This is supported by all versions of Windows and OS X (as well as Linux), but it has the drawback of not supporting individual files larger than 4GB – which can be a pain if you work with large video files or databases. If you need compatibility with systems that are older than this, you’ll need to fall back to the ancient FAT32 format. In most cases we recommend you select Microsoft’s exFAT format: this will give you full read and write access in both Windows (Vista or later) and OS X (Snow Leopard 10.6.5 or later). You can choose this from the drop-down menu in Windows’ Format dialogue, or in the Erase pane of Disk Utility. To use your USB disk on both Windows and OS X, therefore, you’ll need to use a different filesystem. There are free drivers available, but again these are limited to read-only access. However, neither is suitable if you want to move files back and forth between Macs and PCs: OS X can read NTFS volumes, but it can’t write to them, while Windows in its default configuration can’t access HFS+ disks at all. These formats are sensible defaults because they support all the features of their respective operating systems, such as native compression and encryption. If you need to back up any information on the drive, first connect your drive to a computer that does recognize the drive and transfer the data to a new storage device.If you follow the instructions above then Windows will, by default, format your disk using Microsoft’s NTFS filesystem, while a Mac might suggest the Mac OS Extended filesystem. Choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' to use the default Mac file system format. Click the 'Format' drop-down menu and select the format you want to use. Select your hard drive from the list and click the 'Erase' tab. Restart 'Disk Utility' if you had to restart your computer to perform a repair and you still don't see your drive. You may need to restart your computer and follow the prompts to complete the repair.Ĭlick the 'Finder' icon in the Dock and look for your drive in the sidebar. If the operating system already mounted the drive, an 'Unmount' button displays instead.Ĭlick the 'First Aid' tab and select 'Repair Disk,' if available. Select your hard drive, optical drive or other attached drive in the sidebar.

Click 'Go' and select 'Utilities' from the drop-down list. Click the background to bring up the Finder menu in the the top bar.

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