However, the file system is not supported by many older systems. How to format/erase usb disk or memory card on MAC using Disk Utility Select the one you want to erase/format, and then click the Erase button. In theory, data capacity of up to 2 TB is possible, but Microsoft has limited the partition size in newer systems to 32 GB in order to promote the modern NFTS format.ĮxFAT is a further development of FAT that in principle offers unattainable storage and data capacity. The maximum data size is limited to 4 GB in the latest version FAT32. I have searched Google on how to convert a Windows disk to Mac (format to HFS+ on Windows) but can't seem to find a solution to this problem. The problem is that the disk is currently formatted as NTFS and is not readable with Time Machine. If the USB flash drive was formatted for a Mac (AFS+) but you want to use it on a PC, you must. I have an old external 1 TB hard drive I'd like to format for use with Apple Time Machine backup. Note, however, that any data on the drive will be erased, so make sure you already have another copy. Then right-click your USB drive and select Format and NTFS. It is not supported by many applications.įAT is a file system developed by Microsoft that is also supported by Linux and macOS. To format to NTFS, open File Explorer and click on ‘This PC’ from the left pane.
FORMAT USB DRIVE FOR MAC ON A WINDOWS MAC OS
Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the addition that the file system can differentiate between upper and lower case (e.g. HFS+ or Mac OS Extended (case-sensitive and journaled) Windows/Linux devices are only able to read but not write on USB sticks in this format. Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar. Right-click on it in a File Explorer window and choose Format. Launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility ). The process is the same for both internal and external storage devices. The most popular way to format a storage device, and arguably one of the easiest, is directly through Windows File Explorer.
A file system developed by Apple that is particularly suited to data media with large memory capacity. Method 1: Format USB Drive from File Explorer.