This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system. This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS.*END A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and macOS. This is useful if a drive is being used under both to move files between the two environments. Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (macOS) format. For a hard drive to be able to be read from and written to on both a Windows and macOS computer, it must be formatted to or file format. FAT32 has several limitations, including a 4 GB per-file limit. This is a file system limitation that affects both macOS's and Window's, and the only workaround is to format the drive to exFAT.

How to convert/format disk/flash drive/sd raw to ntfs with testdisk in windows 7/8/10/Vista. Data Recovery; Testimonial; Is It Possible to Convert/Format RAW USB HD NTFS Using TestDisk. How to Convert/Format RAW to NTFS on a HDD/USB without Data Loss in Windows 7/8/10.

For more information about what these limitations are please see. The easiest way to format the drive to or is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility for FAT32, or both macOS and Windows' built-in tools, Disk Utility or Disk Management respectively for exFAT. Critical: Never attempt to connect any external drive to multiple computers at the same time.

This could quickly damage the drive's partition and corrupt the data on the drive. ExFAT in macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and above There are two easy ways to format a drive to use is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility; using Erase (Step 4) or Partition (Step 7). For instructions on how to do this, please see the instructions below: • Connect the WD drive to the Mac computer. • Double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner of the desktop screen. Choose Applications from the left-side panel. How to format a hard drive with hfs+ file format to use for a macbook to install os x lion. From the Applications folder, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility.

• Disk Utility will now be open. From the left-side pane, choose the drive that is to be re-formatted. Typically there are two listings for each drive unless more than one partition exists on a particular drive. Choose the drive listing that is farthest to the left (Not indented) for the drive to be formatted. It is usually directly above the name of the drive.

In the example below, the one to be selected would be WD Elements SE. Erase• After selecting the appropriate drive, additional option buttons will become available on the top part of the Disk Utility window. Click on Erase.

• The Erase dialog window will now appear. Assign the name that will be given to the drive. • Select the Format (file system) from the drop-down menu. For this article, we chose exFAT, see image below. • Select the Scheme (Partition Table Scheme) from the drop-down menu. See image below.

• When you have finished erasing the hard drive, click on the Disk Utility menu and select Quit Disk Utility. • Click on the Wi-Fi menu icon which appears in the upper right corner of the Mac’s screen. • You’ll be returned to the main OS X Utilities window. Select your Wi-Fi menu and, if needed, enter the password needed to connect to this wireless network. You will be warned that everything will be removed from the hard drive and that this is permanent.