best external hard drive format for mac and pc

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Best External Hard Drive Format And Pc Mac OS X And
Best External Hard Drive Format And Pc Mac By David

Best External Hard Drive Format And Pc Full Site Gannett

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Best External Hard Drive Format And Pc Mac By David

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Both operating systems use different formats for reading and writing to a hard drive.

The only hard drive format that can be reliably used by both is called FAT32, or MS-DOS FAT as its called on Mac computers.

Even if your external hard drive doesnt come pre-formatted in FAT32, you can format it yourself using either a Mac or Windows PC.

FAT32 The FAT32 format is compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems.

FAT32 has a few disadvantages.

Its more prone to disk errors and its larger cluster sizes make its storage slightly less efficient than other format types.

Other Formats External hard drives formatted specifically for Windows usually use NTFS.

Unlike FAT32, NTFS supports Windows file permissions and is more stable.

External hard drives designed specifically for Mac computers are usually formatted in HFS.

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There are tools available online that allow you to write to NTFS from Mac OS X and tools that allow you to write to HFS from a Windows computer, but these tools can be difficult to manage and require some technical expertise.

Microsofts successor to FAT32, exFAT, is compatible with recent versions of Windows and Mac OS and removes the 4GB limitation, but brings its own set of trade-offs (see Resources).

Formatting From a Mac If you want to format a blank external drive from a Mac computer, launch the Disk Utility, located in the Applications Utility folder.

After you select the drive, click the Erase button at the top of the window, and then select MS-DOS (FAT) from the Format menu.

If you want to only format a portion of the hard drive, click the Partition button and then use the controls to select a partition size and which format you prefer.

If you select a Mac OS format for the partition, it wont be readable from a WIndows PC.

Formatting From a PC To format a blank drive from a PC, you can use the Windows 8 Disk Management Utility.

To open this utility, right-click the bottom-left corner of the desktop and select Disk Management from the menu.

After you locate the drive in the list on the left, right-click its name, select Format and then select FAT32 from the File System menu.

To format only a part of the drive, create a new partition on the drive, right-click the drive name and select New Simple Volume.

Any partition you make that is not in FAT32 is visible from a Mac computer, but the Mac cant write to it.

References CNET: The Best Ways to Format an External Drive for Windows and Mac PCWorld: How to Share an External Drive Between a Mac and a PC OSXDaily: How to Format a Drive for Mac PC Compatibility Resources ExFAT: Formatting Your External Flash Drive for Both PC and Mac Use the exFAT File System and Never Format Your External Drive Again Can Microsofts exFAT File System Bridge the Gap Between OSes Writer Bio A published author and professional speaker, David Weedmark has advised businesses and governments on technology, media and marketing for more than 20 years.

He has taught computer science at Algonquin College, has started three successful businesses, and has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines throughout Canada and the United States.

Best External Hard Drive Format For Mac And Pc