If you’re really interested have a look at the book “Modern Operating Systems” by Andrew S. If you’re interested in this I can recommend the wikipedia articles. Backup, backup and backup!įootnote for the technical smart-ass: Why is FAT less secure than others? In short words: HFS+ and NTFS keep track of the changes you make and can recover if an error occurs.
Many Apple users need the ability to access exFAT drives especially shared external hard drives. It is frequently used in Windows 7 installations as well. But make sure you’re not deleting important data. exFAT is a relatively new file system introduced by Microsoft with the Vista OS. Here you can set the disk name and the file system. To reformat a disk select it and click the erase tab. In your Applications folder there is a Folder “Utilities” and here you find a App called “Disk Utility”.
CAN A MAC READ EXFAT HOW TO
So you wonder how to reformat a disk? Quite easy: exFAT is very similar to FAT but allows larger file sizes and larger disks (and some other stuff). Unfortunately exFAT is only supported on Mac OS 10.6.5 and later. If you use your stick also on Windows machines running XP SP2, Vista SP1 or Windows 7 you can use the very new file system exFAT. I formatted 6 drives to EXFAT from my Windows 10 machine using the GUID format. If you formatted your drive in exFAT with Apple’s HFS Plus, the exFAT drive cannot be read by Windows in default even though the exFAT file system is compatible with both Mac and Windows. It is a file system that read-only allowed on Mac OS X. And it is also much saver in terms of data loss (see footnote). EXFAT Windows formatted drives not mounting on Mac. Can Windows 10 read exFAT drives NTFS, is a file system that works with Windows OS. Once you update Snow Leopard to the latest update, you should have full access to exFAT drives without any difficulties. However, with OS X update 10.6.5, Apple fully supports accessing exFAT drives. If you use your USB-stick only on Macs you will want to reformat it to HFS+ which allows (virtually) unlimited file sizes, longer file names and some Mac specific things. However, previously Apple OS X users have had difficulty accessing exFAT drives. So maybe you would like to change the file system on your stick to something more modern.
CAN A MAC READ EXFAT FOR MAC OS
There is also NTFS, (Windows default / does not work on Mac) and there is HFS+ which is the default for Mac OS X.įAT is by far the oldest file system and has some weaknesses:
Yet you might know that there are different types of disk formats. Disadvantages: Windows-running PCs can read files from drives formatted this way, but they can’t write to them (at least not without the same amount of work it takes to get OS X to write to NTFS-formatted drives).
CAN A MAC READ EXFAT FOR MAC OS X
By default all USB-Sticks are formatted as FAT (MS-DOS default) so they work on Windows, Mac and Linux. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) This is the default file system format for Mac OS X drives. If you’re not a nerd you probably just used it out of the box. Quit possible that you own a USB-Stick (or USB-Hard-Drive) that is 4GB or larger (8GB seems to be standard now,right?).