Format a usb drive for windows and mac

For example, you might want to reformat a new or used removable storage device to make sure it. A file system is a method and structure of data used by an operating system, called windows, linux or mac os, for reading media files such as disks, removable drives, etc. So, if users anticipate using the flash drive with more than one operating system, they will definitely benefit from the fat32 file system. So, now go to your usb flash drive and check the macos high sierra files. Jul 24, 2018 next, you should assign a file system to the drive. Jan 04, 2012 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. This method can be used when you are unable to format the usb device through disk utility.

How to format a usb drive for mac and pc compatibility youtube. This is the easiest way and simply requires you to plug in your usb drive, open the windows file explorer and right click your drive to view a number of actions that you can perform. The above command will format the usb drive in the fat32 format which is ideal for usb drives. How to quickly make a mac os x bootable usb on windows. Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. If the drive comes formatted in ntfs, which is the default file system for windows, youre going to want to reformat the drive because mac os x. You can use fsntfs instead to format the drive as ntfs which will then only work on a windows pc. It is important to use this mac since it will be used to identify the correct windows drivers. Formatting a disk or volume erases all the files on it. To format external drive to file system compatible with mac and pc, connect the drive to your computer and follow the detailed steps given below take formatting hard drive to exfat in windows 7 for example. Insert the usb drive into an open port on your windows. Best usb format tools pen drive stick formatters for.

It could take one or two hours to complete the process depending on your computer. May 29, 2018 to format external drive to file system compatible with mac and pc, connect the drive to your computer and follow the detailed steps given below take formatting hard drive to exfat in windows 7 for example. Format usb or external hard drive for mac using mac disk utility format usb or external hard drive for mac on windows pc using thirdparty usb format tool. Like i said, if you want to use the device for both. To format a drive on a mac, youll need the builtin disk utility application. This article shows you how to download a macos dmg file, format a usb drive using a guid partition table, burn the dmg to the drive and boot your mac from the usb. A drive with two partitions, for example can have one partitioned in exfat and another in a mac os extended format, so you can use the same drive on a mac and a windows computer. You may also be preparing the drive for use as, say, a storage device for a media player or to record tv programmes on a tv with a usb port. External data storage devices such as usb flash drives, external hard disk drives hdds, and solid state drives ssds provide one of the easiest ways to transfer files between separate computers without accessing the. The first format, fat32, is fully compatible with mac os x, though with some drawbacks. It will not affect the performance of the flash drive. Click on the usb drive in the sidebar in disk utility. Sep 19, 2011 the overwhelming majority of usb flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats.

How to format usb flash drive to fat32 on mac os xmacos easeus. If you want to use a different file system on your usb drive, youll need to format it. How to format usb drives on windows 10 make tech easier. Have you ever ran into a problem where youre trying to use a flash drive on both windows and mac. According to the methods above, you have four ways to format your usb drive or usb stick to ntfs in windows 1087. To format hard drive for mac and windows without data loss, we suggest using minitool partition wizard and its convert ntfs to fats32 function. The program is able to format and repair usb flash drives under windows 7, windows 10 and earlier versions of the os. Dec 01, 2016 this tutorial will help you create a bootable usb flash drive for your mac on a windows computer.

How to format a flash drive to work on os x and windows. Rightclick on the device you wish to format and select format. Disk drill, a premium data recovery solution for mac os x with support for all popular file formats and common storage devices, is here to help you recover deleted files from usb flash drive. How to create a windows 10 installer usb drive from a mac. How to create macos high sierra bootable usb on windows. When boot camp assistant is done, the usb drive will be renamed to. To find it, type disk management or format disk in windows search and select create and format hard disk partitions. The former option can help ensure that the usb drive is made fully compatible with your mac, since most usb drives are preformatted for windows computers by default. The overwhelming majority of usb flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats. In the main interface, right click the partition on that need. Dec 05, 2019 rightclick on windows icon, select disk management.

If you are on an earlier operating system like windows 7, xp, etc. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exfat file system. Formatting or reformatting is the efficient and secure way to remove all data on the usb flash drive. Following are the top features of this usb flash drive. Im here to use a windows 10 based hp laptop to format my lexar drive. How to format flash drive on win7 when it was formatted on. Go to applicationsutilities and launch disk utility. In disk utility on your mac, you can format an external disk for a windows computer. For apple mac users, there are two ways to format a usb flash drive to fat32, including disk utility and. How to format a usb flash drive on a mac techwalla. When boot camp assistant is done, the usb drive will be renamed to wininstall. In this article, we will introduce 5 disk formatting tools for windows and mac to help you securely format hard driveusb flash drive or memory card on a pc or a mac. To do this, you can take the assistance of disk utility, which is a dedicated system component in mac. How to format a usb flash drive on windows 10 windows central.

Apr 30, 2016 now, lets take a look at some ways you can format your usb drive on windows 10. It can take about 20 minutes to format and set up the usb installer on the mac. How to choose the best format for usb drive on windowsmaclinux. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. If you have a usb flash drive inserted in your mac, you can see it under the external in the disk utility. Hi there, i have a usb flash drive which was formatted for a mac.

Locate and rightclick on your usb flash drive or external hard drive, and then select format. How do i format a usb drive on a pc that was formatted on a mac. Better still, it can be read from and written to on any mac running mac os x snow leopard or later and on windows. Next format your usb drive to windows fat32 format. How to choose the best format for usb drive on windowsmac. Thankfully, exfat a strict upgrade over fat32, is a file system optimized for usb flash drives. Use the restore disk image to drive dialog box to browse for the dmg file with the installation files for mac os x yosemite in this case, and click the ok button to create a bootable usb of the operating system. Formatieren einer festplatte fur windowscomputer mit dem. The first format, fat32, is fully compatible with mac os. If you only use a mac computer, you can format your thumb drive so it can work on windows systems. In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with. Open up your my computer or computer in vista from the start menu and look for the drive that has a removable disk icon.

Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system. Fortunately, theres a great tool that you can use for free to create bootable macos media on a usb drive in a windows 10 environment. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. It is very simple to format usb flash drive on windows pc.

As always, having a backup option will save you when plan a fails for some reason. Note that you should replace the disk2 with the name of the your drive from step 3 if it wasnt disk2. Next, you should assign a file system to the drive. Its below the file system heading near the top of the page. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at the same time and type in disk utility to find the program. Aug 30, 2019 plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system.

Select mac os extended journaled, or your preferred format type. Apr 26, 2016 to format a usb flash drive, simply plug the drive into your mac, and choose it from disk utilitys sidebar menu. For example, in windows xp my computer is equivalent to this pc on windows 10. Oct 15, 2019 select mac os extended journaled, or your preferred format type. On windows 10, the ability to format a usb flash drive can come in handy in a number of scenarios. How to format flash drive on win7 when it was formatted on a mac. How to format internal andor external drive to work properly on mac and windows computers. Use unetbootin on mac unetbootin is free to use and allows you to make a bootable usb drive for windows 10 using your mac. On the left side panel, you will see the usb drive name. 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. A dropdown menu will appear with the following options. Among many quality flash drives, sandisk extreme pro 128 gb drive is considered the most popular usb flash drive for windows and mac.

It can help you manage system partitions, erase an external unit like a thumb drive, and even repair your disk. We all make mistakes, and you wouldnt be the first person in the world to accidentally format a usb flash drive. Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, usb drive, ssd or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your mac now. Let us go through the exact steps in formatting your usb drive to fat32 on mac using the command line. Although we know its limitation of 4gb file size only. If you want to format a hard drive or usb flash drive on your computer, disk formatting tool is the best choice. To format a hard drive for compatibility of both mac and windows you can use fat32 format which has both readwrite capability on winmac respectively. I put it in my win 7 pro machine to format it for win7. It recognizes the drive, installs the drivers, yet never shows up as an active. Rightclick your flash drive and then select format. Feb 21, 2020 its a universal format that is compatible with mac os xmacos, windows, linux and dos systems. 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.

Learn how to format your usb flash drive or usb external drive so you can use it on both mac os x and windows computers. Actually, if we want to format a usb flash drive under mac os, we should find usb flash drive formatting software at. A popup menu will appear, and you can customize many options here. Select the disc image to restore on usb drive finally hit on ok to continue. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo. Means if one want to transfer movie or any stuff greater than 4gb it cant be done in this format. 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. Download the windows 7 usbdvd download tool to format the hard disk now and install windows 7 later or the windows 10 media creation tool to format the hard drive now and install windows 10 later. Go to open disk utility, which is located under applications in the finder menu. Select the usb drive that you want to format for mac and finally right click on it and hit on format disc for mac. How to make a windows 10 usb using your mac build a.

Oct 29, 2019 terminal command line in mac can be used to format usb devices. If you are a personal user, you can try its professional edition. Sometimes, you cant access certain bad sectors on the drive making it difficult to read the entire stored content. 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. This is usually assigned to the last drive letter and may show multiple drives if multiple devices are plugged in. Format external hard drive or usb drive for mac easeus. This works with any hard drive, flash drive, ssd, usb drive, or just about any other. How to format usb flash drive to fat32 on mac os xmacos. To share a usb drive between a mac and a windows pc, there are two disk formats to choose from. Follow the instructions to create a bootable usb drive. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. 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.

Mac computers are capable of formatting any storage device internal or external such as hddssd, usb flash drive, and external storage. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac and. How to create macos bootable usb on windows 10 uubyte. How to format a usb flash drive on windows 10 windows. To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between mac and pc, you need to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. In the file system list box, choose exfat, type in a volume label. The main reason for formatting a usb drive as fat32 on a mac is that you want to be able to use the drive on a windows pc, as well as a mac.

How to format usb flash drive on mac stepbystep tutorial. Follow these next steps to create one skip to step 2 if youve got a dvd already. Now, lets take a look at some ways you can format your usb drive on windows 10. If you want to use the drive between a windows and mac machine, you can format it to fat32. How to format a hard drive on windows or mac avast. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Its a universal format that is compatible with mac os xmacos, windows, linux and dos systems. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility. Right click on the partition and select delete volume this will remove the partition.

Connect the usb drive to mac and launch disk utility from application. In order for this to work you should have a usb flash drive. However, os x and windows both can read and write to a format called fat32, which used to be used for windows all the way back into the msdos days. In the file system list box, choose exfat, type in. How to format and create a usb drive or pen drive that is compatible with windows 10, 8, 7 or mac or linux. Create a windows 10 bootable usb flash drive on a mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Even if the mac is unable to mount the storage, following this method will enable you to format the storage.

Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Again, like the first method, you will need a usb drive with a capacity of 16gb as a minimum recommendation and you will also need to download the. Sep 23, 2019 use the restore disk image to drive dialog box to browse for the dmg file with the installation files for mac os x yosemite in this case, and click the ok button to create a bootable usb of the operating system. Jun 14, 2018 format usb drive for both mac and pc use. In the disk utility app on your mac, choose view show all devices. How to format usb drive or external hard drive on mac. Jan 15, 2019 the main reason for formatting a usb drive as fat32 on a mac is that you want to be able to use the drive on a windows pc, as well as a mac perhaps to transfer files between the two machines. This option is near the middle of the dropdown menu. Therefore, now your usb drive is ready to boot macos high sierra and you can install macos high sierra from your usb flash drive. However, it is not easy to format the usb flash drive under mac os. How to create mac os x bootable usb pen drive on windows.

Select your thumb drive in the disk utility window then click the erase tab. How to format usb drive to ntfs windows 10 all 4 ways. Jul 05, 2017 youll see the drives file system displayed to the right of format under the general heading. Insert an 8gb or larger flash drive into a usb port on the mac. Just like windows, mac also allows a seamless solution to do pen drive format. Developers of the program claim that the fat is the best format for usb drive to avoid conflicts with other operating systems. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac apple. Save any files you need to another volume before formatting. Set the usb file system to ntfs, tick quick format and click ok to confirm. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. Step6 create bootable usb drive select the usb drive that you want to make it bootable and finally right click on it and hit on restore with disc image. Aug 16, 2019 on windows 10, the ability to format a usb flash drive can come in handy in a number of scenarios.

Rightclick on windows icon, select disk management. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac. How to format a flash drive for mac and pc compatibility in macos. In this article, we will introduce 5 disk formatting tools for windows and mac to help you securely format hard drive usb flash drive or memory card on a pc or a mac. Whether you use mac or windows based pc, there are lots of possibilities that a portable usb device may get damaged. Dec 29, 2015 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 well. 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. You can also open a finder window, select applications in the sidebar, and head to utilities disk utility. Format usb for mac and pc on windows quickly and securely. Run this command using the correct disk number for your usb.