I'm showing this to verify that the USB drive has been reformatted to the file system I wanted. I saved several files to the disk, and open Disk Utility again. And yes If you are on an earlier operating system like Windows 7, XP, etc.
Choosing the Right Format for Your External Hard Drive
The screenshots may look slightly different. Step 2 : A new window pops up prompting options you need to select before starting. The only thing you have to check is under "File system", make sure you have chosen "exFAT". You may also rename the device drive under "Volume label".
Then click the "Start" button to continue.
How to Erase and Format a USB Drive on Your Mac
Step 3 : You'll see this warning. Once again, make sure you've backed up all important data stored in the drive. Click "OK". Chances are that you may encounter some issues formatting a flash drive on a PC or the disk is malfunctioning. If so, the following articles may be of help to you:. Most of the external hard disks and flash drives are formatted for Microsoft Windows operating systems.
That makes using the drive a bit troublesome on Mac machines. Like I said, if you want to use the device for both a PC and Mac, you should consider reformatting it to exFAT once you figure out the drive isn't with another file system.
How to format a drive for Mac and PC compatibility
Hope the above guide is helpful to you. Once again, as a kind warning: formatting a flash drive will likely erase all files and data stored in the device, it's important to ensure you have made at least one copy of the data before you get started. Influenced by the startup culture in the Silicon Valley, Jessica loves building things from zero to one and is keen on following news related to the Big Five tech giants and many SaaS startups.
Mine can only be formatted in NTFS. Thank you Jessica for the informative article. The article was easy to read and understand. The screen shots also helped. I sent my mother to your article since she is new to Mac OS. Good job once again, and keep informing us Novices. I have reformatted a Sandisk usb 2. I have a Mac I exported a screenflick movie to it. Afterwards the usb stick is not recognized by the mac. Now what? With the latest High Sierra on mac the ex-fat files system is not recognised on many devices, have had to return to fat 32 to use my memory sticks.
Also files sizes over 2gb are also rejected. Last update: March 28, Compatible with Windows? Pro tip : Chances are that you may encounter some issues formatting a flash drive on a PC or the disk is malfunctioning.
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Jessica Carrell. Thanks for the step-by-step.
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APM is an older, Mac-only partition scheme. This will erase all the files on the drive!
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