Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac apple. All data has to be put in a file format that the operating system can read off the hard drive. The fat or file allocation table is quite possibly the most widelysupported disk format in existence today. Finally, formatting deletes all data stored on the drive. The formatted files erased by disk utility also can be recovered by free mac data recovery software. In disk utility on your mac, you can format an external disk for a windows computer. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Click the scheme popup menu, then choose master boot record. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. Now connect the external hard drive to windows 8 computer and format it in fat32 file system. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by using the exfat filesystem. To format the primary drive the hard disk where the operating system resides you need to boot into.
Easily format external hard drive on windows or mac. Click your hard drives name in the window near the bottom of the screen. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. Plug your drive into the computer and, if necessary, into a wall outlet. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Although it is possible to format a drive as exfat from disk utility on the mac, that drive will not work with windows pcs, and thats not what. You can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. In this windows 10 guide, well walk you through the steps to use the diskpart command tool to clean and format a hard drive to fix data corruption and other disk. To format the primary drive the hard disk where the operating system resides you need to boot into the setup program on windows 7 or windows 10 and use it to format your drive. I know mac operating system doesnt fully supports ntfs formatted drive. How to use diskpart to clean and format drive not working. The maximum individual file size for exfat is 16 eb. How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing.
People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. Open file explorer and locate your drive in the sidebar. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. When you format your hard drive, you can clean internal as well as external storage media. Once the set up is complete, mount your drive and it will be visible on file explorer. Use the file system dropdown menu, and select ntfs recommended. Click the format popup menu, then choose one of the following. When the driver is installed, you format your ntfs disks with disk utility where you select windows nt filesystem as the format. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. You can select to use a fat, fat32, exfat, ntfs, or refs file system when formatting. Then, connect the seagate drive to your pc and make sure that it can be detected by windows. In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with windows computers. When you connect a macformatted drive to windows, youll be informed that you need to format the disk in drive x. Usually, you can use windows builtin tools like diskpart to format seagate drive.
If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. A user has to know how to convert mac formatted hard drive to windows formatted. Formatting is a very simple procedure which is operated in a similar way for all sorts of storage media. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both windows and mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with windows pc and mac. In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with. Transferring data from a mac to pc via an external hard drive. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Macs and pcs use different file systems, which can make it tricky to put data from your mac on a flash or hard drive and give it to a windows. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. You will learn how to format the external hard disk which has deafult ntfs format, to make it compatible with mac os. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers.
Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. How to format an external hard drive for use with a mac. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet. There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions.
If you dont see this option, try typing create and format hard disk partitions into start. Rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. But to get a hard drive to be compatible with both mac and pc, you have to choose the exfat formatting options. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers operating system, as well as fix any nonphysical errors on the drive itself. Both fat32 and exfat can be used on windows pc and mac. Formatting a disk or volume erases all the files on it. Rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. Other than using the thirdparty tool, you can also format your hard drive from usb with the help of windows installation disk, which, as you will know, is relatively more complicated than using a bootable format tool as shown in method 1 step 1.
Its a direct continuation of the original dos format used on floppy diskettes and hard drives. You cant format the hard disk on which windows is stored while windows is running, for the same reasons that you cant work on a cars engine while you. Windows 10 typically lists an external drive as disk 2 along with the next successive. The only free application that will let you do this we are aware of is hfsexplorer, which uses java and is really only suitable for the odd file transfer fat32 the most compatible option. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Create a windows installation disk and boot your pc from it. 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.
The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. How to format a hard drive on windows or mac avast. Using a thirdparty disk utility that allows you to see macintosh formatted volumes is an alternative to using fat32 file system for the external hard drive. You just need to mount your disk and access all of your files.
The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems. And youll detailed tutorial on how to format seagate drive for mac and windows computer in the following text. The windows system uses a hard drive with a different file system than the mac systems. It is a quick way to format external hard drive on mac. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Partition a hard drive for macos time machine and windows. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. Dont bypass this, if you will use the drive with your mac only. Select the mac partition we created in windows 10, click erase on the menu bar, choose mac os extended journaled in the format list box, then. 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. How to format a disk to ntfs using mac os x ask different. In the disk utility app on your mac, choose view show all devices.
How to format a hard drive for mac internal, external or. Mac os x and windows can both read and write to disks in the fat or exfat format. Although you can find thirdparty software to get mac hard drives to work with ntfs, and windows to work with hfs, these cost money, and you may have to deal with bugs or request for permission to install. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. If you are a personal user, you can try its professional edition. Just select the one you want to format and click on the erase tab. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex. You can then rightclick 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 to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. Securely format external hard drive on windows and mac with super eraser. Click the file menu and select load file system from device.
Most external hard drives you buy will come out of the box preformatted for a windows computer ntfs. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. I have purchased a 1tb portable external seagate hard drive and i would like to use it with both my mac and windows computer. Now that we know the good and bad about every file system, let see how to format a drive in windows, mac, and linux. Format external hard disk drive for mac os and windows. Hierarchical file system plus, also known as mac os extended, is the primary file system format used in mac computers. I havent tried this one, but it should also do the job. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. The problem is that the disk is currently formatted as ntfs and is not readable with time machine. Guide how to format hard drive from usb with bootable. So, whether you wish to format the internal hard drive, external drive, or a usb flash drive, the procedure is the same for all. To format a hard drive means to erase any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. How to format hard drive for windows and mac bearappblog. Some seagate external drives, such as the freeagent go for mac and freeagent desk for mac, come formatted in macos extended format, which is supported by mac os 8.
Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. If you have a mac you should format the drive for your mac first thing, before you start using it. In the value label field, type a descriptive name for the drive. In this tutorial, we explain how you can format a hard drive using the command prompt. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for time machine. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. To format hard drive for mac and windows without data loss, we suggest using minitool partition wizard and its convert ntfs to fats32 function. Format is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solidstate drive, or usb flash drive for initial use to accept windows files. 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. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or usb flash key to a mac will generally read and work fine as is because the mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including windows msdos, fat, fat32, exfat, and ntfs formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a windows and mac machine, formatting it to be entirely mac compatible. That said, if you are using smaller file sizes fat32 can suffice. Windowsformatted hard drives have either ntfs file system of an fat32 file system.
Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. But using a third party all the time for accessing a hard drive on windows is not good. If you wish to boot the drive on a pc or use it with older versions of windows, you may also need to set the partition scheme to master boot record mbr for full windows compatibility. Choose this format if the size of the disk is 32 gb or less. This is not hard to do, and will take you only about a minutes effort. I have an old external 1 tb hard drive id like to format for use with apple time machine backup. The two solutions above can help you format external hard drive on windows or mac.
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. Connect the external hard drive to your mac and copy the important data to the mac pc. This works with any hard drive, flash drive, ssd, usb drive, or just about any other. How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with macs. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed on the lefthand sidebar. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. You need to format a hard drive if you plan on using it in windows. Macs may also create a protected efi partition on these drives that you cant delete with the usual diskpartitioning tools.
Now in this interface, you will see a format option. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Windows operating systems will support fat 32, ntfs file format.
Save any files you need to another volume before formatting. Because mac os x mountain lion does not natively support writing to an external ntfs drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it. You must know what file system the partition was using to rebuild the disk. To use it, download hfs for windows here and install on your pc. Moving data between two systems using an external hard. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. Windows uses nfts file format while mac drives use hfs, this means macs cant write to ntfs drives while windows cant read or write hfs. How to format a flash drive for mac and pc compatibility in macos.
12 1087 502 128 1591 628 832 826 90 460 1365 1649 100 361 12 1586 1397 1554 221 1201 1060 353 468 464 960 1614 1531 1428 664 772 339 790 1076 542 525 1465 96