what format does a usb need to be for mac

A drive with two partitions, for example can have one partitioned in ExFAT and another in a Mac OS Extended format, so you can use the same. Click the 'Partition' tab, if you want to use more than one partition in the drive. If you don't want to spend any money and don't have a Seagate drive, an alternative is to format your drive in the exFAT format, which is a Microsoft file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards, and is supported on both MacOS and Windows. Select the USB flash drive in Disk Utility. What's even better, if your drive is a Seagate you can download this version for free:Īlternately, if you are running a Windows machine and need to read and write Mac HFS+ disks, Paragon also make a driver utility for Windows too: This costs about $20, but is worth every penny if you do any kind of cross-platform work. This can be found by going to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. For Mac, you can use the Disk Utility tool to format a hard drive. Once in the command prompt, type in format c: /fs:ntfs (this will format the C drive using the NTFS file system). If you want to write to NTFS on a Mac, the best solution is: This can be done by going to Start > Run and then typing in cmd. Macs can read NTFS, but normally can't write to it. The most common Windows drive format is the NTFS system, which modern Windows machines use by default, and which is the format most hard drives come with as standard. Is this still correct?įAT32 is supported on both Windows and MacOS but is not recommended(especially for audio files) because of its file size limits. My previous understanding was that only FAT32 is supported between platforms. Especially so I can save iConnectivity drivers, updates etc. I'd like to have at least one external, USB HDD formatted to work on both Mac & PC.

What format does a usb need to be for mac