1. HFS+ Mac OS X’s native file system is HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended), and it’s the only one.
2. It is possible to format a hard disk on a Mac (or a PC) as an ExFAT format. This format is both readable and writeable by both Mac and PCs. It cannot be used as a boot drive on either, nor can it be used as a Time Machine backup drive by a Mac. ExFAT is however fine for use as a transfer drive.

• How To Make A Hard Drive Compatible With Mac
• How To Make A Hard Drive Compatible With Mac And Pc

You can create Mac Compatible hard drive on Windows as well as on Mac. So let’s go ahead and do it on Mac. Step 1: Plug in your Hard Drive to your Mac Pc/Laptop. If you are getting a time machine backup option like this in image below click on don’t use or decide Later. Click on Don’t use if Time machine Prompting. Step 2: Go to SpotLight.

Make your hard disk or USB flash drive compatible to both Mac and Windows PCs using this easy step by step guide.

The irony is that, by default, Windows and Mac use different file systems. While Windows uses NTFS file system, Mac hard drives are formatted with HFS file system. And they are incompatible with each other! Now, the question is how to make hard drive compatible with Mac and PCs?

Well, you can format the drive and make it as excellent cross-platform compatible to work with both Windows and Mac. This is not a difficult task at all. And if you are going to use Mac and Windows PC frequently, you will find this as very useful as any data, files, media files stored on the drive can be easily accessible from any operating system. It is just a matter of few minutes to do this. In this article, we are going to introduce you with the entire process in few simple guidelines.

How to Format a Drive for Mac and Windows PC Compatibility?

You can format any hard drive, flash drive, SSD, USB drive, that is accepted by both a Mac and Windows machine. And it is recommended to carry out the entire process on Mac OS X

• Open Disk Utility
• Attach the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac
• Click the drive name on the left side list in Disk Utility, and then click the Erase tab
• 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

When you want to use your drive with older versions of Windows, you may also need to set the partition scheme to Master Boot Record (MBR) for full Windows compatibility:

• Click the drive, then select Partition tab
• From the Partition Layout dropdown menu, select 1 Partition
• Click Options and choose Master Boot Record as the partition type, then click OK and Apply

“Drives format very quickly, though the total time taken will depend on the size of the drive. Remember, formatting a drive erases all data contained on it so back up important files before proceeding. In the event of not having backups, then you can recover formatted external hard drive data using a reliable Mac Hard drive recovery software. Remo Recover for Mac is recommended here.”

Hard drive can be formatted using both FAT32 and exFAT. Which one is better? FAT32 or exFAT?

Once you have done with formatting, the drive will be compatible to be read and written to on both a Mac and PC, and the resulting FAT file system is compatible with all versions of Mac OS X, and Windows, including Windows 10, it’s one of the most widely recognized and usable file system formats.

This widespread compatibility makes FAT an ideal file system to use for external hard drives that are intended for use in environments with multiple operating systems.

One of the limitations of using FAT32 is the file size limit, which limits files on the drive to being 4GB in size or less. If you require single files to be larger than 4GB, use exFAT instead, though you will lose some compatibility with older versions of Mac OS X and Windows.

Why can’t you use NTFS on Mac?

The NTFS file system is another option to use for Windows formatted drives and volumes, but it has limited compatibility with Mac OS by default. Mac users can mount and read NTFS formatted Windows drives, making NTFS compatible with the Mac on the reading and mounting front, but writing to an NTFS drive requires using either third party software or enabling NTFS write support on the Mac using an experimental functionality bundled on the Mac. So if you want to do heavy file sharing between Mac and Windows with a lot of reading and writing, it is better to format a drive as FAT32 as discussed above.

However, backup any data on the external hard drive you want to keep on another device before formatting. Formatting a hard drive will erase all data that’s stored on it. Both Windows and Mac OS X allow you to adjust the size of the format partitions on external hard drives. Set the number to the maximum to use the entire drive in a single partition. FAT32 formatted drives also work for PC and Mac sharing, in particular with older versions of both operating systems. However, Microsoft recommends against using FAT32 whenever possible in favor of exFAT.

“I got a WD My Passport hard drive from my friend as my birthday present. I was so happy to try it on my MacBook Air, only to find I could not save any files to it. I always use an external drive to share files between my MacBook Air and Windows computer in my office. This is the first time that I encountered such a problem. Does anybody know why and how to make the hard drive compatible with Mac and PC?”

Does it sound familiar to you?

Windows and macOS use completely different logics to store and manage files, so some file systems might work well in Windows platform but not necessarily in macOS platform and vice versa. Windows don’t support Apple’s HFS, HFS+ and latest APFS file system at all, while macOS only has read support to Windows NTFS file system.

For cross-platform users who need to share files between PCs and Macs using a portable drive, it is extremely inconvenient with a drive not fully supported by both operating systems.

How To Make A Hard Drive Compatible With Mac

I will introduce two methods to solve the incompatibility problem.

• Format the external drive to exFAT.
• Use a third-party NTFS for Mac driver to enable NTFS write support for macOS.

How to format an external drive to exFAT?

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system is the optimization of FAT32 file system. It offers better compatibility than NTFS file system and eliminates the 4GB file size limit of FAT32 file system. It is a great choice for sharing an external drive between Mac and PC.

How To Make A Hard Drive Compatible With Mac And Pc

Note: Before you proceed with the instructions, remember to back up your data first if you have important files on the drive. That’s because, formatting a disk will write a new file system on your disk and prepare your disk for new data to write on. Your pen drives, SD cards or external hard drives will turn blank and all your files will be gone after formatting. Therefore, back all files up before formatting. If you do not care about data, however, go ahead to format it to exFAT.

You can format the external drive to exFAT both on a PC or a Mac. The instructions below are conducted on a Mac running macOS Mojave.

Step 1: Connect the external drive to the Mac.

Step 2: Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 3: Select the external drive at the left sidebar.

Step 4: Choose Erase at the top tool bar.

Step 5: Give the drive a name.

Step 6: Choose exFAT as Format.

Step 7: Choose GUID Partition Map as Scheme.

Step 8: Click on Erase button.

After the formatting process is completed, click on “Done” and you will have a drive with exFAT file system. The drive will work seamlessly with Macs and PCs without any third-party software.

How to enable NTFS write support on Mac with a third-party NTFS driver?

If you came cross the problem because you are using a Microsoft NTFS drive, a third-party NTFS mounter can make your NTFS drives compatible with macOS without formatting.

There are free and paid NTFS drivers for Mac available. Free NTFS drivers include FUSE for macOS, NTFS-3G, Mounty and SL-NTFS.

You have to be very familiar with command lines to use free NTFS drivers for Mac. They are less compatible and less secure as well. I recommend to use a paid NTFS driver for Mac, which is easier, more compatible, and more reliable.

Let’s take iBoysoft Drive Manager as an example here to explain how to enable NTFS write support on Mac natively using an NTFS driver for macOS.

iBoysoft Drive Manager is a paid NTFS driver for macOS. It can mount NTFS drives in read-write mode on Mac. NTFS-formatted pen drives, SD cards, and external hard drives will be opened with NTFS write support in the Finder automatically. The write and file transferring speed to NTFS drives is noticeably fast.

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Drive Manager on your Mac.

After the utility is completely installed, you will see an icon at the top right menu bar.

Step 2: Connect the NTFS drive to the Mac.

You will get a notification that your NTFS drive is successfully mounted.

Step 3: Read-write to the NTFS drive.

The NTFS drive will be opened automatically in read-write mode. You can make any changes to the existing files and save new files to it freely, which are not supported efore.

iBoysoft Drive Manager is far more than an NTFS mounter. As a drive management tool, it can manage multiple USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks and external hard drives with one click. It also supports adding network drives manually by providing server address, user names and password and map them as local drives. You can connect and network drives with one click too.

Conclusion

When you are using a removable drive for file sharing between Macs and PCs, you should take file system compatibility into account. You can either choose to format the drive or use third-party software to help you.

However, formatting a disk doesn’t sound as easy as you may expect. Think about the time and other work you must do when you back up a lot of data, reformat several external drives and restore data to them.

In conclusion, third-party drivers will be the easier way to make external drives compatible with Macs and PCs.