Format the new drive on the win 7 machine, right click on its icon and format. Fat sorter can help you sort the contents of a folder on a fat file system in alphabetical order. Most windows systems format disks by default using a file system called. You can format a fat32 usb drive on a mac using disk utility. How to convert a macintosh hard drive to fat 32 small business. A comprehensive guide to sharing your data across multibooting windows, mac, and linux pcs were platform agnostic at lifehacker, which is why we. Mac computers can read ntsf drives, but cant write on them. So if you need to get files from a pc to your mac, ntfs is a decent option. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. Whats the difference between fat32, exfat, and ntfs. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac and.
However, you wont be able to move files in the other direction, from mac to pc. Apple file system apfs apple file system apfs, the default file system for mac computers using macos 10. I did a search about fat32 file system on the forums but didnt find a solution. Fat32 is an older file system thats not as efficient as ntfs and. Which mac file system is best for an external drive. Macs can read files on ntfs drives, but it cannot write to them. The new technology file system, or ntfs, was developed by microsoft as a file system for the windows operating system. How to share files between mac os x and windows with boot. Apple file system apfs apfs is apples latest file system, first introduced in early 2017 for ios devices.
Compare with the other commonly used ntfs file system on a flash drive, fat32 has a compatibility advantage across many operating systems. Ntfs is the default file system for windows operating system and hfs for mac operating system. Typically, documents are detected by the date they were added, instead of their name. The mac operating system requires that you use a disk formatted using a compatible. How to format a flash drive with a mac to fat32 techwalla.
Exfat a newer file format, supported in mac os x 10. Msdos fat this is disk utilitys name for the fat32 filesystem. Many computer users who use a removable flash drive have the demand for formatting it to the fat32 file system. If you want to make your drive compatible with mac and windows, you need to format it with a common file system for mac and windows. For apple mac users, the easier way to format usb flash drive to fat32 is using the disk utility. Recover ntfs, fat, fat32, ext3ext4, hfs on mac os disk drill. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac.
You can format external hard drive or other external drives with exfat or fat32 file system for mac and windows, so that both mac and. The file allocation table 32 fat32 was the standard windows file system before ntfs. The exfat file system was introduced in 2006 and was added to older versions of windows with updates to windows xp and windows vista. Use the exfat file system and never format your external drive. The first format, fat32, is fully compatible with mac os.