How to Check a Drive’s File System RELATED: So how do you know if your USB drive is? You don’t need to do anything special with Disk Utility–just plug in your USB drive and open the Finder. Right-click or Control-click the drive’s icon in the Finder’s sidebar (or on your desktop) and select “Get Info.” You’ll see the drive’s file system displayed to the right of “Format” under the General heading. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system. How to Format a Drive on a Mac If you want to use a different file system on your USB drive, you’ll need to “format” it. Again, formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep.

To format a drive on a Mac, you’ll need the built-in Disk Utility application. Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search dialog, type “Disk Utility”, and press “Enter” to launch the app. You can also open a Finder window, select “Applications” in the sidebar, and head to Utilities Disk Utility. Your connected drives will appear under “External” in the Disk Utility’s sidebar. Select the drive by clicking its name. Click the “Erase” button after selecting the entire drive to erase the entire drive and create a single partition on it.

You’ll be asked to provide a name for the disk, which will appear and identify the disk when you connect it to a Mac, PC, or another device. You’ll need to choose between several file systems: RELATED:. OS X Extended (Journaled): This is the default, but it’s only natively supported on Macs. It’s also known as HFS+. This file system is necessary if you plan on using the drive for Time Machine backups–otherwise, you’ll want to use exFAT for maximum compatibility. OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled): On a case-sensitive file system, “file” is different from “File”.

By default, Mac OS X doesn’t use a case-sensitive file system. This option exists because it matches the traditional behavior of UNIX and some people might need it–don’t select this unless you know you need it for some reason. OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended file system, but with encryption. You’ll have to enter a password, and you’ll need to provide that password whenever you connect your drive to your Mac. OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended (Case-senstiive) file system, but with encryption. MS-DOS (FAT): This is the most widely compatible file system, but it has some limitations–for example, files can only be 4GB or less in size each. Avoid this file system unless you have a device that requires FAT32. ExFAT:, but doesn’t have the limitations.

You should use this file system if you may share the drive with Windows PCs and other devices like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. ExFAT is the ideal cross-platform file system. It’s not natively supported on many Linux distributions, but you can. For external drives, it almost always makes sense to format in ExFAT, unless you’re using the drive for Time Machine. RELATED: You’ll also be asked to choose between a partition scheme: GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, or Apple Partition Map.

Both also work with Windows PCs. APM is an older, Mac-only partition scheme. This choice doesn’t really matter if you don’t plan on booting from the drive.

If in doubt, just select the default GUID Partition Map (GPT) scheme. Avoid the Mac-only Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme. Click the “Erase” button when you’re done and Disk Utility will format your disk with the settings you specified.

This will erase all the files on the drive! You’re now done–be sure to eject the disk before you remove it from your Mac. You can do this by clicking the eject icon to the right of the disk in the Finder or Disk Utility windows. You can also right-click or Option-click the drive in Finder or on your desktop and select the “Eject” option. Macs do have some limited support for other file systems–for example, Macs can read files on Windows-formatted NTFS volumes, but.

Macs don’t have an integrated way to format partitions with NTFS, either. Use exFAT for excellent compatibility with Windows without FAT32’s limitations.

USB flash drives are very useful devices that help in storing data and adding mobility to them. You can load your files on your USB drive or use it to store backups for restoring. You can even load songs and movies on it and share it with your friends or family. But at times we find it necessary to erase or format USB Mac. If you own a Mac and are thinking to delete your USB drive so that it works perfectly, you would want to do it the easy way. For instance, if your USB device has got corrupted, it might not be as easy to get your.

So, how can USB format on Mac help? How would it help you to get more data when you need and help you keep your USB as good as ever? Here are some of the ways how a USB format can help you format your USB drive. Flash drives are formatted for Windows by default.

It is required to format the USB drive to Mac OS file system to make it fully compatible with the platform. USB drives have limited space and it becomes essential to format it for getting free space. USB drives can get corrupted or infected by virus.

The only way to remove those issues is by formatting the flash drive. How to Format a USB flash drive on Mac You can easily format Mac USB drive by following the steps mentioned below. You just need your Mac computer or laptop and the USB drive. Then you can learn how to format USB on Mac.

Lexar Usb Format Zip Drive For Mac

Connect the USB drive Switch on your Mac and connect the USB drive using one of the USB ports. Ensure that the USB is properly connected. Choose Utilities Now launch the application program and click on the Utilities option on the right side window. Launch Disk Utility From the many tabs, select the Disk Utility. This will open the Disk Utility interface.

Choose your USB drive On the left side, you will find a menu with your USB drive displayed in the list. Click on your USB drive name and select it. Initiate Erase Now choose the Erase tab on top of the right side Disk Utility window.

Set Format option Now click on the drop down menu beside Format to choose the formatting options. You can select any format you wish to. But to make your USB drive fully compatible with Mac, you need to format it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) option. Select a Name for USB drive You can set a name for your USB drive before the format begins.

Click on the field beside Name and input any name you want. Begin formatting After everything is set, now is the time to begin the formatting.

To activate it just click on the Erase tab at the lower right part of the interface. Reconfirm and format The program will display another confirmation message before the format starts. Select the Erase option one more time to begin formatting the USB drive. After this your flash drive can be used with Mac or other computers. USB format on Mac can sometimes go wrong or you may accidentally delete some data. Many times we do not mean to erase something but do it mistakenly. Then we wreck our brains looking for ways to get back the lost data due to USB format on Mac.

Reformat Lexar Usb

Flash Drive Format For Mac

Fortunately help is on the way as there are some programs that enable you to. Recoverit - The Best USB Drive Data Recovery Software Recoverit Data Recovery program for Mac can be used to recover data lost due to deletion, partition errors, formatting, virus attacks, system failures and a variety of other reasons. It can trace multiple types of files from different locations including the Mac platform and even external sources. The comes with thoughtful essential functions which retrieves data efficiently in different scenarios.