Tip: If you’re trying to use external volumes that are formatted as NTFS on Mac, it won’t work unless you install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, an app that unlocks read and write support for NTFS on Mac. Wondering how to format hard drive for Mac and Windows at the same time? FAT32 and ExFAT are the best options in this case.

When you format hard drive for Mac to be used in conjunction with Time Machine, you’ll also want to go with Mac OS X Extended, as Time Machine can’t use APFS directly and will offer to reformat it if you try to do so.

If your macOS is older than High Sierra, stick with Mac OS X Extended because APFS is unavailable on old systems.

If you’re trying to format flash drive on Mac or figure out how to format an external hard drive, you’ll likely want to go with APFS.

If you’re looking at how to format SD card on Mac, you’ll want to go with ExFAT.

However, there are some differences even within the macOS ecosystem: Commonly, macOS uses APFS and Windows uses NTFS (which is read-only on Mac). Second, the desired format will depend on the type of device you’re using. That’s not a problem if the device is new, but means you’ll need to take some precautionary measures if it’s not.

Give the device a name and choose the desired format (more on that below)įirst of all, let’s cover the obvious point above: when you format USB drive on Mac, or any similar device for that matter, you need to erase everything that’s on it in order to do so.

Select the relevant device or drive in the left sidebar and click Erase.

Go to Applications > Utilities and open Disk Utility.Note that formatting a drive means completely erasing it, so make sure you read our recommendations on how to back up and recover files below. Likewise, you can use this tool to format Micro SD cards, hard drives, and so on, getting your new device into the right condition. Thanks to Disk Utility, the issue of how to format USB on Mac is fairly straightforward.

The reason? Mac and Windows each use different file systems.Īfter unboxing a new storage-based item, it’s a wise move to look into how to format a hard drive for Mac (or SD card, flash drive, etc.) to reduce the likelihood of unexpected corruption, data loss, or other performance issues. Out of the box, USB flash drives may function unreliably or even fail to work on Macs at all.

Macos format external hard drive