How To Make External Hard Drive Compatible For Mac And Windows

Image Courtesy wonderhowto.com How many times have we founds ourselves with a USB that only works with our computer and no one else! Often resorting to emailing that massive Powerpoint file 30 minutes later. Today, this is going to end as we have created a fantastic step by step guide on how to make your drive compatible for both Mac and Windows. I bet you have seen many formats on your computer but understand that your Windows PC and Mac understand one format well and that is exFAT. The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by today’s standards.

Awesome, it’s perfect! Almost since exFAT is fairly new, it isn’t compatible with older Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible.

If you know you’ll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems, exFAT is the clear best choice. Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac 1. Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities). Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.

Dec 27, 2018  Possibly the best solution to using a hard drive with both Windows and Mac without the use of third-party software is creating two partitions on the drive, one for Windows and one for Mac. To make your Western Digital hard drive work on both Mac and Windows computers, you need to format the drive with the FAT32 file system.

Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive. Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.

Now you are ready to conquer the Windows world! Format a drive using Windows 1. Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP). Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu. A window will pop up where you can choose the format – NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.

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Click Start to format the drive. Now you are ready to conquer! Fynd provides Laptop, Desktop,, & repair service in Singapore. Our services include,, and also.

ExFAT format in Windows 10 When you format a partition or drive in Windows 10, there are three types of file system you won’t be unfamiliar, NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT. NTFS, a modern file system, is used in system drive by default due to its advanced features what benefit system running. FAT32 is most compatible file system format that can be read-and-write in many different operating systems.

Why not and settle troubles once and for all? That is because FAT32 has inherent limitations, maximum 4GB in size for single file and maximum 8TB in size for single partition or volume. Under such condition, exFAT comes into being. ExFAT integrates the advantages of FAT32 and NTFS. That is to say, you can use your external drive or USB flash drive on other operating systems and have no restriction in file size and partition size. It has lower compatibility compared with FAT32, yet strong enough for common use. When format exFAT on Windows 10?

Usually, when you plug a removable device in Windows 10 for the first time, it would format that device to NTFS by default. However, sometimes, we need exFAT format in Windows 10. For example, you have created and stored files on NTFS-formatted flash drive in Windows 10.

One day, you want to share that data with your friend who owns a machine with Mac OS. Your USB drive will be read-only on OS X. On the contrary, the partition created by your friend’s Mac OS with HFS+ formatted won’t even be read by Windows 10. Really inconvenient! For example, again, you have a game file larger than 4GB stored on your external drive with NTFS-formatted because FAT32 does not recognize file larger than 4GB as covered. Now you want it connected with PlayStation 4 (PS4) to read it. What should you do since PS4 only reads FAT32 and exFAT?

Guess you want Windows 10 to format external drive exFAT before you store files. Free exFAT formatting tool for Windows 10 is a free exFAT formatting utility you won’t want to miss in Windows. It formats partition to exFAT no matter the partition is on external drive, USB stick, SD card, Pen drive, or internal hard drive (system drive is an exception) in Windows 10 as well as Windows 8/7/XP. In addition, this software will format large removable device to FAT32, which makes up for the drawback of Windows formatting utilities.