You will be asked to provide the disk name and then select the file system as exFAT. If you have a USB flash drive inserted in your Mac, you can see it under the External in the Disk Utility. Go to Open Disk Utility, which is located under Applications in the Finder menu. To format a drive on a Mac, you'll need the built-in Disk Utility application. You will see the drive's file system shown on the right “Format”.įormatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep. Right-click the drive icon in the Finder sidebar (or on the desktop) and select Get Info. So how do you know if your USB drive is in the correct format? You do not need to do anything special on the 'Disk Utility' - simply insert the USB drive and open Finder.
#Format flash drive for mac and windows how to#
How to format a USB drive as exFAT on Mac Don’t Format the Drive! (Yet) When you connect a Mac-formatted drive to Windows, you’ll be informed that “you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” Don’t click the “Format disk” button or Windows will erase the contents of the drive–click “Cancel”! Now click the “Erase” button and confirm again on the next pop-up window to format the External Disk or a Flash Drive for Mac.
#Format flash drive for mac and windows mac os#
If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC.įormat an External Disk or Flash Drive for Mac in Maverics Now type a new name for the Volume and select the format type as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than. If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. You can format the drive on your Mac or Windows computer.