Are you looking for a reliable format tool that can format and change the file system of your USB flash drive or external USB drive to make it detectable on Mac computers?
Follow through the below guide, you'll learn how to set a suitable file system for your USB flash drive and make it detectable on Mac:
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This guide also works to format your external hard drive, SD card, hard drive, etc., devices to recognized on Mac computers.
A drive can be used on any type of computer - PC or Mac. But in order for the computer and drive to communicate with one another, the drive has to be formatted with the correct file system. This article explains about file systems and provides instruction to format a drive on Windows and Mac.
If you want to use the USB drive on your Mac computer only, formatting it to be entirely Mac compatible file system is highly recommended, such as HFS+ file system. If you want to use the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, you can format it to FAT32. You can follow the steps as below to format USB drive to HFS+ or FAT32 in Mac. Any and all data on the USB drive will be destroyed during this process. Make sure the drive is blank, or copy the data to a safe place before proceeding. Insert a USB drive into your USB port. Open Windows Explorer. In the left-hand pane, locate your USB drive under This PC. Using your right mouse button, right click on your USB drive. How to format a usb flash drive on a windows 10 pc for mac os x & windows pc compatibility If you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between macs and wi. Connect the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the “Erase” tab Click the pulldown menu alongside “Format” and select “MS-DOS (FAT)” Optionally, give the drive a name.
#1. Pick The Best USB Format Tool for Mac - 3 Top Tools
The first thing that comes up in your mind could be which tool that you can use to format the USB flash drive or external USB drive, right?
Here, in this part, we've collected 3 top recommended USB format tools that can help you fully format and reset the file system of your device to be usable on Mac:
So how to select a suitable tool to format your USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? For a quick guide, read the tips here:
After picking the right USB format tool, you can now move to the next guide and decide which format that you should set for the USB flash drive or external hard drive.
#2. Set a Suitable File System for USB or External USB Drive on Mac
Note that Windows uses NTFS but Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format. Mac computer can only read NTFS devices.
Here is a list of macOS supported file systems:
Usually, both APFS and Mac OS Extended file systems are mostly used on Mac hard drives, while the FAT/FAT32 and exFAT are common formats for external storage devices.
So how to set a suitable format for your USB flash drive or external USB drive? Here are our suggestions:
#3. Format USB Drive for Mac on Mac/Windows Computers
So how do I format a USB stick on a Mac computer? Here, we'll show you how to format your USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac usage.
Important Note:
What Format For Usb Drive Mac And Pc Windows 10
Method 1. Format USB or External Hard Drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility
Disk Utility offers users similar features in the disk management tool, such as to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac:
Step 1. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
Step 2. On the Apple menu, click 'Go' and select 'Applications'.
Step 3. Double-click 'Utilities' in the Applications window.
Step 4. Double-click to open Disk Utility in the Utilities window to open it.
Step 5. Select your USB or external drive, click 'Erase', then click the Format column and select a format for your USB.
For example, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or MS-DOS (FAT).
Step 6. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase' to confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.
Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get a new Mac compatible file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device detectable and workable on Mac.
Method 2. Format USB Drive for Mac using Terminal Command
Terminal command lines work the same as Disk Utility, however, it's more complex for beginners. If you prefer to use this method, make sure that you follow the steps below carefully:
Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
Step 2. Press cmd + space to run Spotlight, type: terminal, and hit Enter.
Step 3. Type: diskutil list and find out which disk is your USB drive. Malware download mac.
Step 4. Type:sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2 and press Return.
Step 5. Wait for the process to complete and then close Terminal.
After this, you can use your USB on Mac in a detectable and readable format now.
Method 3. Format USB or External Hard Drive for Mac on a Windows PC![]()
If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 on a Windows computer so to make it work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool for help.
EaseUS partition software is a popular disk management tool that is available for resolve all types of partition management jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problems.
It allows you to format a USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC in only 4 simple steps:
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2. Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3. In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4. Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
After this, you can connect the formatted external hard drive or USB drive to your Mac computer and use it to save data by then.
You May Also Interest In:
Note that if you want to transfer a USB flash drive from NTFS to FAT32 without formatting it as you have saved some important data on it, EaseUS Partition Master can help.
Pick a Right USB Format Tool and Format Your USB Drive for Mac Now
On this page, we presented 3 reliable USB format tools for you to format a USB flash drive or external hard drive on Mac or Windows computers, making the storage device usable on Mac.
For Mac beginners, Disk Utility is good for you to try. As for Windows users who want to format a USB drive for Mac, EaseUS partition manager software - Partition Master worths your trust.
After picking the right tool, you can just revert to the right tutorial, take action to format your drive usable for Mac computer now.
Updated on November 23rd, 2020
This article shows you how to format an external hard drive via different methods, and you can follow these methods to format external hard drive for PC, Mac or Linux.
External hard drive is popular storage device and it can be used to store all kinds of digital information such as images, documents, apps, emails, etc. You can connect external hard drive to computer via USB cable and then transfer data with internal hard drive. Regardless of the brand or model, the first thing you may need to do after purchasing an external hard drive might be partitioning and formatting it.
Usb Drive Target
Formatting external disk can be done via various methods and it can be formatted to a range of file system so that you can use the disk under different operating system platforms. The formatting process removes all data on the partition and thus causes data loss. You should create a backup for important data before formatting if the disk contains significant files.
A brand-new external hard drive is usually partitioned into s single partition with NTFS file system. Still many users would like to format the external hard drives and people do that due to various reasons:
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive with your computer and open Windows Explorer to check if it can be recognized.
Note: if you have stored data to the drive, please back it up before formatting the disk.
Step 2: Right-click on the external hard disk and select “Format” option from context menu.
Step 3: On the formatting window, select Quick Format option, choose file system format, and click Start. Also you can enter a name for the drive under Volume Label.
Step 4: System prompts formatting removes all data and asks confirmation for the action. Click OK and formatting starts.
This method formats external hard drive using Windows built-in utility Disk Management. If your external hard drive does not show up in Windows Explorer, you can follow this instruction to complete the formatting.
Step 1: Access Windows 10 Disk Management by right-clicking Start menu and selecting “Disk Management” item from the list.
Step 2: Locate the external hard drive in Disk Management and check its status.
If there is not partition on the disk or the disk is marked with Not Initialized, you cannot format it directly.
The next step assumes the external hard drive is full of unallocated space and shows how to format it.
Step 3: Right-click on unallocated disk space and select New Simple Volume from the context menu.
Step 4: You can see the “Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard” now. Click Next button to proceed.
Step 5: The wizard will ask you to select set partition size, drive letter, file system, format method, etc. step by step. You can follow suggested option to complete the process.
Want to use external hard drive under both Windows PC and Mac? In this case, you should consider the hurdle that these operating systems support different filesystems. The default file system in Windows is NTFS, while Mac OS users HFS. The filesystem that is compatible with Windows and Mac is exFAT and FAT32.
exFAT VS FAT32, which one should be chosen for Max and PC? It is recommended to use exFAT by many experts, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit and exFAT does not has such limitation, and exFAT also performs better than FAT32. FAT32 is also a good choice if you do not store files whose single size does not exceed 4GB.
FAT32 and exFAT file system is supported by Windows though, they are originally designed for removable storage devices like USB flash drive, SD card. When you try to format an external hard drive which has very large capacity in Windows, FAT32 or exFAT may not be available. Also, some users may encounter error “The volume is too big for FAT32”. In this section, we’ll use a free Windows partition manager to complete the formatting task.
Eassos PartitionGuru is free Windows partition manager and it supports various file systems such as FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, etc. and the formatting process is very simple.
Step 1: Install and launch Eassos PartitionGuru from your computer and find the external disk you want to format.
Step 2: Right-click on the partition to be formatted and select “Format Current Partition” option from context menu.
Step 3: Select Filesystem type from the drop-down list and click Format button.
Step 4: Click Yes button when Eassos PartitionGuru asks confirmation for the operation.
This part of this guide applies to format external or portable hard drive to Ext2, Ext3 or Ext4 file system under Windows 10/8/7, so that the drive can be used under Linux.
Step 1: Connect the portable drive to computer and launch Eassos PartitionGuru. Then you can see the drive is displayed in the software.
Step 2: Select the partition you want to format to Linux file system, and click “Format” button from toolbar.
Step 3: The Format window pops up and you can select Linux filesystem from Ext4, Ext3 and Ext3 from drop-down list. Then click Format button.
Step 4: Click Yes button to continue and formatting will be completed within a couple of seconds.
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