Dec 29, 2015 - How to Format an External Drive in OS X. Connect the drive to the Mac. Open Disk Utility. Select the drive you want to format. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive. What Is ExFAT? Microsoft's exFAT is a file system designed for cross-platform mobile personal storage. The exFAT format is designed for high-capacity flash drives, memory cards, and external hard drives. The format is designed to require minimal adjustments to add support from Microsoft's widely used FAT32 format on the developer and manufacturer side. ExFAT improves on many of the FAT32 format's limitations, including increasing the maximum storage capacity per partition or reserved section from 32 gigabytes to 256 terabytes. External hard drives benefit from exFAT because you can set them up with large partitions that can contain the entire device -- instead of in 32GB sections in FAT32 -- and maintain compatibility between Macs and PCs. Format to ExFAT on Windows 8 Windows 8's included Disk Management tool can format devices to exFAT. To format an external hard drive to exFAT with the tool, connect the hard drive to the computer, press 'Windows-R,' then type 'diskmgmet.msc' and select 'OK.' Free photoshop download for mac os. After the Disk Management program has launched, right-click on the external hard drive's partition graphic box. The hard drive partitions are listed on the lower section of the Window. Recently attached devices will appear at the bottom of the list and the partition will be marked with the dark blue color bar on the top of the box. Select the 'Format.' Option from the menu. ![]() Change the 'File System' drop menu to 'ExFAT' and press 'OK' to format the drive. Warnings and Tips Backup any data on the external hard drive you want to keep on another device before formatting. Formatting a hard drive will erase all data that's stored on it. Both Windows 8 and Mac OS X allow you to adjust the size of the format partitions on external hard drives. Set the number to the maximum to use the entire drive in a single partition. FAT32-formatted drives also work for PC-and-Mac sharing, in particular with older versions of both operating systems. It might be somewhere like Public Documents /Intuit / QuickBooks / Company Files You’ll see your company file there. How do you change company name in quickbooks for mac 2016. However, Microsoft recommends against using FAT32 whenever possible in favor of exFAT. When you work (or live) in an environment that consists of both Mac and Windows computers, it becomes a constant headache negotiating the different filesystems and their compatibility. First, there is the lack of NTFS write capability on Mac’s. Then there is the inability to write files greater than 4gb on Fat32 and of course the complete lack of support on Windows for a Mac drive formatted with HFS+. There are two answers. One is to use a paid 3rd party tool to add NTFS write support to a Mac, such as tool. The other is to format your drives with the exFAT file system. This file system can be read and written by both Mac and Windows with support for single files of up to 128 petabytes! Even better, it’s freely included in both operating systems. A drive can be formatted with exFAT using either a Windows or a Mac computer. From what I understand, Windows doesn’t always like the way Mac’s do the formatting on some larger drives, though, so give it a try and if your Windows machines don’t like it, just format the drive with Windows. If you need to be sure without the time to test it, it is best to do the formatting on Windows since there don’t appear to be any compatibility problems that way. So how do you do it? First, make sure anything important from the drive has been backed up. ![]() You don’t want to accidentally lose it when you format the drive. Windows • Right click on the external drive in “My Computer”, and then click “Format”. • In the “File System” drop-down select “exFAT”. • Click “Start”. Select ExFAT when formatting an external drive with Windows. Mac (OS X Sierra) • Open Disk Utility and click the drive you want to format. • Click “Erase” and from the “Format” drop-down select “ExFAT”.
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