Best external drives for mac and pc interchangeable 2020. Rightclick on the start button and select disk management on the popup menu. In order to use the drive on both systems you can just format it exfat and it will be readwrite on both systems. From what i understand, windows doesnt always like the way mac s do the formatting on some larger drives, though, so give it a try and if your windows machines dont like it, just format the drive with windows. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Well be putting together a complete video tutorial on this in the near future. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. That said, if you are using both a pc and mac in the workflow, youll need to use a different format. But before you click the format disk button and erase all the contents of the mac formatted drive, consider the alternatives. If you only use a mac computer, you can format your thumb drive so it can work on windows systems.
Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard drive so make sure you back up your data elsewhere before starting. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet. If you format your fat32 drive in windows, the drive partition cannot be larger than 32gb. Opening disk management can be done a number of ways. Disk utility shows the recommended mac format by default. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. Apple file system format or the older mac os extended format, and it automatically chooses a compatible format for you. How to erase and format an external hard drives on windows. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both windows and mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with windows pc and mac. Connect your external hard drive to your windows 10 pc. How to format usb drives on windows 10 make tech easier. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. This works with any hard drive, flash drive, ssd, usb drive, or just about any other.
But before you click the format disk button and erase all the contents of the macformatted drive, consider the alternatives. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. The g drive mobile pro ssd drive provides shockresistant storage 1 in a durable case with 3meter drop protection 3, a lb crushproof rating, and designed with handpicked components to. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. How to format a drive for mac and pc compatibility macyourself. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. How to initialize and format a new hard drive in windows 10 tutorial duration. Apr 26, 2016 if you are a mac users, here are overviews of different file format systems, and how to choose which format to use for your usb drive to ensure compatibility with other operating systems. Jan 15, 2019 so if you think you might need to plug the usb drive into a mac running an older version of macos, format it as mac os extended. Format external hard drive with windows builtin tool. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac.
For example in a gspeed q with 1tb x4 drives, the end capacity would be 3tb of storage. The latest trend with computers is not including a cddvd drive. My external g drive made by g technology has always worked great with windows 7 but no longer is accessible with windows 10. To use gdrive mobile usb on mac and windows, go to cross platform use. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. However, you can format the drive to work with both.
A drive can be formatted with exfat using either a windows or a mac computer. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. If youre going to be using the drive with a version of windows prior to windows vista, youre going to want to go with mbr. How to format a flash drive to work on os x and windows. Aug 16, 2019 in this guide, we show you virtually every method to format a usb flash drive and quickly erase its contents or fix data corruption and other issues using windows 10s builtin tools. How to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. Gpt is a newer format supporting larger capacities, but isnt compatible with. Im a mac user and do not plan on using my g technology drive with the windows os nor do i plan to share my drive with a windows os user. The missing 1tb of space in this example is used to hold partial amounts of data in the event any 1 drive in the raid fails. Please back up all data prior to reformatting your drive.
Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. How to format or partition an external hard drive on mac. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. However, fat32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. Find out how to format an external drive or usb disk making the drive work with both windows pc and mac can read and write. I plugged the g drive into my ms sp3 and it works fine so i know its not the drive or the cord.
Just click on g technology format wizard button below and follow the instructions. If you wish to format external hard drive in exfat follow the steps below. Gtechnology data recovery from driveraid on windows and mac. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Jul 25, 2016 hello jane, we have extensive directions on our website here. May 17, 2018 g technology sells their external storage devices for professionals under the product lines g speed, g raid, g safe, and g drive for desktop mobile, network services, workflow media and accessories. How do i format my new g drive mini external hard drive on my pc with windows xp. Please, someone help me, give it to me in laymans terms just to make sure i understand everything and so it right. Formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep.
Mar 31, 2020 how to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other. Restore the g technology drive icons download g technology windows format wizard download the new windows formatting tool for g technology drives download g technology assistant download the latest version of the g technology assistant. How to format a drive for mac and pc compatibility posted by ant on march 11th, 2012 43 comments if you have an external hard drive or usb flash drive that youd like to use on both macs and windows pcs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Since windows isnt equipped to understand any of apples file systems, it will try to convert them to a usable file system. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on mac and windows as exfat. Once that is completed you can close the command prompt windows and continue the process in disk management of initializing and formatting the drive. Apfs is optimized for ssd solid state drive such as flash drives, so if you reformat a flash drive on a mac, you should definitely choose apfs unless you plan to use it with a prehigh sierra mac, of course.
Format your western digital my passport external hard drive to fat32 or exfat format so to transfer the data between a mac and windows system conveniently. Windows cannot natively access a mac formatted drive. Now, your external hard drive is formatted and is as good as new. You can select the exfat format when using the disk. Windows will format the drive as exfat and youll be able to use the drive on both windows and mac. Sep 26, 2018 need to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. If you dont see your drive available, ensure that its properly connected to your mac. Now your usb flash drive is formatted with ntfs format. All data will be removed from the drive during reformatting to ntfs. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. After disk management opens, which might take several seconds, look for the drive you want to format from the list at. I tried the included instruction and the included cdrom but my pc will not show the g drive. Apr 30, 2016 now, lets take a look at some ways you can format your usb drive on windows 10.
Cant access mac hard drive on windows 10 microsoft. A window will now popup asking which file system you would like to use, in order to format your external drive. Setup gdrive usb external hard drive on windows pc how to. This is the easiest way and simply requires you to plug in your usb drive, open the windows file explorer and right click your drive to view a number of actions that you can perform. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. For now here are some valuable doscuments that g tech has. How to format a usb flash drive on windows 10 windows. There are specific thirdparty systems, like digital camcorders, and sony playstation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either fat32 or exfat format to perform read from and.
This process is not required for the operation of g drive mobile usb. When i try to copy the files from the mac to the windows drive, the computer does not allow as the files do not move. If you own an imac, mac mini, mac pro or mac book pro simply plug in your new drive to the thunderbolt port and start using it. Format your external drive with exfat for both mac and. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. G technology portable external hard drive 2tb from the sleek design to the preformatting, this terabytesized drive is perfect for mac users who need a little extra space and offers the transfer rate up to 140mbs for accessing all your files. Dec 29, 2015 how to format a hard drive for both windows and mac.
Make sure your external hard drive is attached and mounted to. Click the link below to download the 5 day free trial of a great utility macdrive install that, then restart your pc, start the utility and connect the drive, you will then have access to that mac drive like any other pc hard drive. If you dont want to format the external hard drive for mac exclusively, you can choose msdos fat or exfat. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. In the simplest terms, there are three formats between the pc and the mac. Windows on the other hand cannot read mac formatted drives period. One simple way to make the drive readable on both platforms is to format it to exfat, which both operating systems can understand. In order to use the drive on both systems you can just format. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. G technology sells their external storage devices for professionals under the product lines g speed, g raid, g safe, and g drive for desktop mobile, network services, workflow media and accessories.
Rightclick on the unallocated space, and select the new. Simple and easy to use, macdrive is recognized as the leader for accessing mac disks from windows for almost 20 years. The raid 5 configuration allows you to write partial data across all drives. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. For some reason when i tried to reformat my gdrive mobile. This process is not required for the operation of gdrive mobile usb. Dec 31, 2019 please select the drive you would like to format. Then, select your hard drive from the left sidebar. A fat32 partition can reach up to 32gb when formatted on a windows pc. Windows only formatted drives are ntfs and they are readonly on a mac.
It seems the system does not recognize the windows g drive. Read mac formatted drives with windows the tech guy. Rightclick the drive icon in the finder sidebar or on the desktop and select get info. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management window.
Plug your hd into the mac and open disk utility, which can be accessed by searching for it in spotlight. Format usb flash drives to work with both mac and windows 7 by jack scicluna photography, llc guest writer. How to format usb drives on windows 10 by ayo isaiah apr 30, 2016 apr 28, 2016 windows if you have a malfunctioning or corrupted usb drive, formatting it may be the best way to get it back to its original working state. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. How do i format my new gdrive mini external hard drive on. Next, open a command prompt window as administrator. You will see the drives file system shown on the right format. Then, click erase at the bottom to format the drive. However, this format doesnt support larger files, which can be problematic for transferring 4k videos and so on between macs and windows 10. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. In the disk management, youll see your external hard drive as partition or. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both mac and windows by using the exfat file system.
Select the second option manage from the rightclick menu. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. How to erase and format an external hard drive on mac and. If this is the case for you, rightclick the drive you want to format and click initialize disk. How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with macs. Although it is possible to format a drive as exfat from disk utility on the mac, that drive will not work with windows pcs, and thats not what. The other limitation is the total size of the partition. Open disk management, the hard drive manager included with all versions of windows. In the volume format list, select mac os extended journaled. How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. Aug, 2017 windows cant normally read macformatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead.
This will prompt a new window asking you to select a partition style for your disk. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. Windows users will have to go through a feew basic steps before they are up and running. If you move a hard drive between the two operating systems, heres what you need to know. Mar 15, 2018 rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. Click the file menu and select load file system from device.
When done, quit disk utility to return to the utilities window. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. The mass adoption of usb drive makes it one of the most used storage media today. The drive comes formatted for your mac, making it an easy plugandplay. Setting up your gtech thunderbolt drive on windows. Apr 17, 2015 in the simplest terms, there are three formats between the pc and the mac. For example, in the screenshot below, the macformatted drive is disk 2.
Right click on start and select command prompt admin. On windows 10, the ability to format a usb flash drive can come in handy in a number of scenarios. Format usb flash drives to work with both mac and windows. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Fixing gdrive 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, 4tb, 5tb, 6tb, 8tb, 10tb, 12tb, 14tb, 16tb that works perfectly fine on apple mac os x or macos computer such as macbook pro, imac, macbook air, mac mini, or mac pro. Need to format an external hard drive for mac and windows.
Jan 17, 2019 starting clean how to format new hard drive on windows 10 formatting is an essential task before starting to use a new drive, and in this guide, well show you how to do it on windows 10. Open the disk management tool by rightclicking this pc manage disk management. 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. The best external drives for your mac or pc duration. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. A vast majority of video production will be done on a mac or windows operating system, so we arent going to cover linux.