how to format my hard drive for both mac and windows

HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS HOW TO
HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS FOR MAC
HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS

And the other for the kids videos and games stuff. One partition for you to use with your work pals. The minus button decreases the number of partitions.Ī simple setup is where you want to separate the external hard drive into two parts. That button is important because you use it to create your extra partitions.Įach of your clicks on this button increases the number of partitions. You should see the drive on your desktop.

HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS FOR MAC

Creating The Partition for Mac And Windowsīought your drive? Is it formatted to HFS+? Power up your Mac, and plug it in. Decide how many partitions you want on your external hard drive. Adding 5-10% to your total will be enough.Ĭ. Your Mac writes the partitions and it needs space to do that. How much room will you need on the drive for the stuff you share with your colleagues? You know, the stuff you don’t want to share with the kids.įinally add a bit of head room for the creation of the partitions. What size are they?Īdd them up and you’ll find out how much room you need. Take a look at the folders both on your Mac and on the Windows PCs. Think about the stuff you plan to share with the kids. Choose an external hard drive large enough to hold the things you want to share. Sounds obvious but I am going to say it anyway. It’s as easy as pie and when you’re done, head back here.ī.

HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS MAC OS

Take a look at my post on formatting here by clicking on the link.Īnd follow the short steps to creating a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. You can buy an external hard drive already formatted as HSF+ or take a few minutes and make it that way yourself. It’s simply a disk layout that a Mac computer uses. Don’t let this technical sounding jargon worry you. When you’re creating a partition for Mac and Windows to share, you need your external hard drive formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Your faithful Mac creates the partitions on your external hard drive.īut before we jump straight in, there are some things you need to have in place before you begin.

HOW TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE FOR BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS HOW TO

How To Partition An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows Why Is The Shared Partition For Mac And Windows Created As ExFAT?

What Happens When You Plug Your External Hard Drive Into Your Colleague Or Kids Windows PC?.

Choosing A File System For Your Partition

To Partition The External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows PC Pick The External Hard Drive You're Going To Partition For Mac And Windows You'll Be Using A Piece Of Software Called Disk Utility

Creating The Partition for Mac And Windows.How To Partition An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows.How to clone a hard drive as a backup for your Windows computer.What is Google Drive? A guide to navigating Google's file storage service and collaboration tools.What is an SSD? Everything you should know about solid state drives.What is a hard drive? Everything you should know about the computer storage device.You'll see the MacOS Utilities window choose 'Disk Utility.' Now you can choose to erase your startup drive, and choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the operating system. To get around that problem, hold down the Command + R keys when you turn on your Mac and let go when the logo appears. If you want to format your Mac's system drive, you can't do that when the Mac is running normally because the drive is in use by the operating system.

Usually, you'll want ExFAT, which is the default for the MacOS. Select the drive you want to format and then choose “Erase.”Ĥ. At the top of the window, click 'Erase.'ĥ. In the pop-up window, choose the file system you want to use.

How to format my hard drive for both mac and windows