You can use LaCie Setup Assistant to format your LaCie hard drive when it is first connected to a. ExFAT: compatible with Mac and Windows. The maximum volume size for MBR is 2TB while the more recent GPT format does not assign. When I format the drive using Win7, OSX wants me to initialize it. Setting the Partition type to GUID instead of MBR when formatting as exfat?
This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS.END External hard drives and external solid state drives come pre-formatted and ready for use. Internal HDD and internal SSD drives do not ship pre-formatted and will need to be Partitioned and formatted before being used. Please note the instructions do not differ when formatting different capacity sizes, this is not capacity specific. Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Important: Please note if this is the first time connecting an external device to a macOS, there is a Reformatting Required for Mac OS Compatibility, please see.
Select an Operating System (OS) Operating System Instructions Windows 10 and 8.1 Windows 7 and Windows Vista macOS 10.14.x (Mojave) macOS 10.13.x (High Sierra) macOS 10.11.x (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12.x (Sierra) macOS 10.9.x (Mavericks), and macOS 10.10.x (Yosemite) macOS 10.7.x (Lion), and macOS 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) Both Windows and macOS (exFAT & FAT32). APFS formatted volumes can be read by a macOS High Sierra (10.13), but not by a macOS Sierra (10.12) or earlier. For more information, please refer to. If the following message occurs during the format procedure, MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation. Operation failed., please refer to. For instructions to convert a drive to (APFS) Apple File System Format on macOS High Sierra (10.13), please refer to Important: If at any time an error occurs stating that the drive can not be dismounted or unmounted, this is not caused by an issue with the hard drive. Please see for additional information on this particular issue.
How to Partition and Format a Drive on Windows 10 and 8.1 Partitioning a hard drive means preparing it to be used by the, creating a Volume for the OS to use. Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it, and assigns a file system to it so that data can be moved into and out of the volume. Both processes are normally done together. Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.
Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Windows 10 includes a built in utility known as Disk Management that can be used to partition and format a hard drive. To partition and format the drive with Disk Management, follow these steps:. Right-click on Start, the Windows logo on the bottom-left of the screen, and click Disk Management. In the Disk Management window, the lower pane will display a list of available drives.
Identify the drive that needs to be partitioned and formatted, and make sure that all critical data on this drive has been backed up elsewhere. If there is already a partition on the drive, the bar above that drive will appear blue. If there is no critical data on the drive, or the data has been successfully backed up, right-click the bar and click Delete Volume. Important: If Disk Management shows the drive as Not Initialized, the drive will have to be initialized. For assistance initializing a hard drive, please see. If there is no partition and data on the drive, it will appear as Unallocated, with a black bar on top. Right-click the Unallocated space or the black bar, and click New Simple Volume.
The Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard will open. Click Next to proceed. Choose the volume size and click Next. By default, the maximum disk space is already selected and it is recommended to leave it at the maximum disk space. Note: To create multiple partitions, select or type a specific number of megabytes (MB) for the first partition and continue to the next step.
Once done with this process, the remaining space will display as unallocated space. Now, create another New Simple Volume in the remaining unallocated space for the next partition. For example, on a 2TB drive, set the volume size to 1000000 (1 TB) and continue to the next step. When done, begin the New Simple Volume process again and select the remaining capacity, the unallocated space, for another 1TB partition.
Assign a drive letter to represent the volume being created, and click Next. By default, this is the next available letter. Next is the File System, which controls how the data is read and written. Set the file system to NTFS, which is the default Windows file system, and leave the Allocation unit size to Default.
The Volume Label field can be customized in order to give the volume a desired name, such as My Book or WD Black 1. Check the box labeled Perform a quick format and click Next. Click Finish to begin formatting the drive.
When complete, the drive will appear with a blue bar as in the image below. How to Partition and Format a Drive on Windows 8 or 8.1 Partitioning a hard drive means preparing it to be used by the, creating a Volume for the OS to use. Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it, and assigns a file system to it so that data can be moved into and out of the volume. Both processes are normally done together. Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive.
This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Windows 8 includes a built in utility known as Disk Management that can be used to partition and format a hard drive.
To partition and format the drive with Disk Management, follow these steps:. Right-click on the lower-left corner of the desktop screen and click Disk Management. In the Disk Management window, the lower pane will display a list of available drives. Identify the drive that needs to be partitioned and formatted, and make sure that all critical data on this drive has been backed up elsewhere. If there is already a partition on the drive, the bar above that drive will appear blue, which indicates the drive is already formatted and may contain data.
If there is no critical data on the drive, or the data has been successfully backed up, right-click the bar and click Delete Volume. Important: If Disk Management shows the drive as Not Initialized, the drive will have to be initialized. For assistance initializing a hard drive, please see. If there is no partition and data on the drive, it will appear as Unallocated, with a black bar on top. Right-click the Unallocated space or the black bar, and click New Simple Volume. Click Next to proceed.
Choose the volume size and click Next. By default, the maximum disk space is already selected and it is recommended to leave it at the maximum disk space. Note: To create multiple partitions, select or type a specific number of megabytes (MB) for the first partition and continue to the next step. Once done with this process, the remaining space will display as unallocated space. Now, create another New Simple Volume in the remaining unallocated space for the next partition. For example, on a 2TB drive, set the volume size to 1000000 (1 TB) and continue to the next step.
When done, begin the New Simple Volume process again and select the remaining capacity, the unallocated space, for another 1TB partition. Assign a drive letter to represent the volume being created, and click Next. By default, this is the next available letter. Next is the File System, which controls how the data is read and written. Set the file system to NTFS, which is the default Windows file system, and leave the Allocation unit size to Default.
The Volume Label field can be customized in order to give the volume a desired name, such as My Passport or WD Black 1. Check the box labeled Perform a quick format and click Next. Click Finish to begin formatting the drive. When complete, the drive will appear with a blue bar as in the image below. How to Partition and Format a Drive on Windows 7 and Windows Vista Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.
Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Windows includes a built in utility known as Disk Management that can be used to partition and format a hard drive. To partition and format the drive with Disk Management, follow these steps:. Click on Start and right-click Computer. Click on Manage. A window called Computer Management will open, displaying two panes. On the left-side pane, under Storage, click on Disk Management.
This will load Disk Management on the right-side pane. Disk Management will proceed to display all the hard drives detected by Windows. The window may need to be maximized in order to see all the drives listed. The lower pane will display a list of available drives. Identify the drive that needs to be partitioned and formatted.
It typically has a black bar indicating unallocated space. Important: If Disk Management shows the drive as Not Initialized, the drive will have to be initialized. For assistance initializing a hard drive, please see. If there is already a partition on the drive, the bar above that drive will appear blue. This indicates that the drive is already formatted and may contain data. Make sure that all critical data on this drive has been backed up elsewhere.
When ready to proceed, right-click on the blue bar and choose Delete Volume. The bar should now be black.
Right-click on the unallocated space or the black bar to see a menu of available options, and click on New Simple Volume. The Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard will appear. Left-click on Next to proceed to the next screen. Choose the volume size and click Next. By default, the maximum disk space is already selected and it is recommended to leave it at the maximum disk space.
Note: To create multiple partitions, select or type a specific number of megabytes (MB) for the first partition and continue to the next step. Once done with this process, the remaining space will display as unallocated space. Now, create another New Simple Volume in the remaining unallocated space for the next partition. For example, on a 2TB drive, set the volume size to 1000000 (1 TB) and continue to the next step.
When done, begin the New Simple Volume process again and select the remaining capacity, the unallocated space, for another 1TB partition. Assign a drive letter to represent the volume being created, and click Next.
By default, this is the next available letter. Next is the File System, which controls how to data is read and written. Set the file system to NTFS, which is the default Windows file system, and set Allocation unit size to Default. The Volume Label field can be customized in order to give the volume a desired name, such as My Passport or WD Black 1. Check the box labeled Perform a quick format and click Next. Click Finish to begin formatting the drive. Note: If an error message is received stating that Windows is unable to unmount the drive, this means that there is a program or service currently reading or writing data on the drive.
Determine what program is accessing the drive and shut it down, and then try again. Please see for assistance with this error under Windows. The listing for the drive (Disk 3 in the picture below) will say Formatting as it formats the drive. This process may take a few seconds. When the drive is done (Disk 3 in the picture below), the bar will be blue and the drive will say Healthy. How to Partition and Format a Drive on Windows Vista Partitioning a hard drive means preparing it to be used by the, creating a Volume for the Operating System to use.
Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it, and assigns a file system to it so that data can be moved into and out of the volume. Both processes are normally done together. Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Windows Vista includes a built in utility known as Disk Management that can be used to partition and format a hard drive. Please see for more information.
Please follow the steps outlined below:. The lower pane will display a list of available drives. Identify the drive that needs to be partitioned and formatted.
It typically has a black bar indicating unallocated space. Important: If Disk Management shows the drive as Not Initialized, the drive will have to be initialized. For assistance initializing a hard drive, please see.
If there is already a partition on the drive, the bar above that drive will appear blue. This indicates that the drive is already formatted and may contain data. Make sure that all critical data on this drive has been backed up elsewhere. When ready to proceed, right-click on the blue bar and choose Delete Volume. The bar should now be black. Now right-click on the unallocated space or the black bar to see a menu of available options, and click on New Simple Volume.
The Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard will appear. Left-click on Next to proceed to the next screen. Choose the volume size and click Next. By default, the maximum disk space is already selected and it is recommended to leave it at the maximum disk space. Note: To create multiple partitions, select or type a specific number of megabytes (MB) for the first partition and continue to the next step. Once done with this process, the remaining space will display as unallocated space.
Now, create another New Simple Volume in the remaining unallocated space for the next partition. For example, on a 2TB drive, set the volume size to 1000000 (1 TB) and continue to the next step. When done, begin the New Simple Volume process again and select the remaining capacity, the unallocated space, for another 1TB partition. Assign a drive letter to represent the volume being created, and click Next. By default, this is the next available letter.
Next is the File System, which controls how to data is read and written. Set the file system to NTFS, which is the default Windows file system, and set Allocation unit size to Default. The Volume Label field can be customized in order to give the volume a desired name, such as My Passport or WD Black 1. Check the box labeled Perform a quick format and click Next.
Click Finish to begin formatting the drive. Note: If an error message is received stating that Windows is unable to unmount the drive, this means that there is a program or service currently reading or writing data on the drive. Determine what program is accessing the drive and shut it down, and then try again.
Please see for assistance with this error under Windows. The listing for the drive (Disk 1 in the picture below) will say Formatting as it formats the drive. This process may take a few seconds. When the drive is done (Disk 1 in the picture below), the bar will be blue and the drive will say Healthy. How to format a drive on macOS 10.14.x (mojave) Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.
Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST!. Open Disk Utility. Please See. From the left Column chose the External drive (My Passport, My Book, etc.). Click the Erase Button. Type the drive new Name (My Passport, My Book, etc.).
Click the Format drop down. Choose a new Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Click Erase button. When finished, the drive will be formatted and repartitioned successfully. Click the Done button. How to partition and format A DRIVE ON macOS 10.13.x (High Sierra) Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive.
This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST!. Open Disk Utility. Please See. In the top menu bar, go to View, and choose Show All Devices. Click the eject button next to the drive volume (My Passport, etc) The drive Volume will now be greyed out.
Select the drive (WD My Passport Media, etc). Click the Erase button. Choose a new Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Choose Scheme: GUID Partition Map. Type the drive new Name. Click the Erase button. When finished, the drive will be formatted and repartitioned successfully. Click the Done button.
Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.
Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Steps for macOS 10.11.x (El Capitan) and macOS 10.12.x (Sierra). Open Disk Utility. Please See.
Click the Eject button next to the external hard drive volume (My Passport, etc). The drive will now be greyed out. Click the Erase button. Choose a new Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Choose Scheme: GUID Partition Map. Type the drive new Name.
Click the Erase button. When finished, the drive will be formatted and repartitioned successfully. Click the Done button. How to Format or Partition a Drive on Mac OSX 10.9.x (Mavericks) and 10.10.x (Yosemite) Partitioning a hard drive means preparing it to be used by the, creating a Volume for the OS to use. Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it, and assigns a file system to it so that data can be moved into and out of the volume. Both processes are normally done together.
Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Mac OSX 10.9.x, and 10.10.x include a built in utility known as Disk Utility that can be used to partition and format a hard drive. To partition and format the drive with Disk Utility, follow these steps:. Double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner of the desktop screen. Choose Applications from the left-side panel.
While in there, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility. Disk Utility will now be open.
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In the left-side pane, choose the drive that is to be partitioned and formatted. Typically there are two listings for each drive unless more than one partition exists on a particular drive. Choose the drive listing that is farthest to the left for the drive that will be formatted. It is usually directly above the name of the drive. In the example below, the one to be selected would be 495.78 GB WD My Passport 0830 Media. After selecting the appropriate drive, additional options will appear on the right-side pane.
Click on Partition. In the Partition area, click on the drop-down box under Partition Layout and select 1 Partition. Note: Partitioning a drive is only necessary if planning to use multiple partitions on the drive. It's recommended using a single partition in most cases, if the primary objective is to simply prepare the drive for use with the computer, no partitioning is required. No further action is required. Click on the drop-down next to Format and from the drop-down menu select Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This is the format that the drive will be formatted to.
In the Name area, a drive name can be given to the drive by just typing in the desired name or drive label. Click the Options button and choose Apple Partition Map. Then, click on Ok. Lastly, click on Apply.
Important: If the Mac computer being used is an Intel-based Mac, Apple recommends to use the GUID Partition Table instead. A confirmation box will appear, reminding users that partitioning and formatting the drive will erase all information that is on the drive.
Make sure that all critical information on the drive is backed up elsewhere before continuing. If not, copy the data to another location. When ready, click on Partition. The disk will be unmounted before being formatted.
Note: If an error message is received stating that the drive is unable to be unmounted, this means that there is a program or service currently reading or writing data on the drive. Determine what program is accessing the drive and shut it down before trying to format the drive again. If the error message persists, restarting the computer may resolve the issue. If additional assistance is required, please. The drive is now formatting and at the bottom of the Disk Utility panel a Status Bar displaying the name of the drive, the format that's being applied to it, as well as the given name. When finished, the bar will go away and the drive will now be listed on the desktop. How to Format or Partition a Drive on Mac OSX 10.7.x (Lion) and 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) Partitioning a hard drive means preparing it to be used by the, creating a Volume for the OS to use.
Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it, and assigns a file system to it so that data can be moved into and out of the volume. Both processes are normally done together. Critical: The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Mac OSX 10.7.x, and 10.8.x include a built in utility known as Disk Utility that can be used to partition and format a hard drive.
To partition and format the drive with Disk Utility, follow these steps:. Double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac drive. Choose Applications, then Utilities, and double-click on Disk Utilities. Note: If the screen does not look like the one in the picture below, the folder view may be set to a different one.
Click on the Columns button (it's highlighted in blue in the screenshot) in the upper left corner of the window to change to the same view used here. In the far left pane, choose the drive that is to be partitioned and formatted. Typically there are two listings for each drive, unless that particular drive has more than one partition in it. Choose the drive listing that is farthest to the left for the drive that is to be formatted. It is usually directly above the name of the drive. Once the drive has been selected, click on the Partition tab.
Under Volume Scheme click the drop-down box and select 1 partition. Now, click the Options button and choose Apple Partition Map, then click on Ok. Important: If the Mac computer being used is an Intel-based Mac, Apple recommends to use the GUID Partition Table instead. Click on the drop-down next to the Format option and change the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). A name can also be given to the drive by typing it into the Name box. When done, click on Apply. A box will come up warning that formatting and partitioning the drive will erase all of the information that is on the drive.
If the information on the drive is no longer needed, then click on Partition. If the data on the drive is still needed, it will need to be copied to another location before proceeding. The drive is now formatting, and a status bar will be displayed at the bottom of the Disk Utility window. This status bar will say formatting the disk, and gives the name of the drive, the format it is applying, and the name that was specified for it. When it is done, this bar will go away and the drive should now be listed on the desktop.
If additional assistance is required, or more information is needed, please. Do not use the answer rating below to report technical issues.
Quick Navigation:. As we know, external hard drives are widely used to backup data or interchange files among different computers. Well, is there an external hard drive that could be shared between Mac and Windows PC? Of course, there is. Actually, most external hard disks could be compatible with Mac and PC as long as you format them correctly. Why Need to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between Mac and PC, you need to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC. Currently, hard drives for Windows PC are always formatted with NTFS, while hard disks for Mac are formatted with HFS+.
However, when we connect a NTFS formatted disk to Mac, Mac OS X doesn't allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a NTFS drive. Similarly, Windows OS will ask us to format the HFS+ formatted drive when we connecting such a disk, let along edit files saved on HFS+ formatted hard disks unless we resort to third party programs.
But luckily, there are well supported by both Mac and Windows PC, and they are FAT32 (it might be called MS-DOS on Mac) and exFAT. As long as we format the external hard drive to one of these 2 file systems, it can be shared between Mac and Windows. Further Reading Both FAT32 and exFAT have advantages and disadvantages. FAT32: FAT32 works with all versions of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, game consoles, etc.
However, single files on a FAT32 drive can't be larger than 4GB. If your external drive saves files larger than 4GB or you plan to save larger files to this drive, converting to FAT32 is not recommended. In addition, a FAT32 partition must be not more than 32GB if you create it in Windows Disk Management.
Of course, there is that can help create a FAT32 volume up to 2TB, which also functions correctly. ExFAT: exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits, which means it's a good idea to format your external hard drive to exFAT. Nevertheless, a lot of users complained that exFAT is slow, and they highly suggest using FAT32 if you can avoid file size constraints. How to Quickly Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC Without Losing Data Your external hard drive might have saved lots of files. If you want to share such an external hard drive between Mac and PC, please convert NTFS and HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT.
To do this kind of conversion, we just need a Windows computer, a Mac machine, and a professional partitioning program. For specific steps, please keep reading. How to Convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT Without Data Loss To format hard drive for Mac and Windows without data loss, we suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard and its ' Convert NTFS to FATS32' function. If you are a personal user, you can try its Professional Edition.
Step 1: Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition Download this software to your computer. Then, you can open the software and input the license key to the pop-out window to get its Professional Edition.
Step 2: Convert NTFS to FAT32 with This Software After running the program successfully, we can see its main interface as follows: Here, please select the NTFS partition of external hard drive and choose ' Convert NTFS to FAT' feature from the left action pane. If there is more than one NTFS partition, convert all of them one by one. At last, click ' Apply' button to make the change executed. When MiniTool Partition Wizard shows it applies the change successfully, the original NTFS will finally become a FAT32 partition. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and PC without losing any data. Then, you can share external hard drive between Mac and PC You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required. Step 1: Transfer Data out from External Hard Drive You can choose to copy and paste those files to other external devices or internal hard disk of Windows, but it will cost much time.
Instead, you can use to create a copy for your external drive, which is faster. If there is only one NTFS partition on external hard drive, refer to the tutorial to get instructions. However, if there is more than one NTFS partition, view to get specific operations.
![Install windows 7 gpt partition style Install windows 7 gpt partition style](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125602242/278363663.png)
Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard The Free Edition of this software also enables you to do this job. Firstly, you need to delete the partition by using this software. Just open the software to enter its main interface. Then, choose the target partition and click ' Delete Partition' from the left action pane. After that, you should click ' Apply' to keep this change. Secondly, the target partition will become unallocated. Here, you need to choose that partition and click on ' Create Partition' from the left action pane.
Thirdly, you will see a pop-out window. Here, you can choose ' exFAT' from the ' File System' setting option. At the same time, you can also set some other parameters for this partition, including ' Partition Label', ' Drive Letter', ' Size And Location'. After that, please click on ' OK'. Fourthly, you will go back to the main interface. Then, please click on ' Apply' to save these changes. Finally, an exFAT partition will be created on your external hard disk so that it could be shared between Mac and Windows PC Step 3: Transfer Data back to External Drive If you want to share files that you have backed up between Mac and PC, now please transfer these files back to external hard drive.
How to Convert HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without Losing Data Besides, you can format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows by converting HFS+ to FAT32 or exFAT without losing any data. Step 1: Backup Data in HFS+ Partition on Mac Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on Mac. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step. Step 2: Create a FAT32 or exFAT Partition on Windows PC Some people may ask why create such partitions on Windows rather than Mac. That is because there are cases reporting FAT32 (MS-DOS) or exFAT partitions created on Mac did not work well on Windows.
Please skip to Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive to FAT32 to get steps to create a FAT32 partitions or go back to Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard to get operations to create an exFAT partition. How to Make an Empty External Drive Compatible with Mac and PC If there is no file saved on your external hard drive, how to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC? It's very easy to share it between Mac and PC and you also need a Windows computer, a Mac machine, and the free partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. There are 3 solutions for this case, so please choose the one you like most to format external hard drive Windows 10/8/7.
Solution 1: Format External Hard Drive Windows 10/8/7 to FAT32 Since users are unable to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB in Windows Disk Management, they need to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. Note: when you connect an external hard drive which is formatted with HFS+ with computer, Windows may ask you to format the drive.
Please choose Cancel. Please download and install this program on your Windows computer to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC. Firstly, open the software to enter its main interface as follows. Here, please select the NTFS partition or HFS+ partition of external hard drive, and click ' Delete Partition' feature from the left action pane. If there are multiple partitions on the external disk, please select the disk and click ' Delete All Partitions' feature instead.
After that, an unallocated space will be released. Secondly, you can create one or more FAT32 partitions in unallocated space. Select the unallocated space and choose 'Create Partition' feature from the left side. Then, you should choose ' FAT32' from the ' File System' option in the pop-out window. Meanwhile, you can set properties for this new partition and click ' OK' to go back to the main window of Partition Wizard. At last, click ' Apply' button to make all changes performed.
Solution 2: Format External Hard Drive Windows 7/8/10 to exFAT Firstly, please delete the NTFS or HFS+ partition in either MiniTool Partition Wizard or Windows Disk Management to release unallocated space. Then, you can create an exFAT partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by following steps introduced in the section Step 2: Create exFAT Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard. Once a FAT32 or exFAT partition is created on your external hard drive, you can share it on both Mac and Windows PC. Solution 3: Create One HFS+ Partition for Mac and One NTFS Partition for Windows Alternatively, you can create 2 partitions on the external hard drive: one is for Mac, and the other is for Windows. As to size for each partition, it depends on your own demands. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows.
Step 1: Create a NTFS Partition and a FAT32 Partition Please run, then delete all the original NTFS or HFS+ partition(s), and create a new NTFS partition as well as a FAT32 partition, and the latter will be formatted to HFS+ in Mac machine. Then, select the external hard drive and choose ' Delete All Partitions' to create an unallocated space. Here, select the unallocated space and choose ' Create Partition' feature from the left action pane. Now, please specify partition label ( Windows is recommended), partition type (primary or logical), drive letter, file system (NTFS), cluster size, and partition size (you can change the length of the handle to adjust partition size). Then, click ' OK' to continue. Now, you can see a NTFS partition is created. Please use the same way to create a FAT32 partition labeled with Mac.
At last, click ' Apply' button to make all changes performed. Step 2: Format the FAT32 Partition to HFS+ Partition on Mac Please go to Utilities → Disk Utility to get the window below: Then, select the external hard drive and click ' Partition' tab on the top. Now, find the FAT32 partition and format it to OS X Extended (Journaled), which is the desired HFS+. Finally, click ' Apply' button to make all changes performed. Note: You might be unable to share all files saved on external drive since Windows doesn't support HFS+ partition while Mac doesn't support NTFS partition completely. Well, is it possible to make an external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC without formatting it?
Definitely, it is, but third party program is required. How to Share External Hard Drive Between Mac and PC Without Formatting If you want to use an external hard drive formatted with NTFS on Mac, you'll need to install programs that let you use your NTFS drive on your Mac. However, if you want to use an external drive formatted with HFS+ on Windows PC, you'll need to install programs that let you get read and write access to HFS+ partition on Windows PC.
Just search for the software on Google to have a try. Bottom Line Are you planning to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC? If yes, now try one of our methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC. Should you have any problem, just feel free to leave us a message in comment part below or send an email to. Facebook. Twitter.
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