How to format flash drives for Mac and PC

External flash drives can be very small.

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Although there is a lot of interoperability between Apple’s Mac ecosystem and Windows computers, all is not entirely rosy. One of those areas is data sharing.

Sure, you could rely on a network connection and devices like a NAS or file server to handle data storage between the two sides, but it’s not necessarily an option for everyone.

In some cases, you have to rely on flash drives or external hard drives and physically move the storage and plug it into each device. This can be true in situations where a lot of data is used, e.g. B. in video editing, where it can be much faster to go this way than to work over a network.

Although it may seem easy, there are still a few things you need to know before embarking on this journey.

While hardware concerns will be fairly easy to resolve, like what physical connections are available and a budget for drives, there’s another element that can trip people up.

The file systems used natively by Windows and macOS are very different, with security and other elements getting in the way of using both on the same computer.

For example, if you format a drive to NTFS, Windows’ preferred file system, your Mac can read the drive but not write to it directly. Likewise, an APFS drive can be read by a Mac, but on Windows you need additional software support to work with it.

The answer to the problem is to use exFAT, a file system designed to replace the old FAT32 file system. Not only does exFAT go far beyond the 4TB maximum file size and 8TB partition size of FAT32, but it is also optimized for flash drives, which include USB flash drives and external storage devices.

Conveniently, both Windows and macOS play well with exFAT, with all reads and writes to partitions using the filesystem.

As a general rule, if the flash drive you are using is 32GB or less, you should set it to MS-DOS (FAT) and save exFAT for drives larger than 32GB. However, since we’re seeing fewer sub-32GB sticks in regular use, it’s not a bad thing to stick with using exFAT in such cases.

You can use either macOS or Windows to format the drive to exFAT as it can be used equally by both platforms regardless of which one originally formatted it. Below are instructions on how to format the drive on both platforms.

1. Connect the drive to an appropriate connector on the Mac or to the connectors on an attached dock. It usually appears as a drive on the desktop.
2. Open Disk Utilitywhich can be found via Launchpad or by using Spotlight with Command-Spacebar followed by searching for the term “Disk Utility”.
3. In the left sidebar, select the disc You just connected to the Mac.
4. click Extinguish in the toolbar.
5. In the Delete dialog box, enter a meaningful value Surname for the drive, and then select ExFAT under the Format drop-down list.
6. If the dialog has a scheme option, set it to on master boot record.
7. click Extinguish. When you’re done, click Completed.

For the Scheme option, Apple recommends using Master Boot Record to ensure the drive is compatible with all Windows PCs. You could also use GUID Partition Map, but Apple warns that it can be used by “some newer” PCs and therefore may not work for older PC setups.

Usually, you should use Master Boot Record as the most compatible option for Windows desktops. You can get away with GUID Partition Map, but there is a small chance of incompatibility.

At this point you should unmount the drive as usual and then plug it into your Windows PC to verify that it works as intended.

1. Connect the drive to the PC.
2. Open file managerand choose This PC in the sidebar.
3. Then select with the right mouse button on the drive and click format.
4. Select Format in the window exFAT for the file system.
5. Allocation unit size refers to the blocks of capacity that a file can use, with smaller sizes being better suited for large numbers of small files. In case of doubt, this can safely be left as it is default settings.
6. Enter Surname for the drive under Volume Label.
7. If the drive contained sensitive information, disable it quick formatotherwise leave it enabled.
8. click beginand then click in the Warning dialog box OK.
9. Once the format is complete, click OK.

Again, you can unmount the drive and put it on a Mac to confirm it’s working as expected.

While you could do file transfers or share a pool of data with flash drives or other external drives, this isn’t really the best approach for most users.

Definitely consider getting a NAS for your network, especially if more than one person needs to access the same data at the same time. With a NAS, multiple users can access this data without having to ask each other for physical ownership of the drive itself.

In addition, there is the possibility of having several large drives available, which depending on the configuration offer higher capacities and redundancy.

And for more modest needs, cloud storage works too.

A flash drive is useful for data transfers when you are in need or there is a sense of urgency when no other option is available. A network-based approach is a far better plan.