Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc 2017

So I can't format it on the PC except for that 200MB is recognizes.The Flash drive worked with PC and MAC before I used it to install Snow Leopard. So How do I do this Master Boot Record thing. And I've been testing it on a PC with vista.

Best Flash Drives For Macs

In this mini-guide I will walk you through a somewhat simple task, but one that can often elude people on how to properly fix and reformat a stuck USB Flash drive on Windows. I am using the term “stuck” to mean a USB flash drive that is in a state where the normal Windows formatting does not work as Windows can no longer detect the proper size due to partition changes or corruption.

  1. This looks like a cool forum, so hopefully I can get some answers (and hopefully I've put my thread in the right place!). Here goes: I bought a Memorex 2GB USB flash drive with the intention of swapping files from my Mac G5 at work to my PC at home. I first plugged it into my.
  2. These will format the drive in OS X's HFS+ filetype so it will be compatible with Time Machine. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive. With the drive selected in Disk Utility, click.

This can come about for various reasons, one instance that I encounter often is if I used the USB flash drive in a computer with another OS, such as Linux. Other times flash drives just become corrupt on their own and this technique can sometimes be used to salvage the drive. Of course, with flash drives as cheap as they are now, if it is questionable you may be better off just throwing it away.

You can also use this guide on a working USB stick if you just want to wipe the contents completely and start out clean.

Now let me clarify, this isn’t a guide about file recovery, it is simply how to fix and reformat a stuck USB Flash drive and wipe it clean to return it to full storage capacity. It is not a guide on how to recover files or resurrect a dead USB flash drive. Once this procedure is finished, your USB Flash drive should be returned to its like new state, empty with full capacity available and ready for use.

And I will also mention that while this is deviating a bit from the Cryptocurrency theme of the site, since it is a common enough problem people run into, especially cryptocurrency miners. I thought a mini-how to wouldn’t hurt anything and may help a few folks that find themselves in such a position.

To begin, insert the USB flash drive into an available USB slot. Wait for Windows to detect it and look under My Computer to see which drive letter it was assigned and how much space is available. In this example I am reformatting a 16 GB Micro USB Flash Drive that had once held BAMT when I used to scrypt mine. I wish to reuse this drive to use as the installation media for a new Linux Mint install, and I am using Windows to download the media and format the drive.

In the image on the left, I can see that my computer detected the drive and assigned it as the “J:” drive. However, Windows only shows that 16 MB out of 512 MB is free, well short of the 16 GB flash drive’s capacity. If you try formatting this drive with Windows by right clicking on the drive and using “format”, it will only recognize and format the 524 MB it recognizes as shown below.

There are a couple of different approaches to reclaiming the “lost” capacity, but maybe one of the easiest is to simply use the built-in Windows utility, DiskPart.

DiskPart, short for “Disk Partition” utility, is a command line tool that allows you to manage drive objects (disks, partitions, and volumes) using either the command line directly, or more conveniently in a script format.

For a complete listing of its capabilities refer to the TechNet article from Microsoft here.

For this simple task, we will be using the command line directly as the process is pretty straightforward.

Open up a command prompt (Windows>Start, type: “cmd” in search) and type DiskPart, as shown in the first window above. This window will stay open, but a new Window will open with the utility running, this is indicated by the DISKPART> prompt (lower window shown above).

The first command we will type is “list disk”. This will display all the disks currently on the system. The disk we want will usually (not always) be the last one listed, in this case Disk 6 (as shown below). This can be further confirmed by looking at the size. In this case I am using a 16 GB disk, so we can see a 14 GB detected (Windows uses formatted capacity which is less than physical) so I can see that disk 6 is indeed the one I want to work on.

A note of caution here, if you choose the wrong disk you can easily wipe a drive on your system, be careful and take the time to make sure you are selecting the correct drive.

Now that we have identified the disk we want to work on, again in this case Disk 6, we need to select it. Type “select disk #” in my example “select disk 6” to select it. This should be verified with a “Disk 6 is now the selected disk message as shown above.”

Next we type “clean” to erase all partition information and basically wipe the disk. Sometimes this step errors out, in that case simply type “clean” a second time. Stronger than you midi. It usually will work the second time around. Valentino rossi the doctor font free download.

Now we can create a new primary partition with the “create partition primary” command, as shown above. Again this should be confirmed by a message indicating success.

We now select the newly created partition with the “select partition 1” command. This action is again confirmed with a message.

Format hard drive for mac and pc

Now we activate the partition by typing “active”. Then we can format the drive for use, type the command “format quick fs=fat32” to format the drive. Note the similarity to the GUI option as this is the same process. After a few seconds, or minutes depending on drive size, the program should show format completed. Note that you can also use fs=NTFS to format your USB Drive with the NTFS file system and if you want a complete format instead of quick, simply omit the quick keyword in the above command.

Finally we can assign it a drive letter. By simply typing the command “assign” the system will automatically assign it a drive letter, it will usually be one later letter than original drive letter, as Windows thinks this is a new drive, so in my case we went from J to K as shown below.

Well that is pretty much it, I told you it was a simple process. We now have our USB Flash Drive back to factory default capacity, freshly formatted, and ready for use.

An abbreviated list of the commands that were used are as follows:

  • diskpart
  • list disk
  • select disk # (Where # is the number of your disk, i.e. 3)
  • clean
  • create partition primary
  • select partition 1
  • active
  • format quick fs=fat32
  • assign
  • exit

You can format the external hard drive or USB drive to make it compatible with both Mac and Windows machines. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesn’t worry it’s not complex.

If you are tech savvy and use Windows and Mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between Mac and PC. Windows and macOS filesystems are different and you might need to format the drive every time to use on both platforms. 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

Format flash drive for mac and pc 2017 download

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. After cross-compatible formatting, simply unplug the drive from one machine and then plug it into another. Sounds good to you right? So let’s started, how this works.

Understand file systems for Mac and Windows

There are three common file system types to format an external USB or hard drive, SSD drive, SD card and etc. FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT let’s have a look what’s the difference between these formats.

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FAT 32 Format

This format is pretty old but supported and it’s not efficient as compared to NTFS. It doesn’t support big features but offers great compatibility which means it’s compatible with all versions of Windows. It can only support 4GB file size and up to 8TB hard drivers. It’s not capable to store files larger than 4GB.

NTFS Format

NTFS is a modern format system and Windows also uses this format for itself and for other non-removable drives by default. This format is also compatible with all versions of Windows but limited to none Windows OS as FAT32.

exFAT Format

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

  • If your drive is formatted as Windows default format NTFS then it’s only readable to macOS. You can’t do more than that or you have to install a separate app on Mac to read write the drive.
  • Drive with macOS format HFS+ cant readable to Windows.
  • FAT32 format works on both Windows and Mac but the problem is you can only work with files with a maximum size of 4GB.

Using Flash Drive On Mac

Learn more: Copy data on NTFS drive in macOS

FAT32 is much better than NTFS and HFS+ becuase it works on both operating systems. You can also install drivers on each OS to make work your drive. So exFAT is much better than all of these formats and a simple option but this will not work on Leopard.

Format a USB Drive on Mac

Time needed: 5 minutes.

Format Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

First, let’s see how to format an external hard drive or USB drive in macOS which works with both Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive into a macOS machine.

  1. Disk Utility

    Open Disk Utility on your macOS, press cmd + spacebar keys, and type Disk Utility in the spotlight search. Open Disk Utility from the search results.

  2. Erase Drive

    On the Disk Utility interface, select an external drive click on the Erase button from the top of the window (make sure and backup your drive before erasing it).

  3. Drive format

    Now enter the name for the external drive which will be used after formatting and also select the exFAT for Format option and click on the Erase. This will format the drive as exFAT format and your drive is now compatible with both platforms.

Format USB Drive in Windows

The below steps for formatting external drive is for Windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of Windows. To format your external drive hard drive in Windows to use on Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive with a Windows machine.

Open the Disk Management tool by right-clicking on the start menu icon and then select Disk Management. Now right click on the external drive and click on the format option (double-check the drive name and capacity to make sure you are going to format the right drive.)

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Now enter the Volume label as you need and change the File system for exFat and click OK. Now you are done.

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc 2017

Share your experience, how do you use an external hard drive on both Mac and PC. Did you format the drive as exFAT ? or use any utility that helps the system to read another type of file system. Please leave a comment below.

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