Open terminal, which is in the utilities folder of your applications folder. The instructions i have found online require reformatting the drive, which i assume would wipe out existing. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. You can format the drive from either the mac or the windows machine. Accessing mac formatted drive on pc external drives for pc. This is simple to do and means the data on your drive usb stick can be read and written on both macs and pcs. Apr 26, 2016 if you are a mac users, here are overviews of different file format systems, and how to choose which format to use for your usb drive to ensure compatibility with other operating systems. You can also make the disk bootable by specifying a. Wie sie einen usbstick unter macos formatieren erfahren sie hier. I only saved my data onto a wd passport drive, not realizing that it needs to be formatted differently for a mac vs. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. I successfully formatted my usb drive to fat32 with the powerful windows usb formatter minitool partition wizard free edition. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exfat file system.
How to format a usb flash drive on a mac techwalla. Just plug in the drive, then access the files you need to use. The other formats microsofts ntfs and apples mac os extended dont work well on the other operating system. Reading pc formatted hard drives using your mac is easy enough. It is necessary to format an external storage device, such as a usb flash drive, pen drive, and a memory card, to a proper file system, so that mac os x or macos could recognize, detect or read data. Feb 21, 2020 when your usb flash drive is not showing up on your mac, the reasons might be the usb port, or usb contains errors that make the drive undetectable. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility. Rufus is one of the free applications mostly available online and free to use for. How to open mac format usb devce in windows youtube. Rightclick or controlclick the drive s icon in the finders sidebar or on your desktop and select get info. Click the erase button or tab, then complete these fields. Enter a name for the disk or volume, such as macintosh hd. Make sure the drive is blank, or copy the data to a safe place before proceeding.
Jun 14, 2019 formatted usb flash drive data recovery software free download. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on mac and windows as exfat. This also allows you to restore time machine backups on windows. For most reasons to erase, you should erase the disk, which also erases all volumes on that disk. If your integral usb has a security or zip software preloaded integral splash, secure 360 then this will be deleted on format, so you may want to make a backup copy onto your computer first. The mass adoption of usb drive makes it one of the most used storage media today. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. May 09, 2019 the best external hard drives for mac in 2020.
Go to applicationsutilities and launch disk utility. How to format usb drive for mac and windows to transfer. Any and all data on the usb drive will be destroyed during this process. Click on the usb drive in the sidebar in disk utility. Aug, 2017 windows cant normally read macformatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. Unformat usb drive mac free mac formatted usb recovery. So, if it needs to be formatted at all, you need to format it as fat32. In the new properties window, check general file system and youll see what type of file system your flash drive is currently with. If you dont have the dvd handy, you need to create a bootable windows usb drive. Formatting usb flash drives and external hard drive to work on smart tv using your mac. Feb 03, 2020 if the other mac isnt using high sierra or later, choose mac os extended journaled. Its exactly the same procedure if you need to reformat a flash drive on a mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. So your first move is to make usb can be recognized again, and then you can use mac hard drive data recovery software to recover files if the usb becomes inaccessible.
If you are looking to download rufus for mac then you are at the right place. Mar 18, 2020 we can effectively and quickly recover data from formatted usb drive with ease by using the best file recovery software minitool power data recovery. Thats why were using a bootable windows 710 installation dvd or usb drive which allows us to format the hard disk. Dec, 2019 you can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. How to format usb drive for mac and windows to transfer files file systems. If you have a mac drive lying around and you no longer have a mac, youre not stuck with the mac file system forever. Dec 27, 2019 check your usb drive partition, if it has a drive letter assigned. Please back up all your data before you format the usb drive. In this article, i have mentioned a 100% working method by which you can download rufus and create a bootable usb drive on mac. How to partition usb drive macos high sierra how to turn it. Earlier versions of macos dont mount apfs formatted volumes. Lets see how to boot a mac from a bootable usb drive and what to do if your mac doesnt start up from it.
How to format a usb flash drive on windows 10 windows. Is there any way for me to access the data already on the drive on the pc. In particular, minitool power data recovery would not bring any damage to your original data. The overwhelming majority of usb flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats. How to format a hard drive on windows or mac avast. Jun 22, 2018 reading a pc formatted drive on your mac is no problem. Apple has built os x yosemite and some previous os x releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine. Usb drive on mac, you have an important decision to make. This article will show you how to recover data from formatted usb drive step by step. The main reason for formatting a usb drive as fat32 on a mac is that you want to be able to use. How to format usb flash drive on mac stepbystep tutorial. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex.
Jan 15, 2019 formatting usb flash drives and external hard drive to work on smart tv using your mac. To share a usb drive between a mac and a windows pc, there are two disk formats to choose from. Jul 05, 2017 youll see the drives file system displayed to the right of format under the general heading. Use remo recover tool to efficiently get back all data from a formatted usb drive of any make and kind using a mac os x running computer. How to choose the best format for usb drive on windowsmaclinux. Just install it, and mac drives will show up like any other drive. The quickest way is to search on spotlight and click. Oct 11, 2017 hi all, i recently transitioned my home laptop from a mac to a pc running windows 10. Moving from windows to mac transferring your documents.
Windows cannot read a mac formatted disk, but macs can read a windows formatted one. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. Hp usb disk storage format tool utility will format any usb flash drive, with your choice of fat, fat32, or ntfs partition types. Disk utility tries to detect the type of storage and show the appropriate format in the format menu. This is due to the fact that ntfs, the file system. However, if you want to use part of the drive for os xs time machine backups, you should do this from the mac. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. Mar 03, 2020 go to this pc, under devices and drives, highlight the disk that represents your usb flash drive, rightclick and select properties. The best thing to do is download it once and create a bootable install usb drive from the file for all of your macs. After downloading and installing do your data recovery for mac free on mac, the users should connect the usb drive to the mac via usb cable.
Chkdsk is a command line utility that helps fix drive errors and. If it cant, it chooses mac os extended, which works with all versions of macos. How to recover data from formatted usb drive stepbystep guide. May 14, 2015 macs can easily read pc formatted hard disk drives. Sep 19, 2011 if the drive comes formatted in ntfs, which is the default file system for windows, youre going to want to reformat the drive because mac os x cant write files to ntfs formatted volumes at. Type or paste one of the following commands in terminal. When you have a flash drive, the first thing you may need to do is format it in such a way so it can be read by both mac and windows machines. Your mac computer comes with a handy utility appropriately called disk utility, which can be used to. In this guide, we show you virtually every method to format a usb flash drive and quickly erase its contents or fix data corruption and other issues using windows 10s builtin tools. How to create a bootable install usb drive of mac os x 10.
How to recover formatted usb flash drive mac mojave. Samsungs portable ssd t5 drive has a speedy usb c interface, plenty of reliable storage, and it takes up about as much room in your pocket as a. How to format an external drive for mac compatibility. By default, they format disks with the maconly os x extended file system. Mar 12, 2020 connect the usb flash drive or other volume that youre using for the bootable installer. Youll see the drive s file system displayed to the right of format under the general heading. Make sure that it has at least 12gb of available storage and is formatted as mac os extended. If you want to use a different file system on your usb drive, youll need to format it. How to create a bootable installer for macos apple support. Hey guys thanks for watching, i hope you enjoyed, and if you did hit like like button.
How to perform pen drive data recovery on mac sometimes, users end up formatting a pen drive by mistake as well. If not, rightclick on the usb drive partition and choose change drive letter and paths. Each time you access the drive, you will be prompted for that password, although keychain will offer to remember it for you when using it on your mac. For a mac user, heshe might format a removable disk for many reasons. This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through. Mar 15, 2018 windows cant normally read macformatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. Most external hard drives and usb drives are compatible for use on mac computers as long as you format the devices for use with mac os x. Whether the usb should be readable by windows machines and mac machines or just by mac and not readable in windows. Jun 16, 2019 configure your mac to work with windows formatted drives.
If you also have accidentally deleted data on mac or have formatted a pen drive, then take the assistance of recoverit data recovery mac. How to format usb flash drive on a mac 2018 youtube. If youre using such a drive and youd like to write new data. Insert the windows 7 or windows 10 dvd into the dvd drive and boot the pc. Bootable usb thumb drive formatted with a guid partition type and containing an os x installer or a usable operating system. Find out how to format an external drive or usb disk making the drive work with both windows pc and mac can read and write.
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