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Step 3: Open Windows Explorer, click the Computer section in the sidebar and find your drive. Step 2: If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step. If the drive is showing, but you’re getting messages about the drive needing to be formatted, etc., then read the next section below.Step 1: Plug your external hard drive into your computer. Then click the pulldown menu alongside Format and select MS-DOS (FAT) Give the drive a name (optional) and click the Erase button to format the drive.Pick a letter for your drive and you should be good to go. Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the Erase tab. Attach the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac.If you don’t know how to format your hard drive on Mac, follow the instructions on the guide given below. The free GNOME Partition Editor (GParted) utility reports being able to move.Part 4: How to Format Mac Hard Drive Now we will look at the process of formatting Mac hard drive and it is also as easy as that of Windows. If not, go to Disk Utility and check to see if it appears under the heading External.If youre used to formatting a hard disk drive (HDD) youll notice that. However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required.On Macs, the drive should automatically appear on the desktop. You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps. Then, you can share external hard drive between Mac and PC.Format DriveWhen it comes to file formats, there are a couple of major formats that are used about 99% of the time: FAT32 and NTFS for Windows and HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) for Macs. Scroll down to the Not Showing Up section below. Flash drives you purchase will often come formatted.If the drive is not showing up in Disk Management or Disk Utility at all, you have some other type of problem. If the drive has a file system not recognized by OS X, you’ll need to erase it and the format it using FAT or HFS+.FAT32 is the de-facto standard file system that works between PC and Mac operating systems since 1995.Make sure you connect the drive to the appropriate operating system and backup any data that you might need before performing a format.So what’s the best format to use so that you can see your hard drive on multiple operating systems? The legacy format that is most compatible is FAT32, but it limits you to only 4 GB for max file size. The only other option is to format the hard drive and use the FAT32 format for the best compatibility.When you connect a HFS+ formatted drive to Windows, you’ll get a message stating that the drive needs to be formatted in order to be used.If you see this message, it just means that Windows does not recognize the file system on the drive. You can get Windows to do it, but you have to purchase third-party software.
Format Hard Drive On Disk Utility For Compatibility With Pc And Drivers Can CauseWindows – Device ManagerSometimes old drivers can cause a device to malfunction when connected to Windows. Let’s start with some common problems and their solutions. When you format a drive in OS X using Disk Utility, you can also choose the exFAT format if you like.If you connect the drive to the computer and nothing happens, one of several things could be going on: your hard drive might have a problem, the correct software or drivers are not installed on your system, or there is something not working properly with the operating system. You’ll have to be running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or higher or Windows XP or higher.In Windows, you can choose exFAT as the file system format in addition to NTFS and FAT32. It’s newer and supports much larger files, but only works with newer versions of OS X and Windows. If the drive doesn’t work on another computer, it’s highly likely something is wrong with the drive itself. If you are connecting to a USB hub, disconnect that and try to connect the drive directly to the computer.The only way you can really tell if the problem is with the computer or the hard drive at this point is to connect the drive to another computer. USB Ports/Secondary PCYou can also try plugging the drive into another USB port on the computer to make sure it’s not a problem with that particular port. Windows tries to blame the device for malfunctioning, but it’s normally a problem with Windows. Restart your computer and try to connect the hard drive again.In addition to Portable Devices, you can expand out Disk Drives and try to uninstall the device from there if it is not showing up properly in Windows Explorer.If you connect your USB drive to Windows and get a USB Device Not Recognized error, make sure to check out the link on how to fix that particular problem. Firstly, make sure you are using an appropriate cable. USB 3.0 DrivesIf you have a USB 3.0 external hard drive, there are a couple of extra considerations you have to take into account. If the drive has become corrupt or has bad sectors, these tools can fix it. Western Digital DataLifeguard Diagnostic Fujitsu (Toshiba) Diagnostic UtilityYou can also read my previous post on checking your hard drive for errors for more information and more tools to test hard drives. Just about all the major brands like Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, etc., have these diagnostic tools. Make sure the hard drive has the correct external power adapter and that the light on the front of the drive is turning on and is not orange or red. Again, go to Device Manager, expand Universal Serial Bus controllers, right click on the one that has USB 3.0 in the text and choose Update Driver.The only other possibilities with this type of problem are lack of power or complete hard drive failure. So try out several cables before you give up.Secondly, you might need to update the driver in Windows. ![]()
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