How do I format exFAT for both Mac and PC?
Format Hard Drive in exFAT for both Mac & Windows PC
- Plug-in your drive into the computer’s USB port.
- Open up File Explorer and right-click on the drive.
- Choose Format.
- In the File System dropdown, choose exFAT. Possible you might get NTFS or FAT32.
- Click Start and close this window when finished.
Which is faster exFAT or NTFS?
exFAT is a tradeoff between responsiveness for small files and write speed for large files (15mb/s). NTFS is very slow for numerous small files but the fastest for very large files (25mb/s).
Can an external hard drive be used for both Mac and PC?
Want to use one external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac machine? Windows uses NTFS while Mac OS uses HFS, and they’re incompatible with each other. However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem.
Why do I need NTFS for Mac?
If an NTFS drive is connected to Mac OS locally, such as via IDE, SATA, or USB, you need Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X to be able to write data to the NTFS partition. So your Mac OS X only needs to support TCP/IP network protocols, which all modern operating systems do.
How do I make my external hard drive writable for Mac and PC?
Click the “Privilege” pull-down menu, and then click “Read and Write” to make the external hard drive both readable and writeable, or click “Write Only” if you want to turn it into a “Drop Box,” which the user can only write files to, but not read files.
How do I convert my Mac hard drive to exFAT?
How to format a thumb drive for both Mac and Windows
- Attach the drive to your Mac.
- Launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility).
- Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar.
- Click Erase.
- From the Format menu, select ExFAT.
- From the Scheme menu, select Master Boot Record.