It’s possible for Windows to read APFS and Mac OS Extended drives, but you require external software to do so. While APFS and Mac OS Extended are macOS specific, you should consider formatting your drive to ExFAT if you’re considering using your drive across Windows or Linux, as well as macOS. There are two other file formats available in Disk Utility: ExFAT and MS-DOS FAT (FAT32). Other File Formats (exFAT and MS-DOS FAT)
Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): This uses the Mac format, but requires a password and encrypts the partition.Choose this option if you don’t need an encrypted or case-sensitive format. Mac OS Extended (Journaled): This is the default, most basic version of Mac OS Extended.These differ slightly in their function, as described below: Or, in macOS High Sierra and newer OS, you can choose to format your drive to APFS.If you decide to go with Mac OS Extended for your drive, you may notice that there are four different types of file formats available in Disk Utility. If you want to format a hard drive, it's better to choose Mac OS Extended. When you need to format a USB drive or an SD card, the ExFAT is a better choice. Simply speaking, these two formats are both compatible with macOS. That's all about ExFAT and Mac OS Extended. Click Erase and wait for the process to be finished. Choose the proper format according to your device. Step 3. Now there would be a pop-up window, notice you enter your drive's name and file system format. Step 2. Find and select your drive from the left side. Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your Mac, and go to Disk Utility.
Here are the steps of how to format a drive in Disk Utility. With this tool, you can mount, erase, and format any external hard drive. On Mac computers, there is a built-in disk management tool called Disk Utility. How to Format External Hard Drives on Mac When formatting an external hard drive, like HDD or SSD, the recommended format is Mac OS Extended, furthermore, you need to choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If your SD card is 64GB or larger, choose ExFAT, if it's 32GB or less, choose MS-DOS (FAT). If you need to format a USB drive or an SD card, the recommended formats are ExFAT and FAT32. You can format your SD card or hard drive according to the following advice. In fact, there is no good or bad of these two file systems, they are just suited for different devices. Which One to Choose: ExFAT or Mac OS Extended? In conclusion, exFAT is a file system that is compatible with both Windows and macOS, and it has no transfer file size limit. Like NTFS, exFAT has a larger limit on file and partition sizes, so you can store and transfer files larger than 4GB. The reason why to develop exFAT is to solve the problem that large files cannot be transferred in FAT32 format. However, its biggest disadvantage is that it does not support the transfer of files larger than 4GB, so most storage devices using this format are USB flash drives. When talking about exFAT, it is necessary for you to know FAT32.įAT32 is an old file system that is compatible with both Windows system and macOS, which is its biggest advantage.
If you want to know their characteristics, please read on, we will introduce them in the following sections.ĮxFAT is short for extended file location table, it was introduced in 2006 and was added to older versions of Windows like Windows XP and Vista. They are less common than the two earlier-mentioned ones. In this article, we mainly help you distinguish between the two file system formats - exFAT and Mac OS Extended.
According to Apple's introduction, APFS is the "default file system for Mac computers using macOS 10.13 or later, features strong encryption, space sharing, snapshots, fast directory sizing, and improved file system fundamentals." As for MS-DOS (FAT), it has a better-known name - FAT32. On a Mac computer or in macOS, there are four compatible file system formats: APFS, Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), and exFAT. Also, they differ from each other in file names, file permissions, and other attributes. The main difference between all the file systems is how data is stored on the hard drive. The file system is the way the system enables your storage device to store and arrange files.
Download for Mac macOS 12.0 - 10.9 Also Available for Windows Overview of File System Format