The technology of external hard drives and connection ports is constantly changing which is why we’ve taken a closer look at the best external hard drive for Mac of 2018. The great thing for Mac users is that external HDDs have never been cheaper and storage sizes have never been bigger.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac? Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format. So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk.
Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better. How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? This page will show you two ways to do this job: Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, SSD or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your Mac now. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac.
Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' 'Utilities'. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'. 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.
![Best Mac Os Format For External Hard Drive Best Mac Os Format For External Hard Drive](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125517779/702344396.gif)
Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to without formatting.
I have an external HD formatted to default HFS (Mac OS Extended - Journaled) and very once and a while I get a folder called DamagedFiles in the root of the volume. The folder contains a collection of links to files on the drive. In general the files seem fine as I am for example able to open the images or text files without a problem. Is this serious? What can I do to fix this problem? Any advice would be great as I couldn't find anything on here or via Google that addressed this problem in particular.
The DamagedFiles folder is created on recent installs of 10.4 when Disk Utility (or ) repairs a file system and finds some, er, damaged files. It's safe to delete this folder but it should be seen as a bit of a warning that your file system was messed up to some degree, at some point. For the moment, check the file names within this folder and verify your drive again. Repair it if necessary. Remember to keep everything backed up! Some situations like accidental power failure, hardware failure, virus infection, and improper system shutdown, may cause damage to HFS and cause data loss. Be aware of that situations.
Is there any data loss? If there's any data loss, try with.