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Best external drive format for mac and pc
Best external drive format for mac and pc









best external drive format for mac and pc

Next, click the "Options." button below the partition scheme layout, and be sure "GUID" is chosen as the partition scheme to use.

best external drive format for mac and pc

With the device selected, a Partition tab will appear, so select this and then choose "1 Partition" from the drop-down menu. With the program open, select the drive device - this will be listed above any volume names, and likely have a name that includes details like the make, model, and sizes. To set up an external drive for the first time, attach it to your Mac and then launch Disk Utility from the Applications > Utilities folder in OS X. Similar behavior might also occur with Aperture, iTunes, and other programs that have central libraries.Īs a result, if you are using the drive solely with your Mac, then before use you might want to consider formatting the drive to Apple's native HFS+ (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) format for optimal performance and compatibility.

best external drive format for mac and pc

For instance, Apple has outlined that iPhoto may experience data loss if you store its library on such a drive. If you select the drive device (in this case "500.28 GB APPLE SSD TS.") then a "Partition" tab will appear which you can use to set the partition and formatting schemes to be most compatible with your Mac.įor the most part, Apple's support for FAT32 is good enough to allow for continual use of a permanently attached drive however, there may be times when certain programs experience performance impacts or even data loss when managing central libraries and databases that you might store on the external drive. Disk Utility can be used to check the format of a selected partition. This means that it primarily serves to allow quick access to a drive you are going to attach and then detach, as opposed to one you are going to keep connected at all times. Since this file system is the one most supported by major operating systems, this allows you to quickly attach the drive to most systems and be able to read and write your data to it.Īpple's support of the FAT32 format is good, and will suffice to allow reading and writing to thumb drives and others that you regularly share between Macs and PC systems, but its support is primarily for compatibility with temporary storage. When you purchase an external hard drive to use with your Mac, it is likely going to be formatted with a FAT32 file system. While this is a common and often recommended practice, if you simply purchase an external drive, plug it in, and start using it, you might be overlooking a detail that could result in slower performance or even data loss. If you purchase an external drive for your Mac, you might be doing so to free up space on your boot drive, or to provide a central and unrestricted area for all user accounts to access.











Best external drive format for mac and pc