How To Format External Hard Drives So They Work On Both Macs and PCs

Have you ever wondered how to format your external hard drive or SSD to work on both an Apple Mac and a Windows PC computer. Both computers use different operating systems (MacOS and Windows) and therefore you may want an external hard drive that is able to read and write files to both Apple computers and PCs. In this video we will show you how to format your external hard drive so it does just that.

In this video we will show you what file system you should select for your external hard drive (SSD or HDD). With all the different file formats out there (Fat32, NTFS, HFS+, APFS, and exFAT) what is the correct format you should select when setting up your new external hard drive or SSD? It's very easy and we will show what all these file formats mean and which format is best for what situation. If you are interested in learning about the hard drive formatting options on both Macs and PCs this video can help.

You will learn:
1). The Differences in all the file formats that you can use to setup your external hard drive or SSD.
2). How To Setup An External Hard Drive on a Mac
3). The correct File Format to select if you want to read and write files to both Apple MacOS and Windows using the same hard drive (or SSD).

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[georgesenda]

I got a 4 tb external ssd drive but np mayor what I try it will not erase and format the drive

[JJ-noqc]

Great video! Many thanks for your instruction. It’s very easy to understand and very helpful !!! 🙏🙏🙏

[stringaudio]

exFAT can't be used like external photo library in mac.Have to be formatted like APFS or mac os extended.I talking about big sure.

[jhonnymarin]

This just saved me from the headache I had from not being able to use it on both

[saurabhmestry]

I have Seagate external drive, currently it is NTFS formatted, if I now format it to the HFS+, use it with Mac and after few months if I again want to use it with Windows, my question is can I again format it to NTFS?

[wgedwardsvideo]

Great video. Just the information I needed. In case anyone also has a Linux machine, exFat is also compatible. So, you can share files with all three operating systems.

[ruipedro]

Thanks for your video. I chose ExFAT but then there are 3 other options that I don't know what to do?! Can you help me?

[abrahamperez]

On my Mac I only have the option to change it to four different AFPS formats. know how to access the other options? Thanks!

[summerivy]

Your video was very helpful, thank you. I have an old Mac (Snow Leopard) I want to backup all my photos from the Mac and then transfer to my Windows 10, will this work?

[berzerkr]

I have an iPad Pro will this work for that so I can transfer files from my iPad to my windows PC?

[PhilGoodzGaming]

So am i able to take my exFat drive from my PC, Where i have movies and stream Plex and Infuse to my tv on, and then move/plug it into my mac mini and it'll be able to play the same movies as it did on the PC?

[clarrisse]

Do i have to back up the data first before I format the external hard drive?

[enuffweturpantie]

I have a mac book. With a toshiba external hard drive thats was set up for windows nfst. is there a way i can change to exfat without losing my music on the external.thanks

[backalleyent]

So I have an ssd and use pc and my buddy runs a mac we have been working on a massive music collection library so what do you recommend to be able to use the library no matter what system the ssd is plugged into

[lindsaydietrich]

How can I do this in reverse?? I have an external harddrive that I partitioned several years ago so that it would work with both my Mac and my PC. I no longer have the PC and would like to get rid of the partition so I can have all the space for my Mac back ups. I can't seem to find how to do this in Youtube land! Thanks!

[VFX_Hunter]

Related Subject > ExFat doesn't work on LG & Samsung TVs (surprisingly so) it appears that as a Mac user i will have to use a PC to reformat my external SSD to NTFS in order to view my Files on my TVs, which is a big pain. One would conclude that the TV manufacturers don't won't you to view your own videos on their TVs.

[MacBookBro]

Thanks just bought a 18tb drive, and need a drive that works with both plus a drive that is readable by my WD cloud network drive via USB port.

[marvamason]

What other ways are there of accessing the same files between Mac and PC? Dropbox? The majority of my files are actually on the PC and I recently bought a MacBook Air for writing.

[locorodman]

Excellent, exFAT has always been the option for this kind of task, you just forgot something, what about the scheme, basically before "erasing" we have GUID, Master Boot Record and Apple Partition Map, which one to choose for a regular external disk that I want to share files between PC and a Mac? Thank you!

[liamstanderjunk]

very cool and straight foreward.. thank you