Nowadays, when you buy a USB drive, you can use it right out of the box with your Mac. However, unless it’s been designed for use with a Mac, it won’t be formatted using macOS’ preferred file system (either Mac OS Extended or APFS, depending on which version of macOS you’re running). That’s because most of the computers in the world run Windows, and Windows uses a different file system, usually one known as Fat32. Drives formatted as Fat32 can be read from and written to by macOS, but it’s not optimal and you’re more likely to run into problems than if you use macOS’ native format. So, if you’ve bought a USB drive that’s formatted as Fat32, or any other format other than Mac OS Extended (also known as HFS+) or APFS, here’s how to format a USB drive on Mac. It’s exactly the same procedure if you need to reformat a flash drive on a Mac. How to format a USB drive on a Mac 1.
Plug the drive into a USB socket (if you have a recent MacBook or MacBook Pro that only has USB-C connectors, you’ll need a USB-C to USB-A adaptor). Open a new Finder window and click on the drive. Make sure it has no files on it that you need.
The process of reformatting it will wipe all the data from it. Once you’ve copied any files you need from the USB drive to your Mac, go to ApplicationsUtilities and double-click on Disk Utility. Click on the USB drive in the sidebar and then choose Erase from the toolbar at the top of the window. In the window that drops down type a name for the formatted drive in the box next to Name. Choose a format from the dropdown menu. If you have previously stored sensitive data on the drive, click the Security tab.
Choose a security level using the slider. The further to the right you move the slider, the more ‘passes’ the erase tool will make and the more securely files will be deleted. However, it also increases the time it takes to format the drive quite considerably. Click Ok then click Erase. Tip: You don’t need to erase a whole drive to delete files securely. If you have confidential files or sensitive data you need to remove from your Mac completely, you should use File Shredder. It’s specifically designed to securely delete sensitive data and will render it unrecoverable.
You can download CleanMyMac X for free. Which format to choose? If your Mac is running macOS High Sierra or later, you have two options for file formats: APFS and Mac OS Extended.
Which should you choose? The key point is that disks formatted as APFS won’t be recognized by Macs running versions of macOS older than High Sierra. So if you think you might need to plug the USB drive into a Mac running an older version of macOS, format it as Mac OS Extended. APFS is optimized for SSD (solid state drive) such as flash drives, so if you reformat a flash drive on a Mac, you should definitely choose APFS (unless you plan to use it with a pre-High Sierra Mac, of course). Even on hard drives, however, APFS is faster and more reliable than Mac OS Extended. Finally, if you plan to use the USB drive as a destination for Time Machine backups, choose Mac OS Extended. Time Machine can’t currently back up to an APFS disk and if you select one for use with Time Machine, it will offer to reformat it as Mac OS Extended.
After isolating an issue on your Mac to a probable hardware issue, you can use Apple Hardware Test to help determine which hardware component might be causing the issue. If your Mac was introduced after June 2013, follow the steps for using Apple Diagnostics instead.
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You can, however, backup an APFS formatted disk to a Mac OS Extended Time Machine drive. How to format a USB drive to FAT32 on a Mac The main reason for formatting a USB drive as Fat32 on a Mac is that you want to be able to use the drive on a Windows PC, as well as a Mac — perhaps to transfer files between the two machines. You may also be preparing the drive for use as, say, a storage device for a media player or to record TV programmes on a TV with a USB port. The fact that Fat32 can be read from and written to on both Mac and Windows makes it very versatile. However, there is a significant limitation — individual files have a maximum size of 4GB.
So, if you’re using the USB drive to store large video files, you may run into trouble. There is a solution, however, exFAT.
Unlike FAT32, exFAT doesn’t have a maximum file limit. Better still, it can be read from and written to on any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later and on Windows. To format a USB drive in FAT32 or exFAT: 1. Plug the USB drive into your Mac. Go to ApplicationsUtilities and launch Disk Utility. Click on the USB drive in the sidebar in Disk Utility. Click Erase in the Disk Utility toolbar.
Type in a name for the formatted disk. Click on the Format menu and choose either MS-DOS (FAT32) or ExFAT. Your USB drive will now be erased and re-formatted as either FAT32 or ExFAT, depending on the format you chose in step 6. How to manage your drives easily If you look for a quick and easy way to manage your drives, try using. With its help, you can drag-and-drop files directly to any drive, clean hidden junk from external drives, and check disk stats. It works for all drives, including USB drives, SSD, SD cards, external hard drives. All the drives will be at hand in the menu bar, so you can get to see types of drives you have and manage them easily.
CleanMyDrive is absolutely free to use, so download it on the Mac App Store and enjoy! It’s very easy to format a USB drive on a Mac using Disk Utility. There are a couple of things you should keep in mind, however.
The first is that when you format and disk, you will erase all the data currently on it. So if you need that data, make sure you copy it onto another disk before you start. Secondly, there are several formats to choose from, each with advantages and disadvantage.
Use the guide above to help you decide which is right for you. These might also interest you:.
How to create a bootable Windows 10 USB on Mac 09 June 2017 on, The last release of Mac OS doesn't have the option to create a bootable USB from Bootcamp like previous versions, and it is a problem because that require uses other tools. I am updating this post today Dec 12, 2018. The reason is that I was only using to create the bootable USB, I will leave guide as a second method since it still working, and I will explain to you how you can create the bootable Windows USB without extra software. The first step for both methods requires to format your USB device to ExFAT. Format USB to ExFAT In order to boot from the USB, you need to format the USB to ExFAT, you can do it using Disk Utility (it comes with MacOS). This step is the same for both methods.
You need to show all the devices in Disk Utility' before to start the process. Select your USB device in the list (not the partition), right click and then click on the Erase option: In the next screen make sure you select these two options:. Format: ExFAT. Scheme: Master Boot Record Click the Erase button. If for some reason it fails, probably is because MacOS still using the USB, just repeat the steps, but if you see a screen similar to above screen is because the operation is successful.
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Format USB with the terminal You also can format the USB from the terminal, but you have to take care to use the correct device because, if you use the wrong name you will lose everything. With this command you can list the device on MacOS: diskutil list This is an example, my USB is the disk2: This command is to format the USB, the last parameter is the the USB: diskutil eraseDisk ExFAT 'WINDOWS10' MBRFormat disk2 Copy Windows files to USB - Method 1 This process is very easy doesn't require to install other software, and they are just a few steps: Open Windows ISO Just double click on the ISO image, MacOS mount the image automatically. Copy files Now you only need to copy the files and paste them to the USB. Command + A Select all files. Command + C Copy files.
Go to your USB Command + V paste the files. This process could fail if you are using a USB with FAT32 because the file install.win is over 4GB, if this is the case try to open the terminal and copy paste the files from there (no always works. Try to follow the instructions to format the USB in ExFAT, NTFS works for some BIOS). This is the command to copy the files from the ISO to the USB: cp -rp /Volumes/CCCOMAX64FREEN-USDV9/.
/Volumes/WINDOWS10/ And that is all, now you can try boot from the USB. UNetbootin - Method 2 I will show you how you can use to create a bootable USB, it can be used no only for Mac but for Windows and Linux distributions too. Is free software and it is also available for Windows and Linux. Check the path name of your USB Disk. Always in Disk Utility, select the new partition that we created in the previous step, and click on the information button, it will give you the information about the new partition. You also can use the terminal and the command diskutil to see the list of drives: diskutil list Download UNetbootin:.
Download the dmg directly from the. And copy the app to the /Application folder. I prefer to use homebrew to install applications, you can check this article for more information:: brew cask install -appdir='/Applications' unetbootin Makes the USB booteable Open UNetbootin and you only need select 3 options:. Diskimage and ISO. Now we need open the ISO Windows image that is on our computer.
Select your USB device on UNetbootin. Click on the OK, button and wait to the process end it will take a time. NOTES:.
I tested other tools like dd and Etcher but they are not working because Windows requires extra steps, for the moment this is the only easy tool that I know that works if you are on Windows try. Some users reported that UNetbootin is not working, if after to format the USB drive and change the block size is not working for you try another Drive with enough space.
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