Please note: since OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Apple made a few changes to Disk Utility (see details from this ComputerWorld article). The first part is for Mac users, and the second part is for PC users (Windows 10 based). Read this USB drive data recovery guide for more information.Īlso, since I don’t know whether you are on a PC or Mac to perform this operation, I’m here to break down this guide into two parts. Because the process of reformatting a disk drive will very likely erase all content and make recovery impossible.

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. 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.

Format usb on mac for pc