Can I use the same external hard drive for Mac and Windows?

While Windows and macOS primarily use their respective proprietary file systems, both support other file systems as well. This means that you can take an external hard drive and format it with the exFAT file system and it will then be readable and writable to both you_r Windows PC and your Ma_c.

What format should I use for external hard drive Mac?

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.

What format should I use for my external hard drive on Mac?

Why do you need to format hard drive for Mac?

If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than for Mac OS X.

Do you need to reformat an external hard drive on Mac?

The truth is, if you want to use the external hard drive on your Mac, it’s necessary to reformat it to make it compatible with the Mac OS. Follow the tutorial below, you’ll learn everything concerning reformatting external hard drive on Mac, as well as how to recover data from formatted external hard drive.

How to format a hard drive on a Mac?

Start the Disk Utility, which is located under Applications > Utilities. Step 3. Find the name of the drive in the left side of the Utilities window and select it. And click the Erase button. Step 4. Follow on-screen prompts to choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system and allow the disk to format.

How to format external hard drive partition to exFAT for Mac and Windows?

Sometimes, you may want to try Format directly to format your external hard drive partition to exFAT for Mac and Windows. However, you can find that there is no exFAT option and the only option under the window of Format > File system is NTFS (Default).

Can you write to an external hard drive on a Mac?

You just got a new external hard drive and want to use it on your Mac. However, the Mac OS does not allow you to write data to the drive. Then you may start to wonder why, and more importantly, how to solve the problem.