When you plug in an external Hard disk or USB Drive into your macOS, it would only be readable. You won’t be able to copy anything to the drive. Normally the USB Drive format is in NTFS format which is only readable by the MacOS. macOS can read Windows MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFAT and NTFS Formats. In-case you want to copy any file from MacOS to External drive, you would need to change the device’s format to be able to do it.
In this guide, we will show you how to change the external hard drive format to ExFAT in MacOS.
Formatting an External Drive for Mac Compatibility
Here’s how to change the external hard drive format to be both readable and write-able for MacOS by formatting it in Mac:
- Connect the hard drive or USB to the Mac.
- From the Spotlight Search, search for “Disk Utility” and click on the search result to open it.
- Click on the name of the drive from the left panel of the Disk Utility window.
- Now click on the “Erase” tab on the right panel of the drive.
- Next, click on the “Format” drop-down menu and select “ExFAT”. You can also change the name of the drive if you want to.
- Click on the “Erase” button and confirm your action by clicking on “Erase” again on the pop-up.
A large hard drive would take a little longer to erase than a USB drive or an SSD card. The drive will be formatted and everything that was already existing in the drive will be erased. Now the drive is compatible with use in macOS, copy anything between the system and external drive.
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