The external hard drive referred to in this article are mainly HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, memory card, and any removable hard disk drive.
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
1. Format for An External Hard Drive |
Solution 1: ExFAT...Full steps Solution 2: HFS+ & APFS...Full steps Solution 3: NTFS...Full steps |
2. Reformat External Hard Drive |
Connect the external hard drive to your Mac...Full steps |
File system key points:
A file system to a physical hard drive is what an operating system to a computer. Without a file system properly configured on a storage drive, like an HDD or SSD, you won't be able to see the hard drive showing up on a computer, nor to access data contents in it.
In this regard, to be able to store, copy, delete or edit a file on an external hard drive on a Mac, this external hard drive has to be formatted with a recognizable file system. The choices of macOS-compatible file system formats can be NTFS, FAT, APFS, HFS+, or ExFAT. Among the five different file system schemes, which is the best format for an external hard drive for Mac?
USB Flash Drive & External Hard Drive - Everything You Should Know
USB flash drive and external hard drive are two terms that often confused people. What are the differences between these two kinds of devices? Which one is better?
As most of our readers are not tech savvies, it's not smart to spend long hours studying the concepts and basics to get an answer at all. Alternatively, let us do the work for you. We'll present a very elaborate guide on how to quickly make a decision according to your specific needs.
- For the purpose of using the external hard drive on multiple devices and different operating system platforms.
Since an external hard drive's advantage is portable, it means that you can disconnect it from a Mac at any time, and flexibly put it to use on another Mac or even a Windows machine as well. If this is your purpose, use the external hard drive on both macOS and Windows OS, ExFAT is the prior choice. Let me show more examples for you to consider the ExFAT as the best format for external hard drive use.
On top of that, FAT32 is a backup plan, too. FAT32 is kind of an older file system format than ExFAT, and it's mostly used for moving files to older systems as well as other devices. In a word, FAT32 has the greatest compatibility with any old and new device, but ExFAT can hardly support the older devices like Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. But referring to the comparison of ExFAT and FAT32, we still recommend ExFAT as the prior choice when selecting the best format for a Mac external hard drive.
- For Mac use only, especially for Time Machine backup
Despite ExFAT being an ideal file format choice for an external hard drive, the standard Apple File System (APFS) and the older HFS+ are good choices. Since the two file systems are exclusively developed by Apple, they won't be working on any other type of operating system. When you cannot set up your mind to choose a file system when trying to format an external hard drive on Mac, just calm down and ask yourself: "Do I need to use the drive on a second operating system?" If the answer the No, it's a good idea to choose the Apple family file systems to get better trust and encryption protection.
The final decision for choosing HFS+ or APFS depends on how new your Mac is because APFS is a successor to HFS+, and it's only available on newer Mac models and macOS versions.
- Primary use on Windows and secondary use on Mac
You may wonder. NTFS is the Windows-exclusive file system, why do we recommend its use on Mac? Indeed, when you connect an NTFS hard drive to a Mac, the external hard drive is read-only, which means that you can only open and view the files on the drive, however, unable to make changes to the selected files.
This is the case when you want to use the external hard drive for backing up Windows files, but you also need to use the backup files on a Mac computer. If this is the case, NTFS is another right option.
Here's why you choose NTFS over ExFAT for both Windows and macOS use:
Note:
Step 1. Connect the external hard drive to your Mac.
Step 2. Open Disk Utility on your Mac. Choose View > Show All Devices. Locate the external hard drive there, and continue with the Erase button in the toolbar.
Step 3. On the pop-up window, there are four available file system formats to choose from. Choose the one you preferred according to the provided solutions.
Contact the author if you had any questions about how to choose the best format for Mac external hard drive after reading the post. Welcome to share more useful ideas with Qiling, the reputable data recovery software vendor in the market, to make people feel easier to manage a hard drive and rescue important data.