With technology growth, use of data storage formats such as CDs and DVDs are on the decline, but physical storage remains useful, especially if you do not have an Internet connection or file sizes are large. In these circumstances, external hard drives help, but unfortunately these are not always reliable. Apple products are usually able to read Windows-based formats such as MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFat, and NTFS. In most cases, however, Mac machines can only read these formats and are unable to write or change data. The best way to solve this issue is to reformat your external drive. Changing an external drive or USB flash key format is useful if you are planing to use the device only with Apple products, and especially if you wish to store a Time Machine backup file or create a bootable drive.

These are not the only reasons to format your drives - they can often show less space than is actually available or require cleaning of junk files. By formatting your external drive, you also can choose an encrypted file system, which decreases the chance of data or file theft.

In this article, we describe recommended file system formats for Mac computers and how to perform a reformat. Table of Contents:. It is recommended to run a free scan with Spyhunter - a tool to detect malware and fix computer errors. You will need to purchase the full version to remove infections and eliminate computer errors. How to format an external drive using disk utility? Formatting an external hard drive or USB flash key is straightforward. Note: before you start formatting, bear in mind that all data from the drive will be erased, so ensure you have made a copy of your data.

Once you have the copy, follow the guide below. First, connect the drive to the Mac and launch Disk utility, which is under Utilities located within Applications.

Find your drive in the left sidebar of the Disk Utilities window, select it, and click the Erase button. In the pop-up window, choose a format from the drop-down menu.

We recommend Mac OS Extended (Journaled). In the second line, enter your drive name or leave it unchanged. Click the Erase button to confirm the formatting process. The duration of the process depends on the size of the drive and amount of data contained on it.

When complete, the external drive or USB flash key will be empty, fully compatible with Mac OS, and ready for work. If you are still experiencing problems with your external drive, look for a possible solution in this, in which we describe the most frequent issues when using external drives.

Video Showing how to format external hard drives on a Mac.

Often switch between a Mac and PC? Want to use one USB flash device for both? The thing is that by default, these platforms use different file systems – discs are formatted differently. Windows uses NTFS, and Mac OS uses HFS, these file systems are not compatible with each other. However there is a simple solution – you can format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT that performs better than FAT32. In the resulut, your external hard drive will work just fine with Mac and Windows.

You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for OS X’s Time Machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through Mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible with “Time Machine Backups”. And you can only do this with exFAT as with FAT32 Mac OS X’s Time Machine backup won’t work. FAT32 or exFAT? You can format your external hard drive in both – exFAT and FAT32.

They both will work just fine. Mac and PC can read and write on both. However, each of these filesystems has their own pros and cons. FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit, but exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB, that’s more than you will ever need. If you have to work with large video clips, games or any other kind of massive files, FAT32 may not be the best choice. Many still choose FAT32 over exFAT despite its slower performance, as it’s also compatible with Linux Os and is supported on many consoles. Once you have done with formatting, your external hard drive will be able to write and read files from both a PC and Mac.

The resulting FAT32 file system will be compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows including back to 95. This is one of the most widely recognized file system formats. FAT32 – a file system normally used on USB disks. exFAT – a newer file system optimized for flash devices and has improved performance overFAT32 Why I can’t use NTFS on Mac?

The default file system for Windows is NTFS (New Technology File System). Macs that run Snow Leopard or Lion can read data from drives that are formatted as NTFS. However, they can’t write. To make your Mac compatible writing on NTFS you have to get and install a third-party driver. So in the end, it’s possible to make your NTFS external hard drive compatible with Mac. But we advise to just format it to “FAT” file system as it’s less time consuming and easier.

Windows 7 can’t read nor write files to external drives that are formatted as HFS. To do so you also have to install third-party like. How to format an External Drive in Windows 1) Connect the drive to your Windows PC. 2) Open Disk Management. Gmail How to Format an External Drive in OS X 1) Connect your external hard drive to the Mac. 2) Open Disk Utility. You can do this quickly by pressing CMD and the spacebar at the same time.

Sandisk Usb Format Tool

Then type in “Disk Utility”. 3) Select the drive you want to format. 4) Click the Partition tab. 6) Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition. 7) Click Options, Select Master Boot Record, and click OK.

8) Name the hard drive with a name of your choice. 9) Click the Format drop-down menu. 10) Select exFAT or MS-DOS FAT(FAT32). 11) At last press Apply, then click on Partition.

WD My Book would be best for desktop, Seagate Backup Plus Slim would be one of the best portable hard drives. Both are all-around decent drives and will do fine for any backup, pictures included. As for cross-platform encryption, if you intend to use the same drive on both Mac and Windows, the best option would be using a cross-platform compatible encryption tool, like, while formatting the drive in exFAT to avoid compatibility issues. This is because Windows won’t recognize Mac’s native encryption and vice versa. VeraCrypt is well-renowned, so it should function well without any problems, just be prepared to learn how to use the tool. Try testing this setup with just a couple files before you perform entire backups.