If, on the other hand, you want to take data currently on the NTFS-formatted drive for use on the Mac, then re-use the drive on the Mac (if this is an external drive formatted with NTFS, for example) you would need to network the PC and Mac together (which varies in degree of difficulty depending on the versions of Windows and Mac OS in.
How to Check a Drive’s File System RELATED: So how do you know if your USB drive is? You don’t need to do anything special with Disk Utility–just plug in your USB drive and open the Finder. Right-click or Control-click the drive’s icon in the Finder’s sidebar (or on your desktop) and select “Get Info.” You’ll see the drive’s file system displayed to the right of “Format” under the General heading.
In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system. How to Format a Drive on a Mac If you want to use a different file system on your USB drive, you’ll need to “format” it.
Again, formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep. To format a drive on a Mac, you’ll need the built-in Disk Utility application. Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search dialog, type “Disk Utility”, and press “Enter” to launch the app. You can also open a Finder window, select “Applications” in the sidebar, and head to Utilities Disk Utility. Your connected drives will appear under “External” in the Disk Utility’s sidebar. Select the drive by clicking its name.
Click the “Erase” button after selecting the entire drive to erase the entire drive and create a single partition on it. You’ll be asked to provide a name for the disk, which will appear and identify the disk when you connect it to a Mac, PC, or another device.
You’ll need to choose between several file systems: RELATED:. OS X Extended (Journaled): This is the default, but it’s only natively supported on Macs. It’s also known as HFS+. This file system is necessary if you plan on using the drive for Time Machine backups–otherwise, you’ll want to use exFAT for maximum compatibility. OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled): On a case-sensitive file system, “file” is different from “File”.
By default, Mac OS X doesn’t use a case-sensitive file system. This option exists because it matches the traditional behavior of UNIX and some people might need it–don’t select this unless you know you need it for some reason. OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended file system, but with encryption. You’ll have to enter a password, and you’ll need to provide that password whenever you connect your drive to your Mac. OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended (Case-senstiive) file system, but with encryption. MS-DOS (FAT): This is the most widely compatible file system, but it has some limitations–for example, files can only be 4GB or less in size each. Avoid this file system unless you have a device that requires FAT32. ExFAT:, but doesn’t have the limitations.
You should use this file system if you may share the drive with Windows PCs and other devices like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. ExFAT is the ideal cross-platform file system. It’s not natively supported on many Linux distributions, but you can. For external drives, it almost always makes sense to format in ExFAT, unless you’re using the drive for Time Machine. RELATED: You’ll also be asked to choose between a partition scheme: GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, or Apple Partition Map. Both also work with Windows PCs. APM is an older, Mac-only partition scheme.
This choice doesn’t really matter if you don’t plan on booting from the drive. If in doubt, just select the default GUID Partition Map (GPT) scheme. Avoid the Mac-only Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme. Click the “Erase” button when you’re done and Disk Utility will format your disk with the settings you specified. This will erase all the files on the drive!
You’re now done–be sure to eject the disk before you remove it from your Mac. You can do this by clicking the eject icon to the right of the disk in the Finder or Disk Utility windows. You can also right-click or Option-click the drive in Finder or on your desktop and select the “Eject” option. Macs do have some limited support for other file systems–for example, Macs can read files on Windows-formatted NTFS volumes, but. Macs don’t have an integrated way to format partitions with NTFS, either.
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Use exFAT for excellent compatibility with Windows without FAT32’s limitations.
Back Up the Drive’s Data First First, back up the data on the Mac-formatted drive if you have anything important on it. This process won’t actually convert the file system. Instead, we’ll just be wiping the drive and starting over from scratch.
Any files on the drive will be erased. If you have a Mac lying around, you can plug the drive into a Mac and back up the files. If you only have Windows systems available, you can use to copy files from the drive onto your Windows system drive or another drive. HFSExplorer unfortunately requires you install Java to use it, but it’s the only free option here. You’ll probably want to.
Erase the Mac Partitions, Including the EFI System Partition RELATED: First, open the. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type diskmgmt.msc into the box, and press Enter to open it. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer — internal ones or external ones connected via USB. Locate the Mac drive in the list of disks. Be sure you’ve identified the Mac drive — if you accidentally delete partitions from another drive, you could damage your Windows installation or lose your files. If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems.
The Mac drive may have an “EFI System Partition” on it. This partition is marked as protected, so you can’t just right-click and delete it — the delete option will be disabled. To erase this partition, we’ll have to wipe the entire disk.
This process erases everything on the disk, including its files and all its partitions. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management window. For example, in the screenshot below, the Mac-formatted drive is Disk 2. Next, open a Command Prompt window as administrator. To do this on Windows 8 or Windows 7, press the Windows key once, type cmd, and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Type diskpart into the Command Prompt window and press Enter. Type list disk at the DISKPART prompt and press Enter to view a list of disks connected to your computer.
Identify the number of your Mac disk in the list. It should be the same as the number of the disk in the Disk Management window. Be sure to double-check this — you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here. Type select disk # and press Enter to select the Mac disk, replacing # with the number of the Mac disk.
For example, here we’d type select disk 2. Finally, type clean and press Enter. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions — whether they’re protected or not. You’ll have an empty, uninitialized disk after you do this. Close the Command Prompt window when you see a message saying “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.” Create an NTFS or FAT32 Partition You can now open the Disk Management window again. If you’ve left it open, you may have to click Action Rescan Disks to update the data.
Locate the Mac disk in the list. It will be completely empty and display a message saying “Not Initialized.” Right-click it and select Initialize Disk. Select the and click OK to create a partition table for the disk.
Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the. The drive will now be formatted for use by Windows systems. There will be no space wasted by protected Mac partitions. Some Mac functions require an HFS+ formatted drive. For example, can only back up to HFS+ formatted drives. Image Credit.