Format an External Drive in Your Mac

The file systems most commonly used in USB flash drives are exFAT, NTFS, and APFS. If you're looking to use your external drive on both Macs and PCs, formatting it with exFAT is the ideal solution.

To format your external drive as exFAT on a Windows machine, follow these steps:

1. First, plug in the USB drive that you'd like to format into your Windows machine.

2. Open File Explorer and navigate to 'This PC.'

3. In your 'Devices and Drives' list, right-click the USB drive that you want to use as a universal drive and select 'Format' from the list.

When formatting your drive, it's important to understand the different formatting options available for your ideal use. Warning: The contents of the drive will be erased when you click 'Format Disk.' Make sure that you've backed up your important files first.

If Windows says that it doesn't recognize the drive (and you've already backed up any data on it), click 'Format Disk,' and then skip the next step.

To format a USB drive as exFAT, you'll need to use a Mac or a third-party tool. If you're frequently using both Macs and PCs with the same drive, formatting your external drive with exFAT is the best solution for cross-platform compatibility.

Before you get started, make sure to back up any important data on the USB drive to another disk or cloud backup service first. This will ensure that you don't lose any valuable files during the formatting process.

In this article, we'll show you how to set up a USB drive as exFAT for both Windows and Mac, ensuring seamless transfer of files between platforms.

Format external drive in mac