Electronics manufacturers are trying hard to convince us that we live in the world of wireless technology. However, nothing has come up with anything better than the old proven flash drive.
For fast data transfer from one device to another, for communication on different operating systems, it is still convenient to use external data storage devices for reliable data storage.
The only problem is to properly format the USB flash drive or disk. Now I will tell you how to make it so that both macOS and Windows can work with such a flash drive without any problems later.
Mar 03, 2020 Part 2: Formatting USB on a Windows PC. Please note: I’m here to use a Windows 10 based HP laptop to format my Lexar drive. If you are on an earlier operating system like Windows 7, XP, etc. The screenshots may look slightly different. For example, in Windows XP “My Computer” is equivalent to “This PC’ on Windows 10. How to format a USB flash drive as exFAT on Windows PC. There are several ways to format drive in Windows PC, you can do that in This PC or in Disk Management. Note: If you have important data on your USB flash drive, you should backup your drive before formatting it. Option 1: Format a USB drive as EexFAT in This PC. MacOS Catalina install image is distributed in.dmg format and Windows 10 has no support. Hen it is almost impossible to read such files in conventional ways. So in this part, we will convert macOS Catalina dmg file into ISO and create a bootable installer by burning the ISO file to USB. Right-Click on USB and click on Format option. Idl version for macos x. Select FAT32 (default) for the file system and click on the Start button. Click OK and wait to complete the format process and close the window. Format USB Flash Drive. Format USB Via CMD Command: #1: Press Win + R key and type diskpart and press Enter key. #2: In CMD prompt type list disk. Oct 25, 2016 USB devices,that are formatted in MAC format. It's format type is hfs. You cannot open the USB devices in windows. If you want to use the USB devices in windows you have to know how to do it.
Among the many existing file systems at the moment, the most popular are considered to be: FAT32,NTFS, exFAT, APFS(Apple File System), HFS+(Mac OS Extended Journaled)
Out of the box, Windows fully supports FAT32,exFAT and NTFS, when macOS supports FAT32, exFAT, HFS+ and APFS. Of course, with the help of third-party drivers and utilities, you can teach Windows to work with HFS+ and APFS, or add NTFS support to macOS, but often these drivers not free and looks like a complicated solution.
Read more:How can you Clear Application Cache and Temporary Files on your Mac?
Note: Access to APFS-formatted disks is currently possible only from Mac computers running the Sierra or High Sierra operating systems. I don’t recommend use it, if you want to share data on an external drive with multiple systems, it is better to leave the drives formatted in a more common file system, such as HFS+, FAT32 or ExFAT.
For cross-platform USB-drive using (macOS, Windows, Linux), ExFAT will be an optimal solution. In this case, it will be possible to both read data from the drive and write to it without limiting the file size to 4 GB.
Attention! When formatting a flash drive or other drive, all data on it will be deleted, save everything you need in advance.
This file system is more universal, but macOS does not know how to work with it, therefore, to clean up the drive you will have to download a special driver. Advantages are less need for fragmentation and compression efficiency.
As you can see, the choice of the file system of the drive depends on the devices with which you will use it. If only with Mac and other Apple device, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
But if you want to use USB drives in cross-platform mode, I strongly recommend you using exFAT file system. The finished flash drive in exFAT format will be recognized by both a Windows PC and any Mac.
In Disk Utility on your Mac, you can format an external disk for a Windows computer.
WARNING: Formatting a disk or volume erases all the files on it. Save any files you need to another volume before formatting.
In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with Windows computers.
Click the Erase button .
Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose Master Boot Record.
Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose one of the following:
MS-DOS (FAT): Choose this format if the size of the disk is 32 GB or less.
ExFAT: Choose this format if the size of the disk is over 32 GB.
Enter a name for the volume.
The maximum length for the volume name is 11 characters.
Click Erase, then click Done.
You can also partition a disk using the Master Boot Record partition layout, which is compatible with Windows.