You may need to determine the file system type of a drive connected to a Mac, whether it’s an external hard drive, USB flash drive, external SSD or HDD, SD card, or something similar. File system types are important because they can help determine if a drive is fully Mac compatible with a native file system, or if a drive or disk is readable by both Windows and Mac, among many other situations. Examples of possible file systems are FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, APFS, Ext, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, JFS, ReiserFS, XFS and HFS+.
So how do you determine what file system a drive connected to a Mac has? We will show you this using two different methods. with Disk Utility and with the Finder.
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How to determine the file system of any disk, drive, or volume on a Mac using Disk Utility
With Disk Utility, you can easily view the file system format of a drive or hard drive connected to a Mac.
Just plug the drive, hard drive, flash key, or anything else into the Mac, then select it in Disk Utility. You will see the file system type under the drive name as shown in the screenshot below:
How to determine the file system of the external drive/volume on Mac using Finder
Another easy way to get the file system of any drive, volume, or hard drive connected to a Mac is through Finder.
With the drive connected to the Mac, right-click the drive name in the Finder sidebar and choose Get Info
The Get Info panel shows the file system format next to “Format:” as shown in the screenshot below:
These are the two easiest ways to find the file system format of any disk, drive or volume connected to a Mac, but you can also use command like diskutil tool if you feel like it by typing in the Type “diskutil list” in terminal .
How to Change File System of a Drive on Mac?
Changing a drive’s file system involves deleting and reformatting that volume. If you need to change the file system of any drive on Mac, e.g. B. an external backup hard drive or an external SSD or a USB flash drive, you can format the drive for Mac while selecting the file system of your choice. Most Mac users will likely opt for HFS+ or APFS for native Mac support, or for NTFS or a FAT file system to use the drive on both Macs and Windows PCs. Remember that formatting a drive will erase all data on that hard drive.
Was that helpful to you? Do you know any other method to determine file system formats of drives or hard drives? Let us know in the comments below.
