FAT32 format works on both Windows and Mac but the problem is you can only work with files with a maximum size of 4GB.

Drive with macOS format HFS+ cant readable to Windows.You can’t do more than that or you have to install a separate app on Mac to read write the drive. If your drive is formatted as Windows default format NTFS then it’s only readable to macOS.It’s compatible with all versions of Windows and the best thing it’s along with Windows it’s also compatible with macOS, Linux, and Android, etc.

This format can store large files and it’s also lightweight. exFAT FormatĮxFAT drives are faster at reading and writing as compared to FAT32.

This format is also compatible with all versions of Windows but limited to none Windows OS as FAT32. NTFS is a modern format system and Windows also uses this format for itself and for other non-removable drives by default. It’s not capable to store files larger than 4GB. It can only support 4GB file size and up to 8TB hard drivers. It doesn’t support big features but offers great compatibility which means it’s compatible with all versions of Windows. This format is pretty old but supported and it’s not efficient as compared to NTFS. FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT let’s have a look what’s the difference between these formats. There are three common file system types to format an external USB or hard drive, SSD drive, SD card and etc. Understand file systems for Mac and Windows Sounds good to you right? So let’s started, how this works. After cross-compatible formatting, simply unplug the drive from one machine and then plug it into another. So to get rid of these situations we bring here a guide that will help you to format your drive which works on both platforms and you don’t need to format and backup data every time. You don’t need to format the hard drive every time you can choose a filesystem while formatting the drive so the hard drive or USB drive work on both Mac and PC Windows and macOS filesystems are different and you might need to format the drive every time to use on both platforms. If you are tech savvy and use Windows and Mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between Mac and PC. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesn’t worry it’s not complex. You can format the external hard drive or USB drive to make it compatible with both Mac and Windows machines.

Windows mac external hard drive format