disk formats compatible with windows and mac

With all that in mind, our guide splits the external drive in half: One primary section capable of storing files larger than 4GB, and a secondary section capable of sharing files between MacOS and Windows 10.

If you want to save larger files, you’ll need to create a second, dedicated space using a format optimized for MacOS (Extended) or Windows 10 (NTFS). That puts you in a peculiar pickle, limiting any shared file between the two platforms at 4GB or smaller. Meanwhile, the NTFS system used by Windows 10 supports large files, but this format can’t be read natively by MacOS. However, this format doesn’t support larger files, which can be problematic for transferring 4K videos and so on between Macs and Windows 10 PCs.

It’s a simpler, universal method if every file you store is less than 4GB in size.

Leo Watson/Digital Trends It’s a split, niche scenarioĪ quick Google search may lead you to believe you’re on the right path by formatting the entire drive with Extensible File Allocation Table, or exFAT.

Disk formats compatible with windows and mac