Find out how to format an External drive or USB disk making the drive work with both Windows PC and Mac can read and write. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on Mac and Windows as exFAT. How to Format USB on Mac - Steps Connect your USB drive to your Mac computer. Open the Applications folder and click on 'Utilities. Click on 'Disk Utility. Click on the name of your USB drive in the left window pane in Disk Utility. Click on the 'Erase' tab displayed at the top of the Disk. Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac. Launch Disk Utility (Applications Utilities). Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left. Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive. May 06, 2016 Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture Tips on preparing a new external hard drive for use with Aperture. You may wish to use an external FireWire or USB hard drive to store your Aperture Library, referenced images, or Vaults. Jan 04, 2012 Connect the hard drive or USB key to the Mac. Launch Disk Utility, located in Applications Utilities. Locate the drive name from the left hand side of Disk Utility and click on it. Click on the “Erase” tab across the top. Next to “Format:” click the contextual menu.
Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility.
Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete any info you currently have on the drive.
Click the Erase button.
Click the Format menu, then choose either MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT.Choose the former if the size of the disk is 32 GB or less. Choose the latter if the size of the disk is over 32 GB.
Enter a name for the volume (no more than 11 characters).