#Format flash drive on mac for windows mac os#

For historical reasons, Windows wonвЂ™t offer FAT32 as an option if your disk is larger than 32GB, but you can format a disk of any size by opening a Command Prompt and typing format h: /fs:fat32 /q, where h: is the letter of your removable drive and the /q parameter specifies a quick format вЂ“ assuming you donвЂ™t want to wait around for Windows to check each sector of the drive for errors. On a Mac, you can format any disk as FAT32 by simply choosing вЂњMS-DOS (FAT)вЂќ from the dropdown menu in Disk Utility before you click EraseвЂ¦. This is supported by all versions of Windows and OS X (as well as Linux), but it has the drawback of not supporting individual files larger than 4GB вЂ“ which can be a pain if you work with large video files or databases. If you need compatibility with systems that are older than this, youвЂ™ll need to fall back to the ancient FAT32 format.

In most cases we recommend you select MicrosoftвЂ™s exFAT format: this will give you full read and write access in both Windows (Vista or later) and OS X (Snow Leopard 10.6.5 or later). You can choose this from the drop-down menu in WindowsвЂ™ Format dialogue, or in the Erase pane of Disk Utility. To use your USB disk on both Windows and OS X, therefore, youвЂ™ll need to use a different filesystem. There are free drivers available, but again these are limited to read-only access.

However, neither is suitable if you want to move files back and forth between Macs and PCs: OS X can read NTFS volumes, but it canвЂ™t write to them, while Windows in its default configuration canвЂ™t access HFS+ disks at all.

These formats are sensible defaults because they support all the features of their respective operating systems, such as native compression and encryption.

#Format flash drive on mac for windows mac os#

If you follow the instructions above then Windows will, by default, format your disk using MicrosoftвЂ™s NTFS filesystem, while a Mac might suggest the Mac OS Extended filesystem.