how to format my hard drive for windows and mac

Once OS X Fuse and NTFS-3G are installed, your Mac should be able to read and write to NTFS disks just fine. Follow the instructions to download NTFS-3G for Mac OS X, whose development seems stopped right now but still works in Yosemite. Follow the directions on the OS X Fuse website to download and configure the software. Then, click the Options button and select the Completion check box. The Format option (Mac Extended (Journaled) or APFS) is available.

Select and Erase the Mac’s system drive, usually known as Macintosh HD, then click the Erase button. NativeNTFS isn't for rookies: It's a bash script that needs to run from the Terminal command line and requires you to have root (administrator) access to your computer.Īn easier way to go is to download OS X Fuse, a third-party software tool that extends the Mac's file system capabilities. To open Disk Utility, launch Mac OS Utilities and select the Task menu. In this example I format a 32 GB drive: On the next screen, select the file system. If you're a DIYer and you'd like to go the free route, you'll find a Sourceforge project called NativeNTFS-OSX that gets the job done. Formatting an internal or external drive under Windows 7 or Windows 10 Boot into Windows as usual. It includes several additional utilities for people who need to tinker or repair, to enable you to format drives with NTFS, check NTFS partition integrity, fix errors, and more. However the same rules apply, only PCs with this software will see drives formatted for Macs.Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac 12 (opens in new tab) is another excellent choice.

Otherwise, you can have a drive as NTFS to allow to work on any PC and then install on your Mac a free app from the Apple website called NTFS-3G, which allows your Mac to fully use (read and write) to NTFS and also do automatic backups with no restrictions on both systems, but since it is done using the NTFS-3G software, this configuration will only work on YOUR Mac and the others will only read from the drive (But they won’t be able to add files).Īlso, you can have the drive as HFS+ to allow you to use it on any Mac and then install on Windows a program called HFSExplorer (Free), which allows you to read (see and copy out) drives formatted for Mac (But not write, so you can’t add files) or you can install MacDrive (NOT free), which is a software able to allow full HFS+ integration (Read and write) on a PC, meaning that it is the exact opposite to NTFS-3G. You can format a drive as FAT32, which would allow it to work on BOTH Windows and Mac, but it won’t do automatic backups, won’t take files larger than 4GB and will have a high risk of data corruption

How to format my hard drive for windows and mac