BEST FORMAT FOR USB DRIVE MAC OS X

Best Format For Usb Drive Mac OS X

Name the device if you wish.The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats: FAT32 or NTFS.The first format, FAT32, is fully compatible with Mac OS X, though with some drawbacks. Select the drive and click Erase. Open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Connect the USB device to your Mac or MacBook.

For a Mac user, neither of these file systems is desirable.Open the Disk Utility app. ItвЂ™ll likely be already formatted, either for Windows (using NTFS) or for maximum compatibility (using FAT32). LetвЂ™s look at the best file system formats to use for your Mac's external drive.How to Format Your Drive With Disk UtilityOnce youвЂ™ve bought a new external storage drive, connect it to your Mac.

Type in the disk name you want, then select your preferred option for both Format and Partition Scheme.Note: YouвЂ™ll lose all the data in the external drive, make sure to back it up.If speed and convenience are your top priorities and cost is not an issue. In the toolbar, click Erase. Be sure to choose the device, not the volume or volumes it contains. Now choose View > Show All Devices to see the storage device at the top level, then the container, and finally any volumes that are in the container.In the sidebar, select the external storage device.

It also doesn't require complicated ACLs and file attribution system like NTFS. ExFAT has no realistic file or partition size limits. ExFAT is the preferred file format for flash storage drives that you share between Windows and Mac. Manufacturers like Seagate lets you read and write data interchangeably on Windows and Mac without formatting the external drive.This was designed by Microsoft to provide similar compatibility to FAT32 without the pesky limitations. Even if youвЂ™re using SSD as a Time Machine drive, itвЂ™s not compatible with APFS.You can only access drives formatted with HFS+ on Windows through third-party apps.

Best Format For Usb Drive For Mac