Important: make sure you have at least one backup of all the data stored on the device before you proceed. How to know what current file system your flash drive is with, and how to format it to exFAT? Now that you’ve learned exFAT is the ideal file system to go. This is because an NTFS-based drive can be read by macOS but you can’t write data to the drive. You may notice that NTFS is marked “Partially” under the Compatible with macOS column. You should go ahead and format your storage drive with exFAT instead of FAT32, assuming that all devices you want to use the drive support exFAT. Therefore, it’s perfect for a USB flash drive or external disk, especially when you need to save files more than 4GB in size. See the table below for more info.Īs you can see, exFAT is the only file system that works with all versions of Windows and macOS and does not have any max file-size or partition-size limits. Note that there is another file system called FAT32 that pretty much does the same thing but with one major flaw. In other words, you can access the drive and transfer data without any hassles. If your disk was initially formatted to NTFS on a PC (or HFS+ on a Mac), most likely you’ll suffer limitations, for example, the data on your drive can’t be read or written on one of your computers.įortunately, there is a file system (actually two, I’ll explain) that you can format your flash drive to be fully compatible with Mac and PC. If you have a USB drive, and you plan to use it on both a Mac and PC, things can get a bit tricky here. By default, Macs are with HFS+ (since 2017 there’s a new Apple File System, APFS, optimized for flash storage), while PCs are with NTFS. Any changes you make on files on this system is permanent.It’s no surprise that PCs and Macs do not work well with each other, due to differences between the two operating systems (Windows vs. The only drawback of exFAT is that it doesn’t support Journaling, i.e., cannot keep track of file changes. You can have a maximum of 4GB size limit per file which is not ideal. Now you can plug into any OS – even Linux, and it will work in reading and write mode. You might argue why not use FAT32 which works for both the OS’s. Click Start and close this window when finished.In the File System dropdown, choose exFAT.Open up File Explorer and right-click on the drive.Plug-in your drive into the computer’s USB port.After these steps, everything will be lost forever. It is where exFAT or Extended File Allocation Table comes into the picture. If you don’t know, exFAT was created to be used on flash drives like USB or SD cards. So the question is how do you format a hard drive using exFAT? The answer is even more straightforward.īefore we go ahead, if you have anything on your drive, make sure to backup everything. So I needed a format which is both read and write on both the systems.
I am the kind of person who needs to switch between both the OS daily.
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