Unformat usb drive mac free mac formatted usb recovery. Hey guys thanks for watching, i hope you enjoyed, and if you did hit like like button. By default, they format disks with the maconly os x extended file system. Please back up all your data before you format the usb drive. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Your old external windows pc drive will work great on the mac. How to format usb drive for mac and windows to transfer files file systems. May 09, 2019 the best external hard drives for mac in 2020. Dec, 2019 you can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. Make sure the drive is blank, or copy the data to a safe place before proceeding. Jun 14, 2019 formatted usb flash drive data recovery software free download. Click the erase button or tab, then complete these fields.
The mass adoption of usb drive makes it one of the most used storage media today. After downloading and installing do your data recovery for mac free on mac, the users should connect the usb drive to the mac via usb cable. Usb drive on mac, you have an important decision to make. In the new properties window, check general file system and youll see what type of file system your flash drive is currently with. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exfat file system.
This is simple to do and means the data on your drive usb stick can be read and written on both macs and pcs. Insert the windows 7 or windows 10 dvd into the dvd drive and boot the pc. Use remo recover tool to efficiently get back all data from a formatted usb drive of any make and kind using a mac os x running computer. You can also make the disk bootable by specifying a. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. If youre using such a drive and youd like to write new data. Accessing mac formatted drive on pc external drives for pc. Windows cannot read a mac formatted disk, but macs can read a windows formatted one.
To share a usb drive between a mac and a windows pc, there are two disk formats to choose from. Whether the usb should be readable by windows machines and mac machines or just by mac and not readable in windows. May 14, 2015 macs can easily read pc formatted hard disk drives. Jan 15, 2019 formatting usb flash drives and external hard drive to work on smart tv using your mac. How to create a bootable install usb drive of mac os x 10. Most external hard drives and usb drives are compatible for use on mac computers as long as you format the devices for use with mac os x. Mar 15, 2018 windows cant normally read macformatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. How to recover formatted usb flash drive mac mojave. I successfully formatted my usb drive to fat32 with the powerful windows usb formatter minitool partition wizard free edition. However, this is a tutorial on how to format a usb flash drive, not to do it for no reason. When you have a flash drive, the first thing you may need to do is format it in such a way so it can be read by both mac and windows machines. So, if it needs to be formatted at all, you need to format it as fat32. Just install it, and mac drives will show up like any other drive. If you selected an encrypted format, enter a password and verify your password in the text fields.
Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. If you want to use a different file system on your usb drive, youll need to format it. Rufus is one of the free applications mostly available online and free to use for. Chkdsk is a command line utility that helps fix drive errors and. Bootable usb thumb drive formatted with a guid partition type and containing an os x installer or a usable operating system. Each time you access the drive, you will be prompted for that password, although keychain will offer to remember it for you when using it on your mac. In this article, i have mentioned a 100% working method by which you can download rufus and create a bootable usb drive on mac.
But, if you plan on using an external drive with both macs and pcs. Your mac computer comes with a handy utility appropriately called disk utility, which can be used to. For a mac user, heshe might format a removable disk for many reasons. How to perform pen drive data recovery on mac sometimes, users end up formatting a pen drive by mistake as well. The main reason for formatting a usb drive as fat32 on a mac is that you want to be able to use.
Samsungs portable ssd t5 drive has a speedy usb c interface, plenty of reliable storage, and it takes up about as much room in your pocket as a. Sep 19, 2011 if the drive comes formatted in ntfs, which is the default file system for windows, youre going to want to reformat the drive because mac os x cant write files to ntfs formatted volumes at. Jun 22, 2018 reading a pc formatted drive on your mac is no problem. Type or paste one of the following commands in terminal. This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through.
If you dont have the dvd handy, you need to create a bootable windows usb drive. Mar 03, 2020 go to this pc, under devices and drives, highlight the disk that represents your usb flash drive, rightclick and select properties. However, if you want to use part of the drive for os xs time machine backups, you should do this from the mac. How to format a hard drive on windows or mac avast. Mar 12, 2020 connect the usb flash drive or other volume that youre using for the bootable installer. Quick tutorial and explanation on formatting drives for mac and windows and what file system to use. The quickest way is to search on spotlight and click. Aug, 2017 windows cant normally read macformatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. You can format the drive from either the mac or the windows machine. This is due to the fact that ntfs, the file system. Feb 03, 2020 if the other mac isnt using high sierra or later, choose mac os extended journaled.
In this guide, we show you virtually every method to format a usb flash drive and quickly erase its contents or fix data corruption and other issues using windows 10s builtin tools. After recovering the files from your drive with one of the tools above, you can then format the drive and convert it to a standard fat32 partition that will work with most devices. Feb 21, 2020 when your usb flash drive is not showing up on your mac, the reasons might be the usb port, or usb contains errors that make the drive undetectable. It is necessary to format an external storage device, such as a usb flash drive, pen drive, and a memory card, to a proper file system, so that mac os x or macos could recognize, detect or read data. How to partition usb drive macos high sierra how to turn it. Jun 16, 2019 configure your mac to work with windows formatted drives. Hp usb disk storage format tool utility will format any usb flash drive, with your choice of fat, fat32, or ntfs partition types. If it cant, it chooses mac os extended, which works with all versions of macos.
Formatting usb flash drives and external hard drive to work on smart tv using your mac. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex. Mar 18, 2020 we can effectively and quickly recover data from formatted usb drive with ease by using the best file recovery software minitool power data recovery. The other formats microsofts ntfs and apples mac os extended dont work well on the other operating system. Apple has built os x yosemite and some previous os x releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine. Wd 2tb my passport for mac portable external hard drive, usb c usb a wdblpg0020bbkwese.
Rightclick or controlclick the drive s icon in the finders sidebar or on your desktop and select get info. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. How to format usb drive for mac and windows to transfer. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility. Make sure that it has at least 12gb of available storage and is formatted as mac os extended. This article will show you how to recover data from formatted usb drive step by step. If your integral usb has a security or zip software preloaded integral splash, secure 360 then this will be deleted on format, so you may want to make a backup copy onto your computer first. How to format a usb flash drive on a mac techwalla. Oct 11, 2017 hi all, i recently transitioned my home laptop from a mac to a pc running windows 10. In particular, minitool power data recovery would not bring any damage to your original data.
Is there any way for me to access the data already on the drive on the pc. Lets see how to boot a mac from a bootable usb drive and what to do if your mac doesnt start up from it. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on mac and windows as exfat. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. So your first move is to make usb can be recognized again, and then you can use mac hard drive data recovery software to recover files if the usb becomes inaccessible.
How to choose the best format for usb drive on windowsmaclinux. How to format usb flash drive on a mac 2018 youtube. Just plug in the drive, then access the files you need to use. Apr 26, 2016 if you are a mac users, here are overviews of different file format systems, and how to choose which format to use for your usb drive to ensure compatibility with other operating systems. Earlier versions of macos dont mount apfs formatted volumes. Thats why were using a bootable windows 710 installation dvd or usb drive which allows us to format the hard disk. If not, rightclick on the usb drive partition and choose change drive letter and paths. The best thing to do is download it once and create a bootable install usb drive from the file for all of your macs. How to recover data from formatted usb drive stepbystep guide. If you have a mac drive lying around and you no longer have a mac, youre not stuck with the mac file system forever. This also allows you to restore time machine backups on windows. Jul 05, 2017 youll see the drives file system displayed to the right of format under the general heading. Wie sie einen usbstick unter macos formatieren erfahren sie hier.
I only saved my data onto a wd passport drive, not realizing that it needs to be formatted differently for a mac vs. How to format a usb flash drive on windows 10 windows. Disk utility tries to detect the type of storage and show the appropriate format in the format menu. Dec 27, 2019 check your usb drive partition, if it has a drive letter assigned. Find out how to format an external drive or usb disk making the drive work with both windows pc and mac can read and write. Any and all data on the usb drive will be destroyed during this process. How to open mac format usb devce in windows youtube. The overwhelming majority of usb flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats. For most reasons to erase, you should erase the disk, which also erases all volumes on that disk. Youll see the drive s file system displayed to the right of format under the general heading. How to format an external drive for mac compatibility. Its exactly the same procedure if you need to reformat a flash drive on a mac. How to create a bootable installer for macos apple support.