How to Check a Drive’s File System RELATED: So how do you know if your USB drive is? You don’t need to do anything special with Disk Utility–just plug in your USB drive and open the Finder. Right-click or Control-click the drive’s icon in the Finder’s sidebar (or on your desktop) and select “Get Info.” You’ll see the drive’s file system displayed to the right of “Format” under the General heading. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system. Office365 and word 2016 for mac and sso and .edu. How to Format a Drive on a Mac If you want to use a different file system on your USB drive, you’ll need to “format” it.

If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. Learn a few ways to make your drive Mac and PC friendly. Right-click the Windows volume and select Format. Then, under File system, switch to NTFS and click OK. Now you can use your external hard drive with both Windows and MacOS.

Here, select the unallocated space and choose ' Create Partition' feature from the left action pane. Now, please specify partition label ( Windows is recommended), partition type (primary or logical), drive letter, file system (NTFS), cluster size, and partition size (you can change the length of the handle to adjust partition size).

Important: make sure you have at least one backup of all the data stored on the device before you proceed. Because the process of reformatting a disk drive will very likely erase all content and make recovery impossible. See for more information. Also, since I don't know whether you are on a PC or Mac to perform this operation. I'm here to break down this guide into two parts.

Step two When Disk Utility opens you’ll see a list of drives in the left-hand pane, with the partitions on each one nested beneath each entry. To reformat your USB disk, click on its name in this pane, then switch to the Erase tab in the main interface (if it’s not already selected) and hit Erase to wipe the drive. How to format a USB drive: which format? If you follow the instructions above then Windows will, by default, format your disk using Microsoft’s NTFS filesystem, while a Mac might suggest the Mac OS Extended filesystem. These formats are sensible defaults because they support all the features of their respective operating systems, such as native compression and encryption. However, neither is suitable if you want to move files back and forth between Macs and PCs: OS X can read NTFS volumes, but it can’t write to them, while Windows in its default configuration can’t access HFS+ disks at all.

Step #5 In a second, you can see a prompt window, asking for some details. Step 5.1 First of all, you can rename the USB Drive if you want. Otherwise, the previous name would be retained. It’s completely one’s choice and doesn’t have much to do with the functioning of the drive. Step 5.2 More importantly, you must select the appropriate Format of the drive. Here, you have four options, which offer different abilities.

I started up an older computer with Windows XP and tried to format the drive but XP would not format the drive. I'd like an informed opinion as to whether or not you think the exFAT format would prevent my player from being able to use this drive.

If you want to store large files on that drive, a large cluster size is better as the drive will be faster. If, however, you want to store small files or run programs off your flash drive, a smaller cluster size will help preserve space. Rule of thumb: large drive and/or large files = large allocation unit size For a 500 MB USB flash drive, rather select 512 bytes (FAT32) or 32 kilobytes (FAT). On a 1 TB external hard drive select 64 kilobytes (NTFS). What Is a Volume Label? The volume label simply is the name of the drive.

Advertisement Formatting a USB drive is no different than If you have a new HDD or SSD, you should format it. Through formatting, you can wipe old data, malware, bloatware, and you can change the file system.

There are different ways to do that. Method 1: Mac OS X is actually capable of writing to a NTSF drive, just not by default (don’t ask!). So you need to activate it: 1. Go to “utilities” and start the “terminal” app. (enter your password if prompted) 2. Type (copy/paste): sudo nano /etc/fstab Press “return” Type: LABEL=TEST none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse Press “return”, CTRL+O to save, CTRL+X to exit the terminal.

For the first and third scenarios, you can simply go with traditional USB Formatting. You will need more insight if you’re formatting the drive for the sake of advanced compatibility. How to Format USB in Mac – Let’s Go Step by Step Note: For this article, we’re using a recently-bought SanDisk USB Drive of 16GB Capacity.

To use your USB disk on both Windows and OS X, therefore, you’ll need to use a different filesystem. You can choose this from the drop-down menu in Windows' Format. Dialogue, or in the Erase pane of Disk Utility. In most cases we recommend you select Microsoft’s exFAT format: this will give you full read and write access in both Windows (Vista or later) and OS X (Snow Leopard 10.6.5 or later). If you need compatibility with systems that are older than this, you’ll need to fall back to the ancient FAT32 format.

If you're transferring files from Macs to PCs, this won't be an issue; however, transferring files from PCs to Macs won't be possible if your drive is formatted in 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled).' If you will only be working with Macs and not PCs, this may not be an issue. Otherwise, you may need to consider one of the file formats discussed below. MS-DOS (FAT) - This is Disk Utility's name for the FAT32 filesystem. Advantages: FAT32 offers near-universal interoperability with virtually every computing system on the planet. A drive formatted this way can easily transfer files between Macs and PCs. You can also move files to video game systems like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

(tip: create an alias of the volumes so you don’t have to go back to the terminal every time) Another free method: “EaseUS ALL-IN-ONE Partition Manager” software I’ve not tried it myself, but I’ve only heard good things about it. You can download it here:. Make sure to download the “free for home user” version. The other methods involve using 3rd party drivers such as: Paragon NTFS or Tuxera NTFS. They’re not free, but they won’t break the bank. I hope this helps.

Permissions can only be set if the drive is formatted with “OS X Extended”. Also, notice that the Created/Modified dates may not be accurate, however, files and folders contained in the drive will display accurate modified dates/times. • One thing to note, is after initially formatting the drive on a Mac, and then attaching the external drive to a Windows 10 PC, the drive may not immediately display with a drive letter by default in the Windows File Explorer. Go into Windows 10 Disk Management and find the drive listed in the discovered drives, but you may find that a drive letter is not associated with the volume. • To fix this, in Disk Management, right-click on the large/unidentified new data volume and click “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. Next, click the Add. Button, assign a drive letter (D:) and then OK.

So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both OS's then you need to reformat it with fat32 or exfat. Please like, sub, share if you find this video helpful!

HFSExplorer unfortunately requires you install Java to use it, but it’s the only free option here. You’ll probably want to. Erase the Mac Partitions, Including the EFI System Partition RELATED: First, open the. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type diskmgmt.msc into the box, and press Enter to open it.

Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to MBR then click on the OK button. Set the format type to MSDOS. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Dadlewis wrote: This is a simple 4GB usb formated on a MS PC and I just want to reformat it in universial format.

Launch the Command Prompt from the Start Menu. Right-click on it and choose Run It as Administrator.

Avoid the Mac-only Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme. Click the “Erase” button when you’re done and Disk Utility will format your disk with the settings you specified. This will erase all the files on the drive! You’re now done–be sure to eject the disk before you remove it from your Mac. You can do this by clicking the eject icon to the right of the disk in the Finder or Disk Utility windows.

Eventually you will find out that you may not be working on the same operating system (OS) as others. If you work solely on a Mac, but need to send files to someone working on a PC, your external hard drive needs to be set up for both operating systems. Let’s take a look at the different types of formats, and which are best for video production. Formatting the Hard Drive A vast majority of video production will be done on a Mac or Windows operating system, so we aren’t going to cover Linux. Hard drives set up for use on Windows machines only will often use, while Macs will use.

It hasn’t been used before and I’d like to create a Mac-friendly USB Drive. So, the tutorial will be from that perspective. Shall we start? Step #1 Connect the USB Drive to your Mac device, using the fastest port possible. Wait for a few seconds while your drive will be detected by the computer.

Format Hard Drive (Mac) 1. Connect the external hard drive to the computer.

It's likley already formatted FAT32 by default and will work on a Mac or PC just fine. Since it's only 4GB you can't put larger than 4GB sized files on it, so there is no need to format it exFAT on a PC or OS X Extended Journaled on a Mac for larger than 4GB sized files. Just use it like it is FAT32/MSDOS and if it's NTFS, then use Disk Utility to format it: Partition 1, Option: MBR, Format: MSDOS. I too had the same problem. On a PC, you simply right click and select 'format.' The reason I wanted to do this on the mac is because I have an 8gb usb flash drive that for some strange reason, when I deleted all the files it still showed only 1.5 gb available making it impossible to put any more than 1.5 gigs of new data on it.

That will take a very long time and usually isn't necessary, but may help uncover physical damage to the disk. In some cases you might need to re-initialize the disk.

Which Allocation Unit Size Works Best? Hard drives are organized in clusters and the allocation unit size describes the size of a single cluster. The file system records the state of each cluster, i.e. Free or occupied.

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* Internal hard drives. * Windows system drives. ExFAT * Provides an unlimited file and partition size. * You may need to install drivers to get exFAT compatibility on Linux. * External hard drives. * Flash drives if you want to work with files larger than 4GB.

Macs running Snow Leopard or Lion can read from drives formatted as NTFS, but they can't write to such drives unless you install a third-party driver or muck about in the Terminal. Conversely, Windows 7 can't read and write to drives formatted as HFS+--also known as Mac OS Extended (journaled)--unless you install third-party software. Formatting From a Mac To format a drive as FAT32 from a Mac, follow these simple steps. Set up your drive following the manufacturer's instructions. Connect the power supply (if necessary), connect to the Mac via USB or FireWire, and turn on the drive. The drive should automatically mount on your Mac's desktop (if the finder preferences are set to show external drives). If the drive is not formatted, you may get a message saying that the drive is unreadable by Mac OS X and asking you whether you want to format it via Disk Utility.

Step 2: Format the FAT32 Partition to HFS+ Partition on Mac Please go to Utilities → Disk Utility to get the window below: Then, select the external hard drive and click ' Partition' tab on the top. Now, find the FAT32 partition and format it to OS X Extended (Journaled), which is the desired HFS+. Finally, click ' Apply' button to make all changes performed. Note: You might be unable to share all files saved on external drive since Windows doesn't support HFS+ partition while Mac doesn't support NTFS partition completely. Well, is it possible to make an external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC without formatting it? Definitely, it is, but third party program is required.

That way the drive will be fully Mac-compatible without any need for you to modify the operating system of the Mac to get it to work properly. Obviously that solution doesn't work for everyone. Maybe the drive you're using has to be used with a PC occasionally. Whatever the case, the good news is that it's not a show-stopper: There are a few utilities out there that will enable Macs to write to mounted NTFS volumes.

How to Format Flash Drive on Mac Not every flash drive out there can be used with a Mac computer right out of the box. Some flash drives have to be formatted first before you can store files on them. In this article, we are taking a closer look at the Disk Utility, which comes with all recent versions of the Mac OS X operating system and how you can use it to format USB drive Mac.

What are your experiences with formatting USB drives and what are your preferred settings? Image Credit: nipastock via Shutterstock.com Explore more about:,,,.

You should now find your external drive listed in Windows Explorer and see the files and folders you copied into it while it had been connected to your Mac.

Quite often, when you purchase a new USB flash drive or an external hard disk, you may have to format it to ensure that it is compatible with your Mac device. This happens mostly because of the fact that they are all configured to be compatible with Windows device. While the disk may operate in a completely flawless manner, there may be some Windows components like MSDOS, FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, and FAT formats that Mac cannot read. Therefore, formatting the external hard disk or USB flash drive can make it easier for the device to run on the Mac environment.

Got any hard drive organizational tips to share with the community? Let us know in the comments below!

Select the drive by clicking its name. Click the “Erase” button after selecting the entire drive to erase the entire drive and create a single partition on it. You’ll be asked to provide a name for the disk, which will appear and identify the disk when you connect it to a Mac, PC, or another device. You’ll need to choose between several file systems: RELATED: • OS X Extended (Journaled): This is the default, but it’s only natively supported on Macs.

A confirmation window will pop up. Click on the Erase Button. Step 12: The formatting process is pretty quick depending on how old your Mac is. Unfortunately there is no confirmation that the computer is done formatting your USB flash drive. When it’s done it will automatically mount the drive with the name you gave it. When you see this you can close the Disk Utility application.

Click Options, Select Master Boot Record, and click OK. Name the hard drive with a name of your choice. Click the Format drop-down menu. Select exFat (or MS-DOS FAT for a FAT32 format). Hit Apply, then click on Partition.

That makes using the drive a bit troublesome on Mac machines. FAT32 is popular but the 4GB file-size limit makes it inconvenient, for instance when you want to make a bootable macOS Sierra USB drive which the system file takes about 8GB of storage space. Thankfully, exFAT — a strict upgrade over FAT32, is a file system optimized for USB flash drives.