'I get a new Western digital hard drive and want to use it as an external disk to save working files. But I don't know how to format it since I should frequently switch from a PC to a Macbook. Can you tell me how to format an external hard drive for Mac and PC compatibility so that I can easily access or transfer my stuff between the two operating system?' Overview of External Hard Drive Formatting for Mac and PC As we all know, Mac and Windows use different file systems by default.

Format app for mac. So, if you frequently use both a PC and a Mac computer and want to share an external drive between the two operating system for data backup or transfer, you need to make it compatible with Mac and PC first. But how can you format the external hard drive for Mac & PC? What is the best file system that makes external hard drive compatible with both PC and Mac What is the best file system that supported by both PC and Mac? Actually, many users have some doubts on this question. If you are one of them, you can choose FAT32 or exFAT in your case. Advantages of the FAT32 file system: FAT32 is not only compatible with Mac and Windows but also many gaming and Linux OSs.

Oct 29, 2016  I have a Lacie d2 Quadra 1tb External Hard Drive. I had it for years on a Mac. How to reformat my External Hard Drive for Windows 10. Click HERE to download Free version of AOMEI Partition Assistant and format the drive to NTFS. Then Windows 10. Jul 10, 2017 - Macs format drives with Apple's HFS+ file system, which Windows won't. Updated July 10, 2017, 10:23pm EDT. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer — internal ones or external ones. Type list disk at the DISKPART prompt and press Enter to view a list of.

Disadvantages of the FAT32 file system: 1. Single files larger than 4GB on the external hard drive is not supported by FAT32. Mac OS X's Time Machine backup utility won't work with FAT32. How to Format an External Hard Drive to fat32 for Mac and PC If you ignored all the disadvantages and decided to format your external hard drive to FAT32, you might need a third-party software for help when the disk is larger than 32GB.

You know, Windows Disk Management utility completely cannot help at this moment. Here, you can try EaseUS, a program allows you to format the Western Digital hard drive, Seagate hard drive, Toshiba hard drive, etc to FAT32 in Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista with simple steps.