Click the Go menu, select Utilities from the drop-down menu, and open Disk Utility.If you already have data stored on the drive, back that data up elsewhere, reformat the drive, and then put your data back on the drive. Reformatting deletes all data stored on the drive, so if you know you’ll need to reformat a drive, do so as soon as you buy it. Now that you’ve figured out the differences, it’s time to reformat your hard drive.
It’s possible, but tricky, to change the size of a partition later on in Windows and macOS we recommend backing up the data on your drive before attempting the task, since it’s possible to wipe your drive doing this. Make sure to leave plenty of room for future backups on both partitions. Now your computer will see your single physical drive as multiple, smaller drives.
First, partition the drive using Disk Utility in macOS and (using our walk-through below) format one part as HFS+ and the other as FAT32 then, plug the drive into your Windows PC and reformat the FAT32 portion as NTFS.
FAT32 was introduced in Windows 95 in 1997, but it remains useful because nearly every system can work with it.
If you buy an external drive-such as one of our recommended portable or desktop hard drives, portable solid-state drives, or USB 3.0 flash drives-you may need to reformat it to work with your operating system of choice, since different operating systems use different file systems to process data.Īlthough it’s true that any drive is compatible with both Windows and macOS once it’s formatted properly, most drives come preformatted for Windows out of the box.