How to Format an External Drive in Windows Note that using a drive frequently between Windows and Mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make sure you have backups of the files on the shared drive and be extra careful about safely ejecting the drive before disconnecting it from your computer. Your exFAT-formatted drive or partition can now be used for both Windows and Mac. Give the partition a name and select exFAT for the format. Select the new untitled partition so we can format it as exFAT for use with both Mac and Windows.ġ2.
In this example, we’re shrinking the Time Machine partition to 128 GB instead of allowing Time Machine to take up the whole drive.ġ0. Enter the amount of space you want to set aside for Time Machine. With the drive selected in Disk Utility, click Partition.Ĩ. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive.ħ. These will format the drive in OS X’s HFS+ filetype so it will be compatible with Time Machine.Ħ. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map. If you don’t plan on using the drive for Time Machine, skip steps 5 to 11 below and continue with step 12.ĥ. The easiest way to do that is hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility to find the program.
