With this tool, you can move partitions, resize partitions (even the active one), copy partitions, as well as change the drive letter and label, check the partition for errors, delete and format partitions (even with a custom cluster size), convert NTFS to FAT32, hide partitions, and wipe all that data off of partitions. Select the MBR or GPT partition table format and click OK to create a partition table for the disk. Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. Tools; About Me; Contact; 9 How to Format or Partition an External Hard Drive for Mac. So, you just bought an external hard drive and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn't allow you to write data to the drive. How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac. (Bay 2 is empty but I'm saving that one for a future audio/video drive) The Installer shows 'Disk 1 Partition 1' at 200MB (for the Boot Camp partition) and the 'Disk 1 Partition 2' for the rest. The latter is the one I keep trying to format and install, but can't get it to work.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac?
Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format.
So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk.
Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better.
How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac
But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? Don’t worry! This page will show you two ways to do this job:
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool
Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, SSD or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your Mac now.
Method 1. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility
Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac.
- 1. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
- 2. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.
- 3. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'.
- 4. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.
- 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.
- Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac.
Method 2. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC
If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS partition software is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to convert NTFS to FAT32 without formatting.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Windows Disk Partition Tool
Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
After this, you can connect your external hard drive/USB to Mac computer and use it to save data by then.
Best Mac Partition Software
If you installed Windows on your Mac using Boot Camp, you can format a disk or volume as a secondary volume to use with the Windows operating system. You can also prepare an external disk for a Windows computer, by formatting it using two MS-DOS formats.
Disk Partition Software Mac Free
WARNING: Formatting a disk or volume erases all the files on it. Save any files you need to another volume before formatting.
- In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
- In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with Windows computers.
- Click the Erase button .
- Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose Master Boot Record.
- Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose one of the following:
- MS-DOS (FAT): Choose this format if the size of the disk is 32 GB or less.
- ExFAT: Choose this format if the size of the disk is over 32 GB.
- Enter a name for the volume.The maximum length for the volume name is 11 characters.
- Click Erase, then click Done.
You can also partition a disk using the Master Boot Record partition layout, which is compatible with Windows.