You can reformat it to what you want.Īnd there’s an article on the site to tell you how. So if you find yourself with a drive, and there are no files on there.

The good news is that any external hard drive can be reformatted on your Mac. You can’t do a Time Machine backup to a FAT32 formatted external drive. But these days it’s not a recommended file system to use. Macs can read and write to a FAT32 formatted external drive. So that your Mac can read and write to the drive.īut you won’t be able to do a Time Machine backup to an NTFS formatted external drive.įAT32 – Is a very old PC file system that’s slow and has file size restrictions. And that software translates for your Mac. Or sometimes this software comes with the external drive. Or update files that are already on there.īut you can buy 3rd party driver software for your Mac. Your Mac can read NTFS formatted external drives but can’t write to NTFS.Īnd this means you can’t put files onto an NTFS formatted external drive. It’s the perfect file system to choose if you want to share files between a Mac and a Windows PC. The real beauty of ExFAT is that a Windows PC can also read and write files to an ExFAT drive. But you can’t use Time Machine to backup to an ExFAT external drive. And you can use HFS+ formatted external drives for a Time Machine backup.ĮxFAT – Is a PC file system format but your Mac can read and write to ExFAT drives. Your Mac can read and write to HFS+ formatted external drives. HFS+, Hierarchical File System – Also known as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File system has been around on Mac’s for several years. But you can’t do a Time Machine backup to APFS formatted external drives. Your Mac can read and write from APFS drives. So What Are The External Drive Formats And Which Can You Use On Your Mac?ĪPFS, Apple File System – Is a format Apple created particularly for the faster SSD drives.

Then it’s worth knowing because Time Machine only backs up to a certain external drive format. And can read and write your files to other formats.Īnd when you want to use Time Machine to backup your Mac or your Files. When you plan on using an external hard drive or SSD on your Mac it pays to know what format your drive is in.īecause your Mac will only read from certain drive formats. Video Credit: MacTakeAwayData Why Is It Useful To Know The Format Of Your External Hard Drive On Mac How Do I Know If My External Hard Drive Is Formatted For Mac: Disk Utility

Format hard drive to ntfs on mac