external hard drive format for mac and windows

You’ll see the basic situation of your hard drives on your computer. Free download AOMEI Partition Assistant, install, and launch it. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows PC.Ģ. Here are the steps of how to use AOMEI Partition Assistant to format external hard drive.ġ.

It is very easy to use that every one can use it to format partition alone. It supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP, both 32 and 64 bit. Format external hard drive with third party softwareĪOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a great free partition format tool that allows you to format external hard drive to Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, etc. Considering using Diskpart to format partition is a danger that one wrong command may cause irrevocable damage, here we highly recommend you to use a simple third-party software. If so, you need to use Diskpart to format partition or try to use a third party software to help you. However, you can find that there is no exFAT option and the only option under the window of Format > File system is NTFS(Default). Sometimes, you may want to try Format directly to format your external hard drive partition to exFAT for Mac and Windows.

When you move to the Format Partition window, choose exFAT under File system drop-down menu. Then you will get into the New Simple Volume Wizard, follow the hints to specify volume size -> assign drive letter and path. Choose the external hard drive’s partition or the unallocated space you want to format, select New Simple Volume. In Disk Management, you’ll see your external hard drive as partition or unallocated space. Open the Disk Management tool by right-clicking This PC -> Manage -> Disk Management. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows 10 PC. Format external hard drive with Windows built-in tool Well then, how to format an external hard drive to exFAT with Windows PC? Here we take an example of formatting external hard drive to exFAT in a Windows 10 PC. Thus, you’d better use the Windows machine to format your external hard drive. However, if you want to use the Mac to format your external hard drive to exFAT, you’ll face the problem that the external hard drive may not be compatible with the Windows PC. You can format the drive from either the Mac or the Windows machine. How to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC? Thus, many users would like to use exFAT instead of FAT32 to make an external hard drive for mac and windows interchangeable. However, FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both Windows and Mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with Windows PC and Mac.īoth FAT32 and exFAT can be used on Windows PC and Mac. Windows PC and Mac use different filesystems. Here, you can try EaseUS free partition software, a program allows you to format the Western Digital hard drive, Seagate hard drive, Toshiba hard drive, etc to FAT32 in Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista with simple steps.Need to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows You know, Windows Disk Management utility completely cannot help at this moment. If you ignored all the disadvantages and decided to format your external hard drive to FAT32, you might need a third-party software for help when the disk is larger than 32GB. How to Format an External Hard Drive to fat32 for Mac and PC Mac OS X's Time Machine backup utility won't work with FAT32. Single files larger than 4GB on the external hard drive is not supported by FAT32.Ģ. Disadvantages of the FAT32 file system:ġ. Advantages of the FAT32 file system:įAT32 is not only compatible with Mac and Windows but also many gaming and Linux OSs. If you are one of them, you can choose FAT32 or exFAT in your case. What is the best file system that supported by both PC and Mac? Actually, many users have some doubts on this question. But how can you format the external hard drive for Mac & PC? What is the best file system that makes external hard drive compatible with both PC and Mac Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC This post will show specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC. So, if you frequently use both a PC and a Mac computer and want to share an external drive between the two operating system for data backup or transfer, you need to make it compatible with Mac and PC first. Can you tell me how to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC compatibility so that I can easily access or transfer my stuff between the two operating system?' Overview of External Hard Drive Formatting for Mac and PCĪs we all know, Mac and Windows use different file systems by default. But I don't know how to format it since I should frequently switch from a PC to a Macbook. 'I get a new Western digital hard drive and want to use it as an external disk to save working files.

External hard drive format for mac and windows