If your NTFS drive doesn’t contain any important data, formatting to FAT32 or ExFAT is the simplest solution for sharing files between macOS and Windows. Format an NTFS Drive to FAT32 or ExFAT on Mac.
Thoroughly research any product advertised on the site before you decide to download and install it. Let’s discuss how you can read and write to an NTFS drive in macOS. A Mac can only read the NTFS formatted hard drive but can not write any. Watch out for ads on the site that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). A new external hard drive or a USB flash drive that you just bought can be used with both Mac and PC, but not always straight out of the box because most of them (external hard drives or USB flash drive) are sold in NTFS format, which is fully compatible only with Windows.
The page appears to be providing accurate, safe information. The easiest way to do that is hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in 'Disk Utility' to.
Standard Disclaimer: This is a non-Microsoft website. How to format an external drive in OS X 1. Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced. APFS is also not compatible with Windows or Linux, so the only way how to install a different operating system on a hard drive with a recent version of macOS is to. Simply select it from the list on the left and click the Erase button. In Disk Management, you’ll see your external hard drive as partition or unallocated space. Open the Disk Management tool by right-clicking This PC -> Manage -> Disk Management. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows 10 PC. You can uninstall that trial version once you have backed up the data on that drive 1 - purchase a second hard drive, format the new hard drive in HFS+, transfer the files from the NTFS drive into the new HFS+ external, and then format the old NTFS drive to HFS+, ExFAT, or FAT32. On a Mac, you can format a hard drive using the Disk Utility app. Format external hard drive with Windows built-in tool Step 1. Install that, then restart your PC, Start the utility and connect the drive, you will then have access to that Mac drive like any other PC hard driveĬopy everything form that drive, then you can format that to NTFS for use on a PC Ĭlick the link below to download the 5 day free trial of a great utility MacDrive Neither Apple File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however. Windows cannot natively access a Mac formatted drive. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a Mac thats running High Sierra or later.