How to Format USB Drive on Mac – The struggle for system domination has been happening for centuries, such as metric vs. imperial, solar vs. lunar calendar system, AC vs. DC, VHS vs. Betamax, and others. The technology world is complete of these battles, so much that people don’t take note of them anymore and simply use any kind system that they experience more comfortable with. This kind of conflicts is the differences of file formatting types between different computer OSes.

Not many people are alert of these differences till they need to copy files into a storage formatted using the different file system. Mac OS X users are the ones who would likely stumble into these file format problems. In case you are a Mac users, here are overviews of different file format systems, and a way to select which format to use for your USB drive to make sure compatibility with other operating systems.

Choosing File Format System in Mac

Now the USB drive makes it one of the most used storage media. It is used to sharing and distributing files via USB drive. But that trend also makes file system compatibility problem more apparent. There are numerous different formats available and it will depend on your usage. Below is the overview of the commonly used file systems.

1. FAT32

This file system is the next generation of FAT that comes a lengthy way from the DOS. Almost all USB flash drive comes pre-formatted with FAT 32 file system because it almost works everywhere. The disadvantage of this system is that it doesn’t support files with size bigger than 4 GB and storage partition bigger than 2 TB. If we only deal with simple documents, small movie files, or other kinds of files below 4 GB, and your storage drive is 2 TB or smaller, we must be fine with this file system.

2. ExFAT

If we still need the universal support, but will exchange files bigger than 4 GB, we might need to use ExFAT file system. This format works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The system is commonly used for shared hard drive that is plugged into computer most of the time. But it’s not as well-suited as FAT32 as there are devices that don’t support it, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation

3. NTFS

This file system is perfect for people works among Windows computer. The file format on Windows, supports big files, and can read and write faster than FAT32 provided that other factors that influence speed are similar. The format has even less compatibility than ExFAT. Mac OS X and some Linux distributions can only read NTFS-formatted disk without the help of third-party software. NTFS is ideal for internal drives on Windows computers.

4. OS X Extended

At the reverse side of NTFS, is Mac OS X Extended file system. If you only work within Mac OS X environment, then the HFS Plus is perfect. It supports volume size and file size up to 8EB (Exabytes) equivalent to 8 Million Terabytes. Now looking at the maximum commercial storage size, we are not going to reach that limit anytime quickly.

Formatting Disk in Mac OS X

Although external drives come factory pre-formatted, there are instances where we want to re-format the drive. For example, if we need to change the file format of the drive, create a bootable installer, or if one of your Windows-user neighbours ask your help to format clean virus-infected USB flash drive. There are several ways to format the USB drive in Mac OS X environment.

1. Using Disk Utility

The easiest way to format a disk in Mac OS X is using Disk Utility. It’s Mac’s disk maintenance tool. To format a USB flash drive, simply plug the drive into your Mac, and choose it from Disk Utility’s sidebar menu.

How to Format USB Drive on Mac

Then choose the Erase tab from the top bar. A pop-up menu will appear, and you can customize many options here.

How to Format USB Drive on Mac

First is the type of file system that you want to use. Please refer to the previous section above to find the formatting type that fit your need.

By default, Disk Utility chooses OS X Extended. As mentioned above, this choice is perfect if you needed to use the drive within Mac OS X environment.

The term “Case-sensitive” means that later on, the files on that drive will be case sensitive. For example, file “image.jpg” will be different from “Image.jpg”. While this option might work for some users, it’s not suggested for general users. The term “Encrypted” means accurately that. That the data inside the drive will be secured by encryption. This option helps with sensitive data. Additionally, we can use FAT32 or ExFAT if we need to share your files with other operating systems. There’s no option to format your drive in NTFS as Mac OS X doesn’t support that format.

The last option is the Security. we can choose to prevent disk recovery applications from restoring your data from the disk by moving the security slider to Most Secure instead of Fastest.

Note: The more secure the erase mode that we select, the longer process will take.

How to Format USB Drive on Mac

After you are done tinkering with the options, you can click the Erase button to start formatting your disk.

How to Format USB Drive on Mac

2. Using Terminal

There’s another way of formatting disk using command lines through the Terminal. Please be recommended that erasing the disk using Terminal is dangerous. One error and you could lose your data in an instant without warning. It’s not recommended for those who have never tinkered with command line before.

If you think you are up to the challenge and aware of the risk, open Terminal and write down this line of code to see the list of all connected disk on your computer:

DISKUTIL LIST

How to Format USB Drive on Mac

From the screenshot above, we can see that the external disk on my computer is identified as “disk3”. We need this identifier to choose the disk to erase.

To erase the disk, use this command line:

DISKUTIL ERASEDISK {FILESYSTEM} {NAME TO USE} /DEV/{DISK IDENTIFIER}

Where,

“{filesystem}” is the formatting system that you want to use.

{Name to use} is the name you want to give to the disk.

{disk identifier} is the disk that you want to erase.

For example, if we need to format the disk in Journaled HFS Plus with Movie as the name, put JHFS+ in the {filesystem}, Movie in the {Name to use}, and disk3 in the {disk identifier}. So the command line will look like this:

DISKUTIL ERASEDISK JHFS+ MOVIE /DEV/DISK3

Note: 

you use “disk3” in the example because my external drive is identified as “disk3”. You should use the identification that the Terminal gave you in the first step. Any data loss because of incorrect use of disk identification will be your responsibility. Consider yourself warned.

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Formatting Issue

Due to the differences in handling file formatting system among different OSes, there might be some issues that arise. Some users reported that their USB drives, which were formatted using Disk Utility, can’t be recognized by Windows machines.

The solution for the problem, you might need to enable Disk Utility’s MBR (Master Boot Record) option by closing the Disk Utility, and type this command line in Terminal:

DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.DISKUTILITY ADVANCED-IMAGE-OPTIONS 1

Then relaunch Disk Utility and format the disk using the ExFat system.

Reading and Writing to Windows NTFS Formatted Disk

While Mac users can correctly choose the file system to ensure compatibility with other OSes, most Windows users don’t even know the existence of different formatting system. Once in a while, you might stumble into NTFS formatted external drive.

Mac OS X can read NTFS-formatted drives, so you can copy files from them. The problem arises when you need to write files to those drives. Currently, the suggested safe and hassle-free way Mac OS X can write to NTFS drives is with the help of third-party software. Two most popular alternatives to such software are Paragon NTFS for Mac (US$ 19.99 with ten-day free trial) and Tuxera NTFS for Mac (US$ 31 with fifteen-day free trial). If you have Seagate external hard drive, you can download the free Seagate version of Paragon NTFS for Mac. The other options to write to NTFS from Mac OS X are using free third-party software or enabling Mac OS X experimental NTFS support, but both options require messing around with the system through Terminal and known to cause problems with NTFS file system. So, they are not suggested.

The Recommended Scenario

The file formatting settings recommend for Mac users are use the HFS+ for the internal hard drive and backup drives and use ExFAT for USB flash drives and other external drives. This setting enables to have the best computing practice while keeping the compatibility with other OSes. we might need to select for one of the third-party NTFS apps if we need to write a lot of data to NTFS drives.