Attach the drive you wish to format for dual compatibility to the Mac.
And it is recommended to carry out the entire process on Mac OS X
You can format any hard drive, flash drive, SSD, USB drive, that is accepted by both a Mac and Windows machine.
How to Format a Drive for Mac and Windows PC Compatibility? In this article, we are going to introduce you with the entire process in few simple guidelines. It is just a matter of few minutes to do this. And if you are going to use Mac and Windows PC frequently, you will find this as very useful as any data, files, media files stored on the drive can be easily accessible from any operating system. Well, you can format the drive and make it as excellent cross-platform compatible to work with both Windows and Mac. And they are incompatible with each other! Now, the question is how to make hard drive compatible with Mac and PCs? While Windows uses NTFS file system, Mac hard drives are formatted with HFS file system. The irony is that, by default, Windows and Mac use different file systems. Click Erase and confirm your selection in the pop-up window.Make your hard disk or USB flash drive compatible to both Mac and Windows PCs using this easy step by step guide.Choose a format from the drop-down window.Select the LaCie hard drive in the left column.All connected storage devices, partitions or disk images are displayed in the left column. In the Utilities folder, double-click Disk Utility.Select Go > Utilities in the Finder menu bar.Follow the on-screen instructions when the New Simple Volume Wizard appears. To create a new partition, right click on the volume and select New Simple Volume.If it is currently formatted, right click on the partion and then choose Delete. The partition must be available to format.
From the list of storage devices in the middle of the Disk Management window, locate your LaCie device.In the search results, double click Disk Management. Go to Search and then type diskmgmt.msc.Make sure the storage device is connected to and mounted on the computer.Note: Refer to your operating system's documentation for more information on formatting and partitioning storage devices. The steps below help you format and partition a storage device. FAT32 is not recommended for modern operating systems and computers. …the storage device is connected to older Windows and Mac computers. …the storage device is shared between Mac and Windows computers. …the storage device is connected to Macs. …the storage device is connected to Windows PCs. However, FAT32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. A FAT32 partition can reach up to 32GB when formatted on a Windows PC. exFAT is not a journaled file system which means it can be more susceptible to data corruption when errors occur or the drive is not disconnected properly from the computer.įAT32: compatible with Mac and Windows. Windows cannot natively read or write to HFS+ (journaled) hard drives.ĮxFAT: generally compatible with Mac and Windows. Mac OS Extended (HFS+): the native hard drive file system for Mac. Mac OS can read NTFS volumes but cannot natively write to them. NTFS: since it is the native file system for Windows, volumes created in NTFS are read and write with computers running Windows. Want to reformat your storage device after successfully formatting the hard drive with LaCie Setup Assistant.Aborted LaCie Setup Assistant while it was formatting.LaCie Setup Assistant helps you to quickly format the storage device according to your needs. You can use LaCie Setup Assistant to format your LaCie hard drive when it is first connected to a computer (Mac or Windows).