What Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc

Dec 16, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions

Format Flash Drive For Mac
Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc
Format Usb Flash Drive For Mac And Pc
What Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc Computers
What Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc Windows 10

A new external hard drive or a USB flash drive that you just bought can be used with both Mac and PC, but not always straight out of the box because most of them (external hard drives or USB flash drive) are sold in NTFS format, which is fully compatible only with Windows. Connect the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the “Erase” tab Click the pulldown menu alongside “Format” and select “MS-DOS (FAT)” Optionally, give the drive a name. Fortunately, there is a file system (actually two, I’ll explain) that you can format your flash drive to be fully compatible with Mac and PC. In other words, you can access the drive and transfer data without any hassles. That file system is — exFAT. The exFAT format will not give any limitations on the file size that you are going to store on your flash drive and you can still use it on both Windows and Macs that are running in Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later version. For you to be able to format your flash drive into Fat32, here is what you need to do.

Will formatting a USB completely loses all of its data? Interesting question right? Many of your answers will be yes. But interestingly it won't. In this world of technology, nothing becomes impossible. Even after completely formatting all the files from an exFAT or FAT32 USB flash drive we can completely recover it or even we can repair the damaged data.

Here we explain it in such a way that each one of you can format USB drive without losing data.

Part 1: What Does Format Flash Drive Mean

When we buy a new USB drive, we all make sure that the complete space available in the flash drive is empty. So what happens when we start adding files to the same? We know space starts to get occupied by the files.

But what happens if it is filled and we want to use it again in a fresh manner. There we use the technique called formatting which means we completely erase all the data and files inside the flash drive. So let us see how this works:

When we add data to a USB flash drive it creates a filing system that organizes the data while allowing you to store the most files possible. This virtual filing cupboard organizes your files in a way that makes your USB flash drive perform at its best.

Part 2: Will Formatting Flash Drive Erase Data

The answer to this question is a simple yes. Let us have a quick look at how it happens. Here we talked about organizing files. Files are allocated by certain systems that determine how and where your files are digitally stored. There are mainly 4 types of file systems for storage devices: FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS.

NTFS uses less fragmentation and therefore manages space more effectively. It also excels at transferring files larger than 4GB. However, this system is not always optimal for USB flash drives unless you need to transfer extra-large files.

FAT and FAT32 are supported by nearly every operating system, use less memory, and work faster. The file system exFAT combines the best of both NTFS and FAT for flash drives by reading and writing larger files at a faster speed.

Formatting is not complex either. If you have your flash drive and computer system, you already have all the tools you need.

Step 1: Right-click on your flash drive under My Computer and select Format.

Format Flash Drive For Mac

Step 2: Choose from the drop-down menu for the File System to change it to its desired format. The default is generally FAT 32.

Step 3: Uncheck Quick Format if needed.

Step 4: Then, click Start and click OK to bypass the deletion warning.

Part 3: Is It Possible To Format USB Flash Drive Without Losing Data?

Yes, it is possible to format the removable disk without losing data. Let us see how this can be done.

Step 1: Backup data first before formatting

Step 2: Format USB flash drive

These steps don't need many explanations. Before doing the process of formatting you should create a backup of all the files and data of your drive. This can be done by any backup methods of your choice. Simply you can connect it to a computer and copy all the files to it and then do formatting drive.

Part 4: How to Recover Lost Data After Formatting

If you didn't make a backup before formatting or you find some files lost after formatting, are you worried about losing your data? No more worries because Recoverit Data Recovery is going to help you.

Recoverit Data Recovery - The Best File Recovery Software

Ability to recover all files like photos, videos, documents, etc.
Can retrieve data from all data loss scenarios.
Ability to restore data from all storage devices (internal and external) and crashed windows system.
Video repair tool that can repair corrupted videos under different scenarios.

How to Recover Lost Data From Your Storage Device Using Recoverit

To recover files, first, you have to launch Recoverit on your computer. To make Recoverit Data Recovery run on a Windows computer, you have to double click the 'Wondershare Recoverit' icon on the Desktop. If it is not available on the Desktop, you can enter 'Recoverit' in the search box on your Windows computer. And then click on the App or Choose to 'Open' it.

Step 1: Connect the external device

Before getting Recoverit started, you need to connect the external device to your computer. Make sure that it can be recognized or detected.

Step 2: Select the external device

To recover lost or deleted files from the removable storage media, please select the device as the target location. And then hit on the 'Start' button. Even though the partition on the device has got lost, you can still use Recoverit to bring the lost data back.

Step 3: Scan the external device

An all-around scan will be launched on the external storage media. Wait a few minutes to finish the scanning. During the process, you can locate the targeted files, as well as pause or stop it.

Step 4: Preview and recover files

Once the scanning ends, you can preview the files from the scanning result. To get the files back, click 'Recover' and save them into another safe location.

Conclusion

When you have lost files, the primary thing you would like to see is whether or not you've got a backup on your computer or other storage media. Just attend the backup and restore all of your files. Regularly creating a backup is extremely important and useful, it can assist you to save longer to recover files from USB drive when data got lost, and otherwise you should get the Recoverit USB Data Recovery software to recover your data back.

USB Topic

Recover USB Drive
Format USB Drive
Fix/Repair USB Drive
Know USB Drive

You can format the external hard drive or USB drive to make it compatible with both Mac and Windows machines. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesn’t worry it’s not complex.

If you are tech savvy and use Windows and Mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between Mac and PC. Windows and macOS filesystems are different and you might need to format the drive every time to use on both platforms. You don’t need to format the hard drive every time you can choose a filesystem while formatting the drive so the hard drive or USB drive work on both Mac and PC

So to get rid of these situations we bring here a guide that will help you to format your drive which works on both platforms and you don’t need to format and backup data every time. After cross-compatible formatting, simply unplug the drive from one machine and then plug it into another. Sounds good to you right? So let’s started, how this works.

Understand file systems for Mac and Windows

There are three common file system types to format an external USB or hard drive, SSD drive, SD card and etc. FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT let’s have a look what’s the difference between these formats.

FAT 32 Format

This format is pretty old but supported and it’s not efficient as compared to NTFS. It doesn’t support big features but offers great compatibility which means it’s compatible with all versions of Windows. It can only support 4GB file size and up to 8TB hard drivers. It’s not capable to store files larger than 4GB.

NTFS Format

NTFS is a modern format system and Windows also uses this format for itself and for other non-removable drives by default. This format is also compatible with all versions of Windows but limited to none Windows OS as FAT32.

exFAT Format

exFAT drives are faster at reading and writing as compared to FAT32. This format can store large files and it’s also lightweight. It’s compatible with all versions of Windows and the best thing it’s along with Windows it’s also compatible with macOS, Linux, and Android, etc.

If your drive is formatted as Windows default format NTFS then it’s only readable to macOS. You can’t do more than that or you have to install a separate app on Mac to read write the drive.
Drive with macOS format HFS+ cant readable to Windows.
FAT32 format works on both Windows and Mac but the problem is you can only work with files with a maximum size of 4GB.

Learn more: Copy data on NTFS drive in macOS

FAT32 is much better than NTFS and HFS+ becuase it works on both operating systems. You can also install drivers on each OS to make work your drive. So exFAT is much better than all of these formats and a simple option but this will not work on Leopard.

Format a USB Drive on Mac

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc

Time needed: 5 minutes.

First, let’s see how to format an external hard drive or USB drive in macOS which works with both Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive into a macOS machine.

Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility on your macOS, press cmd + spacebar keys, and type Disk Utility in the spotlight search. Open Disk Utility from the search results.
Erase Drive
On the Disk Utility interface, select an external drive click on the Erase button from the top of the window (make sure and backup your drive before erasing it).
Drive format
Now enter the name for the external drive which will be used after formatting and also select the exFAT for Format option and click on the Erase. This will format the drive as exFAT format and your drive is now compatible with both platforms.

Format Usb Flash Drive For Mac And Pc

Format USB Drive in Windows

The below steps for formatting external drive is for Windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of Windows. To format your external drive hard drive in Windows to use on Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive with a Windows machine.