How To Format External Hard Drives So They Work On Both Macs and PCs
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- čas přidán 19. 07. 2024
- Have you ever wondered how to format your external hard drive or SSD to work on both an Apple Mac and a Windows PC computer. Both computers use different operating systems (MacOS and Windows) and therefore you may want an external hard drive that is able to read and write files to both Apple computers and PCs. In this video we will show you how to format your external hard drive so it does just that.
In this video we will show you what file system you should select for your external hard drive (SSD or HDD). With all the different file formats out there (Fat32, NTFS, HFS+, APFS, and exFAT) what is the correct format you should select when setting up your new external hard drive or SSD? It's very easy and we will show what all these file formats mean and which format is best for what situation. If you are interested in learning about the hard drive formatting options on both Macs and PCs this video can help.
You will learn:
1). The Differences in all the file formats that you can use to setup your external hard drive or SSD.
2). How To Setup An External Hard Drive on a Mac
3). The correct File Format to select if you want to read and write files to both Apple MacOS and Windows using the same hard drive (or SSD).
If you are interested in Apple and PC technology then please subscribe to our channel which covers a wide range of topics from computers, hard drives, hubs, monitors, cameras, microphones, mice, and more. - Věda a technologie
Great video! Many thanks for your instruction. It’s very easy to understand and very helpful !!! 🙏🙏🙏
Ok and thanks for the post and for watching the channel.
Great video. Just the information I needed. In case anyone also has a Linux machine, exFat is also compatible. So, you can share files with all three operating systems.
Thanks for sharing that info and watching the video.
This just saved me from the headache I had from not being able to use it on both
Glad it helped. Please sub if you can. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel if I have photos saved already on the hard drive will erase the memory after I format?
Excellent tutorial on formatting a hard drive for windows and Mac both. Thanks much!
Thanks for watching and the nice comment.
Great video. Thanks for the info. Any good information about how cloud storage can/should be integrated into the equation? I have about 5 years of professional documents in every format other than exFAT but now have a Mac. Could I just upload all the files to a cloud and then download them into the drive of choice with the format of choice?
I think that should work fine. I would just test a few files before you do all of them but I don't see any issues. Thanks for watching Timmy.
very cool and straight foreward.. thank you
Sorry for the late response but thank you.
Yes exFat is definitely the choice for multiplatform users. Works also on Linux which should be mentioned.
Yes, Linux and thanks for sharing and watching.
Thank you for the quality information
Thanks for watching Patrik.
Hi Craig,
My laptop has double OSes (Win and Mac). I formatted a data drive in exFAT.
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Both Windows OS and Mac OS can read the drive. Mac can easily read/open the files created in Windows OS. However, windows can not see folder/files created by in MacOs.
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From Mac, I can open a Ms Mord file created in Windows. However, once I edit the file in Mac, the file becomes corrupt when I try to open it in Windows OS.
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Can you give me a solution for that?
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Thanks
Found this at the perfect time 👍
Thanks for watching.
Thank you. I learned. God bless you.
Thanks for nice words
Thank you very much!!!!!!
Your welcome David.
thank you this was helpful.
Thanks for supporting the channel Shannon.
@@craigneidel you’re welcome. if u like my channel subscribe as well.
Extremely helpful!!! Strangely enough, the formatting doesn't work with an M1 Mac. It tells me, that the drive is full, no space available. Fortunately I still have a Mac mini with Intel, and there it worked perfectly. Both have Monterey, but some features don't work on the Intel-based device. I really appreciate your very succinct and clear explanation, it helped me a good deal.
Thanks. That's weird as I formatted just fine on my M1 MacBook Air. It might be a difference in the external SSD we are both using though. Thanks for sharing and for watching.
thanks for the help
Thanks for watching.
Thanks just bought a 18tb drive, and need a drive that works with both plus a drive that is readable by my WD cloud network drive via USB port.
That was very informative! I recently updated my mac to macOS big sur, and it only allows the APFS option when formating, and it doesn't seem to work on my pc. What can I do to make sure my external drive works on both my mac and pc? Thank you in advance!
format it with a PC it will have an option to format as exFAT
@@aashutoshtaikar5087 Thank you!
@@aashutoshtaikar5087 what about the data ?
Informative!
Thanks for the nice words Parth.
When you press erase, are you arranging the previous formatting or erasing the content on the existing hard drive?
I have a hard drive that has windows content on it (and I want to keep that), but want to add Mac stuff to it.
You are erasing the drive so you need to backup your data, reformat, then move back the the drive you want to use on both Windows and a Mac. Thanks James.
Great video/info! Does exfat also work on android? What would be the best option for Mac and android?
I think it should I didn't think of that. I do think it said it would work on Android also. Thanks for watching.
exFAT can't be used like external photo library in mac.Have to be formatted like APFS or mac os extended.I talking about big sure.
Thanks for sharing.
Your video was very helpful, thank you. I have an old Mac (Snow Leopard) I want to backup all my photos from the Mac and then transfer to my Windows 10, will this work?
It should work fine. Just try one or two photos first but exfat should work on both. I use it all the time
thanks a lot
Thanks for watching the channel.
Great explanation
Thanks for the feedback and for watching Carlile.
Thank you ❤
Thanks for watching.
Great Video Sir👍🏻
Thanks for the nice words.
I want to install windows 10 and keep space for my Mac, is ExFat all I need to do? I’ve seen another video saying that I should split the space for each but when I try it won’t let me with ExFat. Do I need to split the storage or just format it as ExFat and it would be fine?
Create a partition , then format it in exFAT
This is the best video I've seen yet, can you tell me what Ms-dos (fat) is
Thanks for the nice words. FAT32 offers near-universal interoperability with virtually every computing system on the planet. A drive formatted this way can easily transfer files between Macs and PCs. The big issue with it is that it can only support files up to 4 GB in size. So that is why it is becoming less attractive as files keep getting larger and larger. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel cool
Thanks for your video. I chose ExFAT but then there are 3 other options that I don't know what to do?! Can you help me?
Normally you can leave the other options alone but for the Scheme here is some info from MacWorld - www.macworld.com/article/234613/how-to-format-a-thumb-drive-for-both-mac-and-windows.html
for my purposes i wish you got to #5 faster, but this was extremely well put together and informative thank you!
Thanks for feedback and for watching.
I have a mac book. With a toshiba external hard drive thats was set up for windows nfst. is there a way i can change to exfat without losing my music on the external.thanks
I can only read on it not write to it.
I love you. Great video !!!!!!!!!
Thanks for nice message and for watching
very very helpfulllllllllll. tnx
For sure thanks for watching
So I have an ssd and use pc and my buddy runs a mac we have been working on a massive music collection library so what do you recommend to be able to use the library no matter what system the ssd is plugged into
Exfat. But need to format exfat before your data is on it.
Hi, great video! Question, if I format to exfat to use for both Mac and Windows, which computer should I use to format the drive? Mac machine or Windows machine? I was looking at another video and that person said it’s better to use a Mac to do the exfat format. Is there a difference whether I format the drive (exfat) using a Mac or Windows computer?
I haven't tested that but assume both work. I do use the Mac for my exfat formats so best bet is just use that if you have a Mac. Thanks for watching hope you can sub if not already.
@@craigneidel thanks for the reply. I was asking because I formatted the drive using my windows pc. Transferred some files onto it. Transferred over to my Mac and couldn’t mount. Used sudo pkill -f fsck and it mounted but only readable. I’ll try formatted on the Mac and see if this happens again.
SO helpful thank you!
Thanks for the nice words Desiree
There are 4 different versions of APFS to chose from in the list to format, when should you pick what version of that?
You can use the APFS version unless you want something encrypted. Then you need to put in a password to access it so I would just use the standard APFS. Thanks.
Excellent, exFAT has always been the option for this kind of task, you just forgot something, what about the scheme, basically before "erasing" we have GUID, Master Boot Record and Apple Partition Map, which one to choose for a regular external disk that I want to share files between PC and a Mac? Thank you!
I just leave it at GUD Partition Map for that.
Very well explained. But I still have a question. Do there meanwhile SSD Harddrives exists, which have two ports and you can connect a Mac and a PC the same time? I don't want always to switch. But rather being able to read/write from both Computers on them. A bit like my own dropbox at home. Thx if you could answer that.
Yes, I'm guessing you can get something like a NAS (Network attached Storage) and then connect that to your home network. Then you can save any type of files to that device from a Mac or a PC. Look up NAS on Amazon.
@@craigneidel Thx Craig..will have a look into that.
Hello! I have an OWC external NAS with four 2TB SSDs in it. I'm looking to format this as ExFat for both Mac and Windows but I also want to merge the drives to basically become an 8TB storage area. NTFS allows me to do this but I can't seem to do it while the drives are ExFat... Is it just impossible?
I have not tried that and will see what I can find. After a very quick search I found this but I would also search on Google as there are a bunch of topics of people trying it - forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-drive-partition-merge.1902302/
I have an iPad Pro will this work for that so I can transfer files from my iPad to my windows PC?
It should if you select the universal format. Thanks for watching.
is there a way to save the data from an external drive that has been used on a PC before formatting it to exFat so it can be used on both a PC and an iMac?
Not really. You would need to copy the data to a computer, format the drive to ExFat, and copy back. Thanks for watching.
I bought an 8 TB external Seagate compatible for Mac or PC. I formatted it on FAT32. I lost 6 TB of my drive. I was confused when I saw that I had 1/4 of my drive remaining. The Drive reads as 2 TB now! Someone said that FAT32 only works up to 2 TB. That seems to be my experience. Also, I did not realize that FAT32 could only hold 4 GB files, as I shoot a lot of video. Is there a format that will run (read and write) for large video files that works on Mac, but also on PC when needed?
The Seagate I suspect is a spinning drive. So do I need to stay with journaled and forget the compatibility to PC? But then you mentioned that MAC won't be reading old files soon. So that concerns me with not having access by either system.
What do you suggest?
That format should do it. Look at the limits on this and it's way higher than 4 GB files and only 2 TB of space en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT . Are you sure you didn't format in fat32?
@@craigneidel I corrected my comment above to state that I was directed to use FAT32 when originally formatting my drive. I had to go purchase a new drive, so I am attempting to get it right this time, so I can transfer my data to the new drive and either return the old new drive or simply reformat it (after transferring all data off of it) to have access to all of the 8 TB and keep it.
Thank you, you pointed me in the correct direction to do further research: www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/allocation-unit-size-exfat.html
I may not upload the free petition wizard app; however, I am learning information from the link that will assist in deciding if I want to use the default setting or change my unit sizes (to account for video speed or storage space saving capabilities) when I allocate the partitions in my just out of the box new drive.
I have Seagate external drive, currently it is NTFS formatted, if I now format it to the HFS+, use it with Mac and after few months if I again want to use it with Windows, my question is can I again format it to NTFS?
YOu should be able to but will lose all data on the drive.
@@craigneidel Yes! Thankyou!
How can I do this in reverse?? I have an external harddrive that I partitioned several years ago so that it would work with both my Mac and my PC. I no longer have the PC and would like to get rid of the partition so I can have all the space for my Mac back ups. I can't seem to find how to do this in CZcams land! Thanks!
Not sure you can reverse once it has been formatted unless you copy data off this and then do it and copy back.
Hi, I am attempting to copy an internal drive from an older PC that is about 350GB (mostly music and photos) to my newer Mac using an external 8GB drive. I successfully formatted the external drive using exfat. However, I can not get the PC drive to backup to the external drive. Incidentally I am able to backup individual files to the external drive, but the backup option for the entire drive will not work. Each time that I attempt this, I receive a pop up message that an unexpected error occurred because the volume is dirty. I could backup the files individually to the external drive Hi, I am attempting to copy an internal drive from an older PC that is about 350GB (mostly music and photos) to my newer Mac using an external 8GB drive. I successfully formatted the external drive using exfat. However, I can not get the PC to backup to the external drive. Incidentally I am able to backup individual files to the external drive, but the backup option will not work. but that would take considerably longer than just being able to backup the entire drive at once. Any ideas or thoughts? Thanks!!!
On my Mac I only have the option to change it to four different AFPS formats. know how to access the other options? Thanks!
What Mac and OS do you have. Normally you will have the other options. It might also matter depending on the ssd or enclosure you are using but that is pretty rare.
@@craigneidel I figured it out thank you for replying
Welcome and thanks again for watching.
What if , like lots of folks probly, you have an external hard drive full of data when you used a windows machine but now have a Mac and need to access those files? What are the options?
Not a ton of options. One is to just copy data back to Windows machine and then create a new external drive in ExFat and copy to that. Now that can be on both Mac and PC. There is also some software for the Mac (I have not fully researched but do search on Google) that might be able to read NTFS formatted drives so the Mac can read the PC but that is not always perfect.
Do i have to back up the data first before I format the external hard drive?
Always back up everything and all data before doing anything like this.
So am i able to take my exFat drive from my PC, Where i have movies and stream Plex and Infuse to my tv on, and then move/plug it into my mac mini and it'll be able to play the same movies as it did on the PC?
Yes, in most cases. But if possible you should format the drive as Exfat on the Mac first and then you can move it back and forth between the Mac and PC with no issues.
@@craigneidel but the drive is already connected to the PC. When plugging it into the Mac, after already being formatted to the PC, wouldn’t that delete all the files? Why not format it to EXFAT on the PC first before plugging it into the MAC? Thanks for responding by the way.
Yes, if the drive is already formatted don't format it again unless you have a copy of the data as it would erase it. If you already formatted it with Exfat on the PC you can see if it works on the Mac. Sometimes it doesn't work depending on the drive but I have found it almost always works on both PC and Mac when formatting on the Mac to Exfat. But, in the end both should work as ExFat should work between both OS types. Thanks. @@PhilGoodzGaming
I read somewhere that you have to format to exFAT from a PC in order for both Mac and PC to read the drive... Any thoughts?...
I formatted on my Mac and it worked on the PC so not sure and it might be depended on the actual drive. I would just try it when you do it on any drive you pick up and you will know which way it needs to be formatted. Thanks for sharing.
@@craigneidel Ok... just one of the comments below says they bought a Mac formatted HD and re-formatted to exFAT from a Mac but then the PC couldn't detect it... just something I've also heard before...
What other ways are there of accessing the same files between Mac and PC? Dropbox? The majority of my files are actually on the PC and I recently bought a MacBook Air for writing.
I would just get an external drive but other software like dropbox or google drive are online options. It just depends on how much storage you need.
@@craigneidel thanks! 1T is fine for me. I need to reformat a fresh external where I can take it between the Mac and PC so that I have everything in one place
What if you saved everything from your PC onto a external disc with Windows NT File System and then want to be able to access that hard drive on your Mac?
If I erase and change formats then I will loose what is on the disk correct?
It would not work and you need to start from the start with the correct format. Best of luck and thanks for watching.
Buy a new SSD/HD then format it to exFat.You will than be able to transfer your files to that new SSD/HD. After that you will be able to use that new SSD/HD with a Mac.
But...are you able to format it to work with Mac/Pc and be encrypted too?
I tried APFS with Paragon APFS for windows.
Everything was working great until all files written from windows got removed on reboot.
I will format to exFAT now.
Thanks for watching.
I have a formatted mac hard disk and i can not open it on my windows and i cant find it in my pc either. Iknow that i can change it to exFAT on a mac BUT i do not own mac or macbook. Do you know a solution?
I'm not sure what you are asking. Windows is on a PC so not sure what you mean.
@@craigneidel its ok, i fixed it
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Thanks Eduardo. Cheap price for the new iMac....
Related Subject > ExFat doesn't work on LG & Samsung TVs (surprisingly so) it appears that as a Mac user i will have to use a PC to reformat my external SSD to NTFS in order to view my Files on my TVs, which is a big pain. One would conclude that the TV manufacturers don't won't you to view your own videos on their TVs.
I could be TV model specific but thanks for the info and sharing this info.
Hi. I just watched this video and it was very interesting. Here's my issue. I have several external hard drives full of music that I would like to reformat to use on my Mac. All of these hard drives were formatted on a pc. I am a DJ and I use my gear with a mac but I have been told that the audio problems I have been experiencing are because I formatted the hard drives on a pc and not on a mac. How can I reformat the hard drives to be used on a mac? Is this possible or do I need to start fresh with a new hard drive and redownload or repurchase all of my music? Thanks.
Unfortunately you will need to copy the data off the drive to your PC first. Then once you have that backed up (double check) reformat to ExFat and then copy back to transfer to a MAC. Or you can use some type of cloud storage to copy to Mac and then reformat external drive once you confirm you have the data on the MAC. So in a nutshell there is really no way to reformat while keeping your data on the drive.
@@craigneidel Thanks for replying. I already started copying music off my hard drive and backing it up. I decided to store my music directly to my Mac and no longer use an external hard drive. I will be testing my music as I use it. Hopefully this will do the trick. Thanks again.
Can this work for Bootcamp?
you can use external drives with Bootcamp and that's not an issue. Thanks for watching.
Is this works for card readers
If you mean SD Cards it should also work in most cases.
I bought an external hard drive and it was formatted for mac, i put it in my mac and formatted it exfat but my PC still doesn't even see the drive.... ??? help
I read somewhere that you have to format to exFAT from a PC for both OS's to read the drive...
@@N_M_156 the PC doesn't see the drive....
@@TheDanAge Format the drive in exFAT from a PC not a Mac...
@@N_M_156 ..... how do I do that if the PC doesn't see the drive...... ????
@@TheDanAge That must mean that it only works with a drive originally formatted for PC out of the box...
Hi there I like the channel - very informative - a little fast for people my (72) . So, I have the "BOTH" situation and my question is - can I format (exfat) my external drive 3TB Moving drive from my Mac while it is connected to my PC Laptop and has files that I need on it?
Patrick from Germany
Thanks for the nice words. If you format the drive it erases everything on it so you really need to first copy the files somewhere else, format, and copy back. Otherwise you will lose the data. Thanks for watching and I hope that helps.
Does it work for ios and android/windows too?
It should work on Windows (ExFat) for sure. Android could depend on version.
@@craigneidel thanks, I just received my Samsung t7 1tb ssd. Actually it’s quite plug and play type for all three windows, android and iPad. I didnt format a thing
It must be formatted already in ExFat. Thanks again.
Why my windows ask to format my exfat pendrive
I am not sure how to solve that as I haven't seen that before. Some drives might be issue depending on what they are.
I am unable to format my SSD with all the methods you showed on my Mac OS Monterey M1 chip iMac 2021
Never heard that before so maybe bad drive.
So this is what I did, I formatted the SSD on a windows 10 OS as Exfat and it worked fine. Thank you
The drives become really hard to connect to devices after formating as exFat. Most of the time it doesn't get regconized at all.
I haven't had any issues with them at all. Are you issues on the Windows or Mac Side. Try formatting with the Mac first to ExFat and then it should work on PC etc.
@@craigneidel It's on both. I even tried to move the content to another SSD but the problem still resists. And yes I did use Mac to format the drive to ExFat. It's fine if it stays plugged in but if I unplug it (of course I ejected it first) then it becomes a pain in the butt to get it to connect again so I just keep plugging and unplugging it over and over again with hope that it will connect. I once somehow managed to connect it to a classmate's laptop but it needed initializing which indicate the drive was being plugged and unplugged incorrectly constantly (probably).
@@shirakuyanai4095 I haven't seen that before so could be the drive having issues. I use exfat on about 10 drives and never saw that.
@@craigneidel It's weird both 2 of my ssds have the same issue. I tried plugging one into a dock a few days ago but it didn't work. Now I try that again and it's working fine.
What about PCs and iPads?
They should work in ExFAT
@@craigneidel Thanks!
This video would have been far better if it were kept under a minute just to show how to format into exFat.
Thanks for watching.
You have problems focusing or something? This is CZcams, there are other social platforms that have up to a minute quick guides…. SMH.
ExFAT!
exfat tends to have corrupted file system, be aware.
I have not seen that before in my testing.
Who else came here from des2fly playlist’s ?
Not me