I primarily use mac but I always format my drive as exFAT because all of my co-workers use Windows and only me using Mac. but there is some problem with exfat, sometimes the external HDD/SSD is not recognized after plugging out without ejecting (safely remove) it on mac and needs to mount manually via disk utility (this never happens on APFS/macOS Journaled) and then, some files can't be deleted on exfat I don't know why. and need to delete it manually by deleting the .trashes folder on Windows. and one of the most annoying things about exfat is OS unable to TRIM/Optimize it, so sometimes like twice a year I need to make a full backup on my main external SSD to other storage, format it to NTFS, and then trim/optimize on a windows machine and then reformat it to exFAT and then put back my data. I really wish there other universal formats.
I use both. I use exFAT for external USB drives, and a combination of ext4 (Linux system backups) and exFAT (archive and shared data) on an external Thunderbold NVMe enclosure.
THANK YOU! You saved me so many headaches. I was so frustrated trying to understand why it wasn't working on both of my computers and this fixed the issue without me losing all of my data!
Absolute Chad. Thank you for going into details of why it may not show even if you get an auditive notification on your computer. I've been having a headache for a year now!:)
THANK YOU!!!! I've been frustrated for months. After buying a brand new MacBook, I haven't been able to save/write any new files to my external drive, or even modified files that were already on there. No one I found online explained it as simply or clearly as you have. I didn't realize that I would have a compatibility issue when I bought this computer, but I should've known. We consumers are forever caught in the crossfire of Mac vs Windows' "infinity war"! I'm just trying to run a business and get work done, you know!? So, you sir are Godsent! ...Now, if you can tell me where I can temporarily relocate 3TB of storage so I can reformat my external drive, I'll be convinced that you're an angel on earth! :) ...If not you, then anyone else?? Please and thank you!!
as of now all i can think of is buying a new hard drive that's already in an ExFat format (you can now have another backup of the backup) or upload on google drive, but it would be a hassle to download files again.
Wow, you really know your stuff. Me, I was born before the digital age. You went a little fast for me so I am glad that I can rewind and repeat. Thanks for the info.
Thank you so much for the help with this video. I had an external hard drive i was using on my Xbox and wanted to format it to work on PC. you saved me hours of frustration!
Thank you for this! You explained it for every scenario. I thought you were going to be done after plugging it into the PC and I thought I'd need to find another video, but nope, you went over everything!
I actually have Parallels installed on MAC so this is very helpful of having disk management to recognize my external hard drive only recognizing my old PC laptop so I definitely need to try this and of course backup my files on my old pc laptop before I format it on Parallels in my MacBook, very helpful thanks!
I did the conversion from NTFS to Exfat on my PC. My brand new external hard drive shows up on my PC but still don't see it on my mac, even when I go to disk utility. What should I do?
U saved me I can’t thank u enough I’ve had this 16tb hard drive for so long and I could never get it to work cause when I would download stuff on it it would just disappear all i had to do it change the format
I no longer have a PC and have a MACPro and a passport external hard drive 1TB with hundreds of movies I saved in order to get rid of my DVDs…it looks like I can’t reformat the ext drive without backing it up and I can’t back it up unless I have a PC ..so thinking I need to buy a windows pad (maybe a Surface Go) and play my external hard drive movies that way. Thoughts? (For anyone who might know only to answer)
Very helpful! I have my external hard drive from my pc- just bought an old 2015 Macbookpro. I need my files to read &write on the mac! I just ordered a new SD card- I will follow your tips to format it so I can access the info on both computers! Thanks👍
If it’s so convenient to do XFAT why isn’t that the standard option for drives to begin with? I have a MAC formatted external drive and want to switch all my files to windows computer. Can I get a new drive, format to xfat, and transfer all my mac files, data, pics, videos, to my windows PC by copy and pasting from mac format drive to the xfat drive?
What formatting is needed for the Samsung 990 pro ssd m.2 nvme put in an enclosure, if it's for backing up files on both windows and mac laptops, use exFat?
Hello! Thank you :) What about the new option in Disk Utility under name and format called (Partition) scheme on mac? If I'm formatting ExFat (for mac and windows compatibility), should I use GUID Partition Map or Master Boot Record?
Currently i have windows. So am planning to use it as exFAT by default as incase if i want to copy any files from mac so no need to format later. Does this make any dfference in transfer speed. which perform better. NTFS or exFAT ?
Any recommendations for swapping large quantities of data from a mac formatted drive over to windows or dual format... One that doesn't involve buying another pricy 14tb drive for 1 use? I'm almost thinking buying a month of cloud storage to use as a placeholder while the drives get reformatted. Not sure how reliable that would be and I can only imagine the upload and download timeouts and errors😣
I greatly appreciate this video I’m going to subscribe and follow because of this great video, I have a question? Can I leave the drive plugged into my pc and turn my pc off? Or do I have to unplug the drive and shut my pc down is there a certain sequence or no
When you shut down, the drive ejects itself safely before it completely turns off. Otherwise make sure to eject before you remove any external drive as it may be writing or caching in the background
Hi, I bought Toshiba's Canvio Advance Portable Hard Drive and had to format it to use it on Mac... I am now trying to use it on my Windows and unfortunately does not work. Do you have any tips on how to reformat it for both or even Windows only? I can find it on Computer Management but nowhere else (not even Disk Management). Thank you in advance! :)
I might have missed this in the video but lets say I format the drive on PC as ExFat and load it up with files. Can I then plug it into a Mac and those files would be accessible on the Mac? There are over 300GB of files to transfer fyi.
I read something online that said this method doesn’t work if you’re sharing files over 4GB between Mac and PC, anyone know if that’s true and if there’s a way around it?
I’m leaving M1 Mac Mini with 4T external drive for a serious PC workstation. I want the external to be plugged into my new PC. The part that worries me is where I put the data in between reformatting. Dropbox? My external is a G-Drive. Can it be reformatted to exfat? I bought it from Apple. Any other links you can share for my migration to PC would be helpful. I’ve been only a Mac user my whole life (I’m 50!). Thanks for the video!
Thank you for making this video. Didn't realize it had been a while since I had to do this, when did exFAT format come around?...my Mac Mini (2014) HD failed and was replaced with a new (old) 1 TB SSD, so its access privileges reset, and my studio backup drive didn't communicate with the OS the same...also realized that my main backup all this time was formatted NTFS >_< ugghh, so I had to buy a new even larger backup for everything just to do this. YES, people back up your personal and business data as often and thoroughly as possible! Why? With the increasing file sizes of video and higher-resolution images, it's very important to keep deep reserves of spontaneous storage space.
Super helpful, I had a drive I formated back when I had my Mac, after selling it, I didn't format the Ext hd. I though I needed a Mac to format it again 🤦🏽
So if you set it as exfat on the Mac will the hard drive be read on the windows pc immediately without formatting? So it has to be set as exfat on both Mac and windows pc for the hard drive on both?
He sounds like a knowledgeable person so I have to put him to the test. This is the problem I am facing at the moment. I have extracted my HDD from my PowerBook G3 Pismo which is accessible. And, VM MacOS 10.13 I can run first aid on the partition but not on the actual HDD. When I clicked on the HDD (not on the partition) I noticed that the partition map is MBR and not APM which I think it should be. And, that is strange as this HDD has never been used for any other purpose but to sit and run the MacOS 9 and the 10.2.8 that are installed onto it. My Pismo cannot boot because I flashed the 4.1.8f5 firmware onto it, it won`t recognize anything like HDD, or DVD but the USB shows, however, I cannot get it to work yet. So, I am looking for software that I can run in Windows preferably to convert the partition map back to APM from MBR without losing data. I tried backups and almost all available methods with the help of chat GPT too, with no success at all. Is there any professional software that might be able to help me restore this drive so I can focus completely on the firmware; tried test disks and their features too, macdrive showed no errors, and MacOS disk utility repaired the partition but the main drive cannot be changed to APM from MBR. I don`t even know how it got changed to MBR when it was used always in the Pismo a mystery to me.
Wet paint dries faster than my technical ability to understand it in one take, my MacBook just died and i have most of my work on the external hard drive, so now i love to extract or get access to the hard drive thru my gf Laptop with Windows...can i convert the hard drive back to pc from the laptop without damage or erase all my work on the drive??😮😮😮
Do you guys primarily use PC or Mac for your work/data backups?
I primarily use mac but I always format my drive as exFAT because all of my co-workers use Windows and only me using Mac.
but there is some problem with exfat, sometimes the external HDD/SSD is not recognized after plugging out without ejecting (safely remove) it on mac and needs to mount manually via disk utility (this never happens on APFS/macOS Journaled)
and then, some files can't be deleted on exfat I don't know why. and need to delete it manually by deleting the .trashes folder on Windows.
and one of the most annoying things about exfat is OS unable to TRIM/Optimize it, so sometimes like twice a year I need to make a full backup on my main external SSD to other storage, format it to NTFS, and then trim/optimize on a windows machine and then reformat it to exFAT and then put back my data.
I really wish there other universal formats.
I use both. I use exFAT for external USB drives, and a combination of ext4 (Linux system backups) and exFAT (archive and shared data) on an external Thunderbold NVMe enclosure.
Underrated content. This is the important stuff in life. You’re a blessing!!
This right here. The must-know
THANK YOU! You saved me so many headaches. I was so frustrated trying to understand why it wasn't working on both of my computers and this fixed the issue without me losing all of my data!
Absolute Chad. Thank you for going into details of why it may not show even if you get an auditive notification on your computer. I've been having a headache for a year now!:)
THANK YOU!!!! I've been frustrated for months. After buying a brand new MacBook, I haven't been able to save/write any new files to my external drive, or even modified files that were already on there. No one I found online explained it as simply or clearly as you have. I didn't realize that I would have a compatibility issue when I bought this computer, but I should've known. We consumers are forever caught in the crossfire of Mac vs Windows' "infinity war"! I'm just trying to run a business and get work done, you know!? So, you sir are Godsent! ...Now, if you can tell me where I can temporarily relocate 3TB of storage so I can reformat my external drive, I'll be convinced that you're an angel on earth! :) ...If not you, then anyone else?? Please and thank you!!
as of now all i can think of is buying a new hard drive that's already in an ExFat format (you can now have another backup of the backup) or upload on google drive, but it would be a hassle to download files again.
I suggest you can buy google drive subscription for trial and then cancel before getting charged
Wow, you really know your stuff. Me, I was born before the digital age. You went a little fast for me so I am glad that I can rewind and repeat. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for the simple explanation on this.. Much appreciated..
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you so much for the help with this video. I had an external hard drive i was using on my Xbox and wanted to format it to work on PC. you saved me hours of frustration!
Love the energy brother, thank you for this video!
Great - with your help I now know how to transfer my whole Windows universe to Apple. Thank you.
You're an absolute blessing!! This is the best tutorial for formatting on Windows!! God bless!!
Thank you man, there very less youtube channel giving stuff free
Thank you for this! You explained it for every scenario. I thought you were going to be done after plugging it into the PC and I thought I'd need to find another video, but nope, you went over everything!
I actually have Parallels installed on MAC so this is very helpful of having disk management to recognize my external hard drive only recognizing my old PC laptop so I definitely need to try this and of course backup my files on my old pc laptop before I format it on Parallels in my MacBook, very helpful thanks!
Thanks a lot for this video it helped me to convert ssd to external USB which I will be able to use on both mac and win
@lapfix Thank you! This tutorial was everything! This just totally saved me. 😆🙏
I did the conversion from NTFS to Exfat on my PC. My brand new external hard drive shows up on my PC but still don't see it on my mac, even when I go to disk utility. What should I do?
OMG THIS WORKED!! thank you! I have been struggling so long with this
YOU SAVED MY LIFE!!! THANK YOU.
Thank you!
U saved me I can’t thank u enough I’ve had this 16tb hard drive for so long and I could never get it to work cause when I would download stuff on it it would just disappear all i had to do it change the format
With a drive that big, always have a second back up
all great Just slow down ! I still didn't get it. Can one external drive be used on Both ? Without reformatting every time I use a diferent PC?
I'm not sure that was explained. He just seemed to talk about reformatting and reformatting. Or did it blow by me?
Thanks this worked perfectly
This was so useful and informative. Thank you!
Great video! You just saved a bar drive that I thought was broke
Freakin sick!!!! Super useful!!!! Automatically going to sub
Thank you very much, very
helpful and easy to follow!
It works !!! Thank you so much !!!
Enjoyed this very much! Thank you!
Thank you very very much. God blessed you
Great video! Thank you for showing these steps.
Excellent Video 10 out of 10 congratulations and thank you.
Thank you! I'm up and running now with my 5tb ext HD.
I no longer have a PC and have a MACPro and a passport external hard drive 1TB with hundreds of movies I saved in order to get rid of my DVDs…it looks like I can’t reformat the ext drive without backing it up and I can’t back it up unless I have a PC ..so thinking I need to buy a windows pad (maybe a Surface Go) and play my external hard drive movies that way. Thoughts? (For anyone who might know only to answer)
WOO HOO! It worked! Thank you!! Mac to exFat on a pc.
Glad it helped!
This was really helpful thnku👍
You're welcome!
Thanks for the super helpful video. Transferring every file and hard drive I have on Mac to a 6tb to use on my new pc
You really helpt me out bro! Thanks for the video and explaining the steps! 🙏
Helped thanks alot bro
Glad it helped
Thank you very much Eric!
Thanks for watching :)
Very helpful! I have my external hard drive from my pc- just bought an old 2015 Macbookpro. I need my files to read &write on the mac!
I just ordered a new SD card- I will follow your tips to format it so I can access the info on both computers! Thanks👍
So did you manage to do it?
If it’s so convenient to do XFAT why isn’t that the standard option for drives to begin with?
I have a MAC formatted external drive and want to switch all my files to windows computer. Can I get a new drive, format to xfat, and transfer all my mac files, data, pics, videos, to my windows PC by copy and pasting from mac format drive to the xfat drive?
Yes, you can transfer from the Mac formatted drive to a new exfat drive and move the data
What formatting is needed for the Samsung 990 pro ssd m.2 nvme put in an enclosure, if it's for backing up files on both windows and mac laptops, use exFat?
Very helpful, thank you.
Is there a file size limit on this format
Hello! Thank you :) What about the new option in Disk Utility under name and format called (Partition) scheme on mac? If I'm formatting ExFat (for mac and windows compatibility), should I use GUID Partition Map or Master Boot Record?
Usually the default settings are ok. Otherwise, just go GUID
@@lapfix Thank you!
Thank you Federer!
great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
Great vid, thanks! 🙏
is there any way to do this without formatting?
Hello mate, did you figure it out? How to do it without formating?
I have a MAC but I use it for both OS's (depending on my use cases). Do I need to reformat everytime I boot that Operating System up?
Thanks, this is really helpful
Currently i have windows. So am planning to use it as exFAT by default as incase if i want to copy any files from mac so no need to format later. Does this make any dfference in transfer speed. which perform better. NTFS or exFAT ?
Is there a solution without formatting the drive? I’m using external because I don’t have extrernal 4tb on the computer to back it up
THANKS!!!!
Any recommendations for swapping large quantities of data from a mac formatted drive over to windows or dual format... One that doesn't involve buying another pricy 14tb drive for 1 use? I'm almost thinking buying a month of cloud storage to use as a placeholder while the drives get reformatted. Not sure how reliable that would be and I can only imagine the upload and download timeouts and errors😣
I wanna to share this video bro thanks alot ❤❤❤
can someone answer my question? do converting diffeerent file system affect in speed of read write?
Thank you very much simple and effective video!
Does it work on ipads too?
Helpful thanks👌🏽👏🏽👍🏽
Nice 👌
I greatly appreciate this video I’m going to subscribe and follow because of this great video, I have a question? Can I leave the drive plugged into my pc and turn my pc off? Or do I have to unplug the drive and shut my pc down is there a certain sequence or no
When you shut down, the drive ejects itself safely before it completely turns off. Otherwise make sure to eject before you remove any external drive as it may be writing or caching in the background
Hi, I bought Toshiba's Canvio Advance Portable Hard Drive and had to format it to use it on Mac... I am now trying to use it on my Windows and unfortunately does not work. Do you have any tips on how to reformat it for both or even Windows only? I can find it on Computer Management but nowhere else (not even Disk Management). Thank you in advance! :)
what if the extra hard storage dont show up at all?
Yea same I don’t see it
I’m trying to link the seagate to play my sims on my owmen computer how do I do that?
I might have missed this in the video but lets say I format the drive on PC as ExFat and load it up with files. Can I then plug it into a Mac and those files would be accessible on the Mac? There are over 300GB of files to transfer fyi.
Wait for 300 years to get your answer
I read something online that said this method doesn’t work if you’re sharing files over 4GB between Mac and PC, anyone know if that’s true and if there’s a way around it?
Thanks 👍
Since older I macs can't upload current software is there an external software ability via USB port.
Thanks man
I’m leaving M1 Mac Mini with 4T external drive for a serious PC workstation. I want the external to be plugged into my new PC. The part that worries me is where I put the data in between reformatting. Dropbox? My external is a G-Drive. Can it be reformatted to exfat? I bought it from Apple. Any other links you can share for my migration to PC would be helpful. I’ve been only a Mac user my whole life (I’m 50!). Thanks for the video!
Thank you for making this video. Didn't realize it had been a while since I had to do this, when did exFAT format come around?...my Mac Mini (2014) HD failed and was replaced with a new (old) 1 TB SSD, so its access privileges reset, and my studio backup drive didn't communicate with the OS the same...also realized that my main backup all this time was formatted NTFS >_< ugghh, so I had to buy a new even larger backup for everything just to do this. YES, people back up your personal and business data as often and thoroughly as possible! Why? With the increasing file sizes of video and higher-resolution images, it's very important to keep deep reserves of spontaneous storage space.
Thank you so much for sharing ya
Thaaaanks mah man
Thank you so much brooo
Super helpful, I had a drive I formated back when I had my Mac, after selling it, I didn't format the Ext hd. I though I needed a Mac to format it again 🤦🏽
Can you please let us know what the allocation size means? 🙏
Why should one leave it at default, increase or decrease
You're awesome. Thank you
So if you set it as exfat on the Mac will the hard drive be read on the windows pc immediately without formatting?
So it has to be set as exfat on both Mac and windows pc for the hard drive on both?
Hi! As soon as you format it as exFAT it is ready for you to use it on both systems no matter where you formatted it.
When its combine i can download gaming and play? I beginners to this pc gaming please help ne 😂😅
If you can’t find it , 9:02 time frame and he will guide you ❤️ and thank you for this video
Legend!
He sounds like a knowledgeable person so I have to put him to the test. This is the problem I am facing at the moment. I have extracted my HDD from my PowerBook G3 Pismo which is accessible. And, VM MacOS 10.13 I can run first aid on the partition but not on the actual HDD. When I clicked on the HDD (not on the partition) I noticed that the partition map is MBR and not APM which I think it should be. And, that is strange as this HDD has never been used for any other purpose but to sit and run the MacOS 9 and the 10.2.8 that are installed onto it. My Pismo cannot boot because I flashed the 4.1.8f5 firmware onto it, it won`t recognize anything like HDD, or DVD but the USB shows, however, I cannot get it to work yet. So, I am looking for software that I can run in Windows preferably to convert the partition map back to APM from MBR without losing data. I tried backups and almost all available methods with the help of chat GPT too, with no success at all. Is there any professional software that might be able to help me restore this drive so I can focus completely on the firmware; tried test disks and their features too, macdrive showed no errors, and MacOS disk utility repaired the partition but the main drive cannot be changed to APM from MBR. I don`t even know how it got changed to MBR when it was used always in the Pismo a mystery to me.
How do you undo this - on pc
What if the drive is apfs
I had my old Mac recovered on to an external and I couldn’t access on my pc… turns out it is formatted as journal
Great tutorial - Very helpful! thank you:)
Great tutorial...it worked for me,
Wet paint dries faster than my technical ability to understand it in one take, my MacBook just died and i have most of my work on the external hard drive, so now i love to extract or get access to the hard drive thru my gf Laptop with Windows...can i convert the hard drive back to pc from the laptop without damage or erase all my work on the drive??😮😮😮
If this works I'll be extremely happy
It is probably working
Nice
My hard drives isn’t popping up on my pc
Mine too
Umm if your on windows from Mac, you should have set it to exFAT because it can work on both.
Slow it down a bit brother. Enunciate 😉
Use boot camp for windows computer
I got mine to work
Windows users @ 1:28
Mac users @ 6:17
Hii ser how are you
I changed NTFS to Exfat and it deleted all my data 😭😭😭😭😭😭
😂😂😂😂 S****d 🤣🤣🤣
👏👏👏