- #CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FOR MAC OS X#
- #CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FULL#
- #CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FREE#
- #CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC WINDOWS#
Virtually all cameras and videocameras support FAT32, too. You can also move files to video game systems like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. A drive formatted this way can easily transfer files between Macs and PCs. MS-DOS (FAT) - This is Disk Utility's name for the FAT32 filesystem.Īdvantages: FAT32 offers near-universal interoperability with virtually every computing system on the planet. Otherwise, you may need to consider one of the file formats discussed below. If you're transferring files from Macs to PCs, this won't be an issue however, transferring files from PCs to Macs won't be possible if your drive is formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." If you will only be working with Macs and not PCs, this may not be an issue.
#CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FOR MAC OS X#
The "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" option will have the highest degree of support for Mac OS X features, and there's no limit to the size of files you can put on the drive.ĭisadvantages: Windows-running PCs can read files from drives formatted this way, but they can't write to them (at least not without the same amount of work it takes to get OS X to write to NTFS-formatted drives).
You can even set up an OS X startup drive if you have the right files, the know-how, and a big enough flash drive, which will allow you to boot your Mac off an external disk if something goes wrong with your built-in drive. It also includes support for features from OS X Lion, such as Versions.
#CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FULL#
Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - This is the default file system format for Mac OS X drives.Īdvantages: Formatting your USB flash drive this way will give you full interoperability with Macs. I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the other three formats below.
#CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC FREE#
Unless you have extraordinary needs, you can safely ignore two of them: Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) and Free Space. There are several possible file system formats you can use for a USB flash drive, and changing them in Disk Utility is as easy as selecting the number of partitions you want on the drive (usually just one), picking the format you want for the drive, and clicking "Apply." Note that this will erase all information on the drive, so make absolutely sure you've got copies of everything before moving forward.ĭisk Utility gives you five different choices for drive formats in OS X Lion. If the drive is listed as NTFS-formatted, you're going to need to format it to something else if you want full compatibility with Mac OS X. If the drive's format comes up as MS-DOS (FAT) or, less likely, ExFAT, you may be able to simply leave the drive as-is and not bother reformatting it. Your new drive should appear in the left-hand column, and clicking the "Partition" tab will bring up info on the drive which includes its current format. How do you tell which format your brand-new USB drive has? Hook it up to your Mac and launch the Disk Utility app, located in your Utilities folder (which is in Applications). If the drive comes formatted in NTFS, which is the default file system for Windows, you're going to want to re-format the drive because Mac OS X can't write files to NTFS-formatted volumes (at least not without a bunch of extra work that's beyond the scope of this article). The first format, FAT32, is fully compatible with Mac OS X, though with some drawbacks that we'll discuss later. This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Robin.The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats: FAT32 or NTFS.
Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar.įrom the Scheme menu, select Master Boot Record.Ĭlick Erase and follow prompts to confirm. Launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). While first ensuring you have a copy of any data on a drive you want to format as ExFAT, as formatting will erase the drive’s contents, follow these steps: Instead, pick ExFAT, its replacement (and still quite old), best used on drives of 32GB or larger capacity. Designed for an earlier time, it can’t handle files larger than 4GB.
#CAN USB DRIVES BE USED FOR BOTH PC AND MAC WINDOWS#
If you’re both Mac users, swell with Mac and Windows in the mix, you might be tempted to pick FAT32 when formatting that thumb drive.īut FAT32 is distinctly out of date. But it still crops up whenever you’re trying to put files on a USB thumb drive to hand off to someone else.
For those of us who rarely transfer files physically across devices, file-format capability may be a distant memory.
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