FORMAT A DRIVE FOR BOTH WINDOWS AND MAC CANNOT MOUNT

Format A Drive For Both Windows And Mac Cannot Mount

Pick a reliable USB format tool.Format a disk for Windows computers in Disk Utility on Mac. Mac cannot mount external drive even with exFAT formatting.Here, 2021 top 3 recommended USB format tools are available to help you format a USB flash drive, external USB drive, SD card, etc., to a Mac-supported file system. Using a FAT32 formatted drive within the Macintosh environment is only recommended for a short period of time. It is only possible to read FAT and FAT32 formatted drives in a Macintosh with OS 10.2 or earlier. See Document ID: 200895 for instructions. You may also format your external drive into FAT32 for use between Windows and Mac computers.

Select Erase and then type in a name for the external hard drive. Click on the name of the external drive in the left panel of the Disk Utility. Open the Disk Utility tool on your Mac. Start the computer and plug in the external HDD. How to format external hard drive for MacTo format an external hard drive on your Mac, you need to complete the following steps:

Simply search for вЂњUSB type A to type C adaptorsвЂќ in Google (or another search engine) and you should be able to quickly find what you need.Also, know that any data stored on the external hard drive will be deleted after you (re)format it. Depending on the model of the Mac and the drive, you may need to buy an adaptor.Newer Macs donвЂ™t have USB type-A ports and if your external hard driveвЂ™s cable is USB type A, then you will need an adaptor cable to connect it to your Mac. Step 1The first thing you have to do is to obviously start your Mac and plug in the external hard drive. If you would prefer to read a more detailed and in-depth explanation of how to perform the external hard drive reformatting, please, read on.

Step 4Once youвЂ™ve selected the external drive in the Disk Utility, look in the right panel and find and click on the option labeled erase (itвЂ™s shown at the top).In the window that shows up, first type a name for the external hard drive, then select either of the following three formats for the external drive: You arenвЂ™t supposed to touch any of these other icons, you should still select the first icon shown below External вЂ“ the one that has the name of your external drive. Click on the icon of the drive ( and not on any of the icons below it, or you may cause problems for the drive!).If you see only one icon below External, click on View from the top, and then select Show All Devices вЂ“ once you do this one or more additional icons should show up below your external drive in the left panel.

Be patient, donвЂ™t unplug the drive or quit your Mac until the formatting is finished.Note: If you got an error message after you clicked on Erase, then make sure that you have selected the correct icon from the left panel. Step 5Once everything has been set up as explained above, click on Erase and let the process complete. ExFat вЂ“ you should pick this format if you want to make the external drive compatible with both Mac and Windows PCs.Note 1: Only the APFS and the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formats allow you to use the drive for Mac Time Machine backups.Note 2: If you do not see the APFS option (sometimes happens when reformatting drives with the NTFS format), you can get it to show by first formatting the drive with the Mac OS Extended format, and then formatting it again вЂ“ this time the APFS option should be available.Next, you must also select the GUID Partition Map as the Partition setting. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) вЂ“ this format is compatible with the biggest number of Macs (newer and older models).