This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Robin. Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar.įrom the Scheme menu, select Master Boot Record.Ĭlick Erase and follow prompts to confirm. Launch Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). This article will teach you how to format the USB flash drive so both Macs and PCs can read them. While first ensuring you have a copy of any data on a drive you want to format as ExFAT, as formatting will erase the drive’s contents, follow these steps: Before starting, please connect the USB to Windows to make sure that the USB can be detected.

Below I will introduce you two methods to format the USB, one is to use the third-party program AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, and the other is to use Windows built-in utility Diskpart. Some external storage devices are preformatted exFAT for compatibility with both Mac and Windows. Two simple ways to format USB for both Mac and PC on Windows. Instead, pick ExFAT, its replacement (and still quite old), best used on drives of 32GB or larger capacity. Optimize performance by formatting your device NTFS. Designed for an earlier time, it can’t handle files larger than 4GB.

If you’re both Mac users, swell with Mac and Windows in the mix, you might be tempted to pick FAT32 when formatting that thumb drive.īut FAT32 is distinctly out of date. But it still crops up whenever you’re trying to put files on a USB thumb drive to hand off to someone else. For those of us who rarely transfer files physically across devices, file-format capability may be a distant memory.