom the table above, you can see that two formats fully supported by macOS and Windows: FAT32 and exFAT. You just substitute external hard drive with USB flash drive, and the instructions will remain the same.Before we make any irreversible changes, let me give you a quick overview of file formats supported in both systems.
![]() ![]() Format Seagate External Hard Drive Mac OS X Can OnlyFor instance, this is the error you will see in Windows when trying to copy a big 8GB file to a disk formatted in FAT32. The largest file it supports is 2^32 – 1 bytes, which is a little less than 4GB. With files getting larger and larger Microsoft kept extending the number of bytes they supported until they released FAT32.FAT32 is still a DOS file format, but since Microsoft supports anything they built 40 years ago, you still can use it.The advantage of FAT32 is that it is compatible with Macs.The downside of FAT32 file format is a file size limit. While we at macmyths.com love myths and tales, but in this case, we think the slowness of exFAT is overblown.Keep reading to learn how to format exFAT on Mac. I don’t know how much it is, but I am sure you will never have a file so big.The advantage of exFAT is that it is compatible with Macs.The downside of exFAT file format it is slower than other Windows formats according to some widespread rumors. Unlike FAT32, the file size limit in exFAT is 2^64 – 1 bytes or 16 exabytes. Microsoft developed it in 2006 in order to support new 32GB SD cards. APFS and Mac OS ExtendedAPFS and Mac OS Extended (also called HFS+) and their encrypted and case-sensitive variants are native macOS file formats. While other Linux systems have drivers with read/write functionality, in macOS write support is disabled. It means Macs can read NTFS drives, but cannot change or delete anything. All we want to know is NTFS compatible with Mac? macOS, by default, has read-only support for NTFS. In just 25 years such name will be ridiculed by rivals.Anyway, NTFS was the first proper file system developed by Microsoft, it has all features that modern file format should have, and Windows is still using it as a primary format.But we don’t care about features. The format was released in 1993, so now you know why you should never call anything new. And as I described above, there is no reason to chose FAT32 unless you have an MS-DOS machine.So if you have an external drive formatted as APFS, HFS+ or NTFS you can format it as exFAT either from Mac or Windows.How to know which file system is on my external drive? One way to find is by using the Finder app. But users who need to transfer data between PCs and Macs have to choose between FAT32 or exFAT. Which format is compatible with Mac and Windows?I don’t know if Microsoft is arrogant and never tried to support file systems other than their own, or Apple wanted to lure PC users so much. Older MacBooks use HFS+ file system. Start Disk Utility with Spotlight Search. In this example, I am using my old Seagate drive. If you have data on the drive and do not want to lose it then read the paragraph about not losing data below. Find drive format in Finder How to Format External Hard Drive For Mac and PC in Mac:Warning: This section assumes that you are planning to format a brand new drive. Check Format line under the General section. Next, select it and use Command + I key combination to bring up the information dialog. Change Format dropdown to exFAT in the pop-up dialog box. Click on Partition icon in the Disk Utility toolbar. Do not click Macintosh HD! It’s your primary disk, and you don’t want to break it. Disk Utility will warn that the operation will erase all data on the drive. And as you guessed it, calling it Junk or Trash is not super productive. Having a meaningful name can beneficial in the future when you need to work with multiple drives. If you not sure which one you need to unplug and plug it back. Be careful not to change the wrong disk. The newly appeared disk is the one you need to work with. In the box type diskmgmt.msc and hit EnterStart Disk Management service with Run dialog Hold Windows key and hit R to bring Run dialog. How to Format External Hard Drive For Mac and PC in Windows PC: On Specify Volume Size leave it to the maximum. This will bring up a wizard. Right-click again and select New Simple Volume. Right-click on the drive and select Delete Volume and click Yes when prompted. It may have more than one partition, click on the larger one. Backup data from the disk to another drive. Click Next.But what if have a drive formatted as NTFS, APFS or HFS+ with files you want to keep? Convert from NTFS to exFAT without losing data Change File System dropdown to exFAT on the Format Partition page and give a name to the Volume. I uploaded the installer file to Virus Total site, and one antivirus detected Minitool as a malware. Some people suggested using MiniTool Partition Wizard. Copy files back to the hard drive. Click on the plus icon on the left to add a new partitionAdd new exFAT partition to existing drive Find the hard drive in the Sidebar on the left and click on it. Start Disk Utility with Spotlight Search Use it at your own risk.Minitool detected as malware in Virus Total Convert from APFS/HFS+ to exFAT without losing dataThe following can work if there is enough space on the hard drive to keep two copies of your data: If i using pages for mac can i delete office 2008Unfortunately, macOS does not allow resizing exFAT partitions so that you will end up with two of them. You can keep old partition in macOS format or delete and recreate it as exFAT. When the process finishes copy files from the old partition to a new one.Now, you can use a new partition to move files between PC and Mac. Installing FUSE is not easy but doable. It currently costs $19.95 per license, but they allow to test drive for free for ten days.A free solution such as FUSE for macOS. The approach could work well if you have an NTFS drive with existing files which you don’t want to lose.As always, there are two possible solutions:Paid 3rd party solution such as Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon. Allow installing FUSERestart the Mac once the installation is complete. When the wizard asks for permissions in Security and Privacy panel of System Preferences click on the Allow button. Enter the password and click on Install Software button. The installer will ask to enter the admin password. FUSE for macOS package contentsKeep clicking on Next and Agree buttons until you get to Install phase. Then double click on FUSE for macOS.pkg file to start the wizard. There is a Linux driver NTFS-3G which does the work. Download it from if you don’t have one.FUSE does not work with NTFS drives. For the next part, you need Homebrew. Replace default macOS driver with NTFS-3gType two commands to save old driver with new name and copy new driver in place of default one:Sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs. Click on Apple logo in the menu bar and while Mac is restarting hold Command and R keys to start it in Recovery mode.Reboot Mac again.
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