How To Format Ssd For Mac And Windows

Want to use one external bulldoze for both your Windows PC and your Mac machine? One hurdle you'll face up is that, by default, these platforms use different filesystems. Windows uses NTFS while Mac Bone uses HFS, and they're incompatible with each other. However, yous can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac past using the exFAT filesystem. Here'due south how.

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In this guide, we're using exFAT instead of FAT32, another filesystem that both Windows and Mac tin read and write to, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large equally 16EB (exabytes). exFAT also performs better than FAT32.

You can format the drive from either Mac or Windows. However, if you desire to use part of the drive for Bone X'south Time Automobile backups, you should do this from the Mac, since there'south an extra step to make the drive compatible for Time Machine.

How to format an external drive in OS Ten

1. Connect the drive to the Mac.

ii. Open Disk Utility. The easiest mode to practice that is striking CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in "Disk Utility" to observe the program.

3. Select the bulldoze you want to format.

four. Click Erase.

If yous don't plan on using the drive for Time Automobile, skip steps 5 through xi beneath and proceed with stride 12.

5. Give the drive a descriptive name and go out the default settings: OS 10 Extended format and GUID division map. These will format the drive in OS X'southward HFS+ filetype then information technology will be compatible with Time Machine.

6. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive.

seven. With the drive selected in Disk Utility, click Partition.

8. Enter the amount of space you desire to gear up bated for Time Auto. In this example, we're shrinking the Time Car partitioning to 128GB instead of allowing Time Machine to take upward the whole drive.

nine. Click Apply.

10. Select the new untitled partitioning then we can format it as exFAT for utilize with both Mac and Windows.

11. Click Erase.

12. Give the sectionalization a proper name and select exFAT for the format.

13. Click Erase to finish.

Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Annotation that using a drive oftentimes between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of file abuse, and so make sure you have backups of the files on the shared bulldoze and be extra conscientious nigh safely ejecting the bulldoze before disconnecting it from your computer.

How to format an external bulldoze in Windows

The instructions below are for Windows 10, but other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and upward can as well format an external drive equally exFAT for use with Mac equally well.

1. Connect the drive to your Windows PC.

2. Open the Disk Management tool. Y'all tin can do that by typing "disk format" or "deejay direction" in Windows search or going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk drive partitions.