

- #FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND PC ON WINDOWS 10 SOFTWARE#
- #FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND PC ON WINDOWS 10 DOWNLOAD#

The process will take less than a minute. Select NTFS for the File System type and check the Quick Format checkbox.NOTE: Be sure you selected the correct drive icon for the “My Passport” external drive. Right click on the drive icon for the external drive and choose " Format" from the menu.If you are looking for an external hard drive to connect to a Windows PC instead of to a Mac. In Windows 8, you can choose the "This PC" tile from the start screen. Read on for our reviews of five top models and find the.In Windows 7, this can be done by clicking the start button and choosing "Computer" from the right panel of the menu.Open " Computer" (there are multiple ways this can be done).Connect the external drive to the computer.If you have already saved files to the drive that you want to keep then don’t format the drive. WARNING: All data on the external hard drive will be erased by this procedure. NTFS partitions have a file size limit only limited by the partition size. To get around this problem or prevent it from being a problem later you could format the drive as an NTFS partition. You could save the file to an NTFS partition or a DVD. When trying to copy files to the drive you may get prompted to do a disk clean up but this will not resolve the problem. This may be a problem for larger files, such as video files, disk images, or large Outlook PST files.
#FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND PC ON WINDOWS 10 DOWNLOAD#
SD Memory Card Formatter Download for Windows/Mac. The maximum file size on a FAT32 partition is 4gb. Always confirm that the device is compatible with the SD, SDHC or SDXC memory card before formatting. If you’re thinking of moving to Mac but are unsure about the process or concerned with these kinds of issues, check out our Moving to Mac Guide.A new Western Digital external drive is configured by default out of the box as a FAT32 partition. Of course, there are other options for transferring files between hard drives cloud-based solutions like Dropbox are convenient and don’t have compatibility issues, although are sometimes limited in space. That said, for a daily exchange of files (for example, if you work on a PC but you have a Mac at home), it’s a practical and effective solution. Configuration Windows Disk Management fails to initialize a hard drive in.

#FORMAT HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND PC ON WINDOWS 10 SOFTWARE#
What problems could I have on an HD formatted in FAT32?įAT32 is the only format that both OS X and Windows can read and write without the use of third-party apps. When long-term Mac users want to switch into the Windows ecosystem for the first time, they typically find a shortage of Mac-based software and luxuries on the Windows platform, which can get. *Warning: this will delete all data on the disk. If there are documents on there that you want to keep, make a copy of the files on your Mac or on another external drive first.*Īnd you’re done! Now, the disk can be read and written using both Mac and Windows computers. Open the Erase tab. From the Format drop-down menu, choose MS-DOS (FAT), better known as FAT32.Īfter you choose the format, you’ll see a box to enter the name of the disk. Choose any name with a maximum of 11 characters (don’t worry, it can be changed later).Ĭlick on Erase and confirm the operation in the next pop-up window. Connect the disk and open Disk UtilityĬonnect the hard drive or USB drive to your Mac and then open the Disk Utility app, which is located in Applications> Utilities> Disk Utility. You can also open the app from Launchpad.Ĭhoose the disk that you want to format for both Mac and PC from the column on the left. Luckily, with OS X, you can create a disk that can be used by both operating systems in a snap. Here’s how.
