You can use any USB flash drive on a Mac computer provided that it has been formatted. Most flash drives are preformatted by the manufacturer and are ready.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac? Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems.
Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format. So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk. Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility.
And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better. How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? This page will show you two ways to do this job: Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party 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.
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility Windows offers users built-in disk management tool 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. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' 'Utilities'. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.
5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window. Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to without formatting.
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 user. Tricky, but not impossible. Here’s how:
• Your Outlook Global Address Book is now up-to-date. Outlook 2013 Note: Please make sure cached mode is turned on. • In the Offline Address Book dialog box, make sure that the Download changes since last Send/Receive check box is checked then click OK. Outlook cache location.
- Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility.
- Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete any info you currently have on the drive.
- Click the Erase button.
- Click the Format menu, then choose either MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT.Choose the former if the size of the disk is 32 GB or less. Choose the latter if the size of the disk is over 32 GB.
- Enter a name for the volume (no more than 11 characters).
- Click Erase, then click Done.