How To Format Thumbdrive For Mac

If you want to transfer files from a Mac to Windows PC and vice versa using an external portable hard drive then you have to have the external drive formatted in a file system both OS's can read and write too. Your choice is ms-dos (aka fat32) or exfat and I go over the difference in the video. Note: most external drives you buy will automatically be formatted in NTFS which is a Windows file system. Word for mac save as.

A flash drive is a simple, inexpensive, and portable emergency boot device that can handle OS X or the macOS. Heck, it can even have both operating systems installed, letting you use the emergency USB flash drive to boot any of the Mac's you may have. Even if you don’t use a notebook, you may want to have a bootable USB flash drive on hand.

Macs can only read but not write to a ntfs file system. So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both OS's then you need to reformat it with fat32 or exfat.

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Click the 'Erase' tab in the main frame (right hand side). Select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' option in the drop-down menu under 'Volume Format.' Type the name of your drive under 'Name.'

Click the 'Erase' button. Click the 'OK' button in the dialog box to confirm you want to erase all files. Exit the Disk Utility application (select 'Quit Disk Utility' under 'Disk Utility' in the top menu bar). Open a new Finder window and verify that you see your USB drive in the left hand side of the window. Unmount your USB drive by selecting the drive and clicking the triangle to the right of the icon (or click 'Eject' under 'File' in the Finder's top menu bar).