How to format a flash drive for Mac and PC compatibility in macOS High Sierra July 20, 2018 / Dennis Sellers Macs and PCs use different file systems, which can make it tricky to put data from your Mac on a flash or hard drive and give it to a Windows user. If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than. However there is a simple solution – you can format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT that performs better than FAT32. In the resulut, your external hard drive will work just fine with Mac and Windows. You can format your external hard drive from either the PC or Mac.
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So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. Anti virus software for mac. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.
Updated by Admin to Bitlocker for Mac on July 22th, 2019
Is there any way to password protect USB flash drive so that I can access it on both Mac and Windows? I do not need government-grade encryption, just need to protect my important data from unauthorized access.
As far as we know, BitLocker is more secure than other drive encryption software. Although Microsoft just developed and released Bitlocker for Windows and there's no Mac implementation, but with help of M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac, Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive can be readable on Mac.
How to password protect USB flash drive on macOS Mojave/High Sierra?
Step 1: Download and install M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac.
M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac is a Bitlocker To Go for Mac tool which can read/write Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive and external hard drive on macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7 Operating Systems.
Step 2: Insert an external drive (such as external hard drive, USB drive, flash drive) into your Mac computer.
Step 3: Launch M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac.
How To Format Usb Key For Mac And Pc
Step 4: Click 'Encrypt' button in toolbar.
Step 5: Select the partition which you want to encrypt and click Encrypt.
Step 6: Enter the password.
Step 7: Save the recovery key.
Step 8: Complete Bitlocker drive encryption.
Tutorial to read/write Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive on Mac
Step 1: Download, install M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac on your Mac computer.
Step 2: Launch M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac and insert a Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive.
Select Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive and then click 'Unlock/Open' icon to continue.
Step 3: Enter the password (or 48-digit Bitlocker recovery key) to unlock Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive.
Step 4: Read/Write Bitlocker password protected USB flash drive on Mac computer.
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How to password protect USB flash drive in Windows PC?
To enable BitLocker drive encryption on a USB flash drive, do the following:
Step 1: Insert a USB flash drive to a Windows computer where installed Windows 10 Professional/Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Professional/Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate/Enterprise, Windows Server 2008/2012, only these Windows editions support Bitlocker drive encryption. If you only have Windows 7/8/10 Home edition, please refer to: How to enable Bitlocker in Windows 7/8/10 Home edition?
Step 2: Format USB flash drive into FAT32/NTFS/exFAT file system. If there is data in USB flash drive, please go to step 3.
Step 3: Right click USB flash drive in My Computer or This PC and select 'Turn on Bitlocker'.
Step 4: On the 'Choose How You Want To Unlock This Drive' window, choose one or more for the following options, and then click Next:
'Use A Password To Unlock This Drive': Select this option if you want to be prompted for a password to unlock the drive. Passwords allow a drive to be unlocked in any location and to be shared with other people.
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'Use My Smart Card To Unlock The Drive': Select this option if you want to use a smart card and enter the smart card PIN to unlock the drive. Because this feature requires a smart card reader, it is normally used to unlock a drive in the workplace and not for drives that might be used outside the workplace.
Step 5: On the 'How Do You Want To Store Your Recovery Key' window, click Save The Recovery Key To A File.
Step 6: In the 'Save BitLocker Recovery Key As' window, choose a storage location and then click Save.
How To Format Usb For Mac And Pc Laptop
Step 7: On the 'Are You Ready To Encrypt This Drive' window, click Start Encrypting. Do not remove the USB flash drive until the encryption process is complete. How long the encryption process takes depends on the size of the drive and other factors.
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