By Will an external hard drive formatted for Mac work on PC?
A hard drive formatted for use in a Mac has either an HFS or HFS+ file system. For this reason, a Mac-formatted hard drive is not directly compatible, nor readable by a Windows computer.
What format should my hard drive be for Mac?
If you want to format your external hard drive to work with Mac and Windows computers, you should use exFAT. With exFAT, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years. Now that you know which format to use, check out our guide on how to format your hard drive on a Mac.
Why can’t I use my external hard drive on my Mac?
Change the Drive’s Permissions If the formatting of the drive is correct but you still can’t put files onto an external hard drive on a Mac, it might be a problem related to the permissions on your drive. Expand the section that says “Sharing & Permissions,” then click on the lock icon so it’s open.
How to make an external hard drive compatible with a Mac?
Open the Start menu and search for Disk Management. Select the search result and the Disk Management utility will launch. In the left sidebar, you should see your hard drive and its partitions Select the drive which you want to be made into a partition. Right-click the Windows partition and select Shrink partition.
How do I format an external drive on a Mac?
How to Format an External Drive in OS X. 1. Connect the drive to the Mac. 2. Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility to find the program. 3. Select the drive you want to format. 4. Click Erase.
How do I format a hard drive for dual compatibility?
Attach the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the Erase tab Then click the pulldown menu alongside Format and select MS-DOS (FAT) Give the drive a name (optional) and click the Erase button to format the drive
How do I format an external hard drive to exFAT?
Here we take an example of formatting external hard drive to exFAT in a Windows 10 PC. Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows 10 PC. Step 2. Open the Disk Management tool by right-clicking This PC -> Manage -> Disk Management. Step 3. In Disk Management, you’ll see your external hard drive as partition or unallocated space.