If you open the Disk Utility application on your Mac with the disk connected, you should be able to see it in the list of disks on the left hand column of the Disk Utility window. If you click on the the partition (i.e.
How can I format an external drive for both Mac and PC? Update Cancel. Ad by EverQuote. Is it possible to reformat an external hard drive made for Mac to work with both Windows and Mac? Can I use an external hard drive which has been formatted to Mac OS Extended (journalized) with Windows? How to format an external drive to work seamlessly. To share a USB drive between a Mac and a Windows PC, there are two disk formats to choose from: exFAT and FAT32. The other formats -- Microsoft's NTFS and Apple's Mac OS Extended -- don't work well on the other operating system.
The name you see in your file tree when the disk mounts under OS X) what do you see for the Format at the bottom of the window? If it is Mac OS Extended or a something similar then your disk is using the HFS+ file system, which is the default for OS X. This file system type is not natively supported by Windows, which is why the disk will not mount when you plug it into your laptop.
You have a couple of options:. Reformat the disk to FAT32, which is the lowest common denominator in file systems between OS X and Windows. In addition to limitation to file sizes. Depends on the filesystem type and partitioning scheme whether it'll work on both.
If the hard drive were formatted for HFS it would not show up on the Windows Computer. If the Partition Scheme were Apple Partition Map, it would also not show up. For maximum compatibility, back up everything from the external hard drive onto your Mac. Open Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and go to Partition. Under Volume Scheme, choose 1 Partition, then click Options. Choose Master Boot Record. Then choose MSDOS under the Format menu.
Then click Apply. Your hard drive should work on either computer at that point, as well as others you may try to use it on. If you want something that both machines / OSes can read a write, and that can act as an emergency boot drive for either machine, do this:. Reformat the drive, using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the low-level partition table format. Avoid Master Boot Record, which Intel Macs can't boot from. Also avoid Apple Partition Map, which Windows machines would have no clue about. Give the drive one HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) partition large enough to install Mac OS X onto (10GB+).
This volume format accommodates Mac OS X and Mac files the best. Give the drive one FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition, which both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write.
This is a good place to put files that you want both Mac and Windows to have read/write access to. The FAT volume format is showing its age, but a huge variety of OSes know how to work with it.
If you want the drive to have a volume that's more optimal for Windows than FAT, give it an NTFS partition as well. This would be a good volume to install Windows onto, but beware that Mac OS X only has read-only support for NTFS built-in. If you want your Mac to be able to write to this partition, you'll need third-party software to enable this on Mac OS X.
2:55 'I own a SimpleTech 320GB Black Cherry Hard Drive and needed it to run on both Mac and PC for school. I thought it would be pretty helpful if you made a video showing how to format a disc to run on all OS's using Mac OS X.' First, Here's why there's a difference. All data has to be put in a file format that the operating system can read off the hard drive. OS X uses a file format called HFS+ to write its data.
Windows can't read or write HFS+ data natively. 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 MS-DOS days. Most modern Windows systems use the NTFS file format, which OS X can read, but not write to. So your best bet for compatibility is FAT32. To format a drive as FAT32.
First, the Windows way and then the Mac way. Windows way Plug in your external drive to the Windows machine. Go to My Computer and right-click on the correct drive letter.
Make sure you are choosing the right drive! You're about to erase all data on the drive you choose. Select format and choose format. Under file system choose FAT 32.
Then press Start. Pres OK to affirm you really want to destroy the data on this hard drive. And sit and wait while it formats. Mac way For OS X, connect your drive. Launch Disk Utility. I usually just press Command-Space and type 'disk utility' into Spotlight to find it.
Click on the drive you just connected. Again MAKE SURE you click on the right one. Then Choose Erase. Remember, you are destroying every last shred of data on this USB drive. Under Volume format, choose MS-DOS (FAT) That's FAT32. And then press erase. And press erase again to confirm that you REALLY want to erase it.
Now here's the issue with FAT32. You cannot create a file larger than 4GB. If you're mainly working with Web pages or audio, that's fine. But if you're doing large video files, it's not going to work.
NTFS can handle files larger than 4GB, and OS X can read to it, it just can't write to it. There is way around that by using the free MacFUSE to help OS X to write to NTFS.
See my video called Read and Write NTFS in OS X for more info on that.