When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Format Ssd Using Usb Drive Mac By Using

However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem.

Heres how. In this guide were using exFAT instead of FAT32, another filesystem that both Windows and Mac can read and write to, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB (exabytes).

You can format the drive from either the Mac or the Windows machine.

However, if you want to use part of the drive for OS Xs Time Machine backups, you should do this from the Mac, since theres an extra step to make the drive compatible for Time Machine.

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.

Select the drive you want to format.

Click Erase. If you dont plan on using the drive for Time Machine, skip steps 5 to 11 below and continue with step 12.

Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map.

These will format the drive in OS Xs HFS filetype so it will be compatible with Time Machine.

Click Erase and OS X will format the drive.

With the drive selected in Disk Utility, click Partition.

Enter the amount of space you want to set aside for Time Machine.

In this example, were shrinking the Time Machine partition to 128 GB instead of allowing Time Machine to take up the whole drive.

Click Apply. 10. Select the new untitled partition so we can format it as exFAT for use with both Mac and Windows.

Click Erase. 12. Give the partition a name and select exFAT for the format.

Note that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make sure you have backups of the files on the shared drive and be extra careful about safely ejecting the drive before disconnecting it from your computer.

How to Format an External Drive in Windows The instructions below are for Windows 10, but other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exFAT for use with Mac as well.

Connect the drive to your Windows PC.

Open the Disk Management tool.

You can do that by typing disk format or disk management in Windows search or going to Control Panel Administrative Tools Create and format hard disk partitions.

Right-click on the external drives partition or unallocated space you want to format and choose New Simple Volume 4.

Follow the wizard to choose a volume size.

Assign a drive letter.

Choose exFAT as the file system in the Format Partition screen.

Give the volume a new name.

Click Next. 9. Click Finish.

Windows will format the drive as exFAT and youll be able to use the drive on both Windows and Mac.

Format Ssd Using Usb Drive Zip A File

Windows 10 Storage and Backup Previous Tip Next Tip Reclaim Hard Drive Space by Shrinking Windows 10 Delete the Windows.old Folder in Windows 10 How to Save Space By Cleaning Windows WinSxS Folder Back Up Files with the File History Feature Mount and Burn ISO Files Format a Hard Drive For Both Windows and Mac Zip a File or Folder in Windows 10 Control Which OneDrive Files Are Available Offline Map OneDrive as a Network Drive Fetch Any File on a Remote Computer with OneDrive 3 Ways to Save Space Free Disk Space Automatically with Storage Sense All Windows 10 Tips How to Install Apps to an External Drive.

You can unsubscribe at any time and well never share your details without your permission.

Format Ssd For Mac Using Usb Drive