Format hard drive for mac and pc mac os x#
Format hard drive for mac and pc mac os#
Format hard drive for mac and pc full#
Format hard drive for mac and pc Pc#

Format hard drive for mac and pc mac os#

Required for local Time Machine backupsДЄPFS (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended).

Format hard drive for mac and pc mac os x#

Natively read/write HFS+ on MacOS up to Mac OS X Sierra.

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended)

Format hard drive for mac and pc full#

Full NTFS support on Mac requires paid third-party app.Natively read/write exFAT on Windows and MacOS.But before I can dig into what makes sense when, look over this quick rundown of the different standards and which OS each one is compatible with. Be careful not to accidentally format your OSx partition when you have it plugged into a PC, Windows will not recognize in contains files.The file format standard you use for your external drive will depend on how you plan on using the drive. Because both are actually the same physical hard drive be sure to eject both before unplugging it from the mac. When done both will appear on the desktop and in the side bar of finder windows as separate drives. ThatвЂ™s it, wait for the Mac to finish its work, it will both partition and format the Hard Drive. If you do a lot of video work you may want to consider increasing the size of the OSx partition, to do this simply drag the bar between the two drive up or down to make the partitions larger or smaller. for the demo images i only used an 8gig usb stick, you would normally be working on a far larger drive. By default the Hard Drive will be split into two almost equal parts. So far we have not set a size for either partition.

MS-DOS(FAT) can only have upper case letters, no spaces, no special characters and a max length of 11 characters.

Choose MS_DOS(FAT) from the Format drop down menu. Click on the name of the second partition.Avoid special characters In OS Exteneded you can use upper and lower case letters and spaces. Click on the name of the first Partition.As you can see above, you can choose Volume Schemes from a drop down menu.and click вЂPartitionвЂ™ on the tabs in the center screen. Click on your new hard drive on the left.

You can keep your video files for Final Cut on the OS Extended partition, Avoiding FATвЂ™s 4gig limit and use the MS-DOS(FAT) side on both machines for your general files. In my experience Partitioning a drive into 2 parts, 1 part MS-DOS(FAT) and 1 part Mac OS Extended works best.

Choose your Format.We want MS-DOS(FAT).

and click вЂEraseвЂ™ on the tabs in the center screen. Spotlight is the search at the top right of the mac screen In conclusion, if you want to work with video skip to the section Partitioning your Hard Drive If you donвЂ™t plan on doing much video work follow Formating a Hard Drive to MS-DOS(FAT). Video files frequently exceed this limit.

Although you can follow the steps below to format your drive to MS-DOS(FAT), which works with both systems, FAT cannot have a single file that exceeds 4 Gigabytes in size.

So by having 2 partitions you can have 2 file systems.

Format hard drive for mac and pc Pc#

If you format to HFS a PC wonвЂ™t even recognise the drive and ask if you want to format it and you risk erasing all the files on it. If you format your Hard Drive on a pc it will be NTFS which is no good for working on a Mac, It will read files but canвЂ™t put files onto the drive. Windows is NTFS or FAT and Mac is HFS Plus, mostly called Mac OS Extended. Its boring stuff but the basics are, Windows(PCвЂ™s) and OsX(Mac) use different file systems. You can read more about filesystems here.

There are built in limits to different file systems.

You could have a separate partition for video work for example Partitioning a hard drive splits it into 2 or more separate drives. Eject the hard drive and bring it to a Mac. All usb sticks come pre-formatted to work on both PcвЂ™s and MacвЂ™s, but larger external hard drives can come un-formatted, when plugged into a PC Windows will offer to format it for you, DONвЂ™T do this.Д¬lick No. Formatting a Hard drive to work on both Pc andВ MacД®xternal hard drives are a must have for any student doing computer based work.