Exfat Download Mac
Sep 08, 2021 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
We know that the NTFS file system built into Mac cannot write NTFS drives by default, it can only read NTFS drives. Hasleo NTFS for Mac is a free software primarily designed to help users full access to NTFS drives in Mac, with it you can mount, unmount, read and write NTFS drives easily, safely and seamlessly in macOS. Select ExFAT when formatting an external drive with Windows. Mac (OS X Sierra) Open Disk Utility and click the drive you want to format. Click “Erase” and from the “Format” drop-down select “ExFAT”. Select ExFAT when formatting an external drive in Mac OS X Sierra. ExFAT is an acronym for Extended File Allocation Table which is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006. It is created to be used on flash memory like USB flash drives, SD cards and so on. The name of exFAT gives a hint for its precursors: FAT file system. ExFAT is a newer version of the FAT32 file system, and you can think it this way.
If your USB flash drive is not recognized by your Apple Mac computer because it has a different format it is kind of difficult to format it. You may not know how to format your USB flash drive to make it compatible with your Mac system but we do and will show you how to do it in this article.
Disk Utility on Mac supports several file system formats: Apple File System (APFS): The file system used by macOS 10.13 or later. Mac OS Extended: The file system used by macOS 10.12 or earlier. MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT: File systems that are compatible with Windows. Open Disk Utility for me. ExFAT drives must be safely ejected to prevent corruption because ExFAT is not a journaled file system When using between macOS and Windows, drives should always be formatted on macOS because not all Windows allocation unit sizes (block sizes) are supported by macOS which will prevent the drive from mounting.
Overview of Formatting USB Drive on Mac
Mac Systems have a different OS to Windows and this is where most of the problems like. Most USB flash drives on sale are designed to work with Windows operating systems that run on Fat32. Mac devices on the other hand run on either Mac OS Extended or APFS. If your drive is an APFS format or a Mac OS format you can format your drive easily but if it is a FAT32 format this may be a problem. If you have made the mistake of buying a flash drive they run on a FAT32 file format you don't have to discard it altogether. There are ways to format a flash drive that runs in a different format and we will show you steps to take to remedy the situation.
Step to Format a USB Drive to FAT32 on Your Mac
- Plug the drive into the Mac system
- Choose Applications- Utilities then Disk Utility
- From the sidebar pick USB drive
- From the toolbar select Erase
- Name the formatted disk and choose either ExFat or MS-DOS(FAT32) from the menu
- Select erase to format your drive depending on the selection you have picked (FAT32 or ExFAT)
Convert/Format USB Flash drive to FAT32 using Command Line
- Connect Flash drive to Mac
- Tap CMD and space bar to open Spotlight. Type 'terminal' and press Enter
- Type in :diskutill land locate your USB drive
- Type in sudo.diskutilerasediskFAT32MBRFormat/Dev/disk2
- Sudo will give you the user right
- Diskutill will call in the utility program
- Erasedisk commands will format
- FAT32 will set the file system
- MBRFormat will tell the disk to format with Master Boot
- /Dev/disk2 will be the USB drive location
You will have to wait a while for the format to be completed. Type in : diskutill to check if the process was successful.
If you follow these steps religiously you should be able to resolve the issue quickly. If you're searching for a way that helps you recover formatted USB drive on Mac, download Recoverit Data Recovery software and go to the page telling you how to restore the formatted hard drive.
Video Tutorial on How to Format a USB Flash Drive on Mac
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What Does a File System Mean?
Before you are going to figure out what is exFAT, you must get to know about the file system. A file system is a process of managing how and where data on a storage disk. It performs the translation from logical file operations to actual physical storage of information. That is to say, a file system determines how data is stored and retrieved.
To get a deep understanding of a file system, you must learn about the file system architecture. A file system contains file two or three layers. For file operations, the Application Program Interface is provided by the logical file system. For processing, the requested operation is forwarded to the layer that is located below it. For physical operations of the storage device, the third layer is needed.
What Is the exFAT Format?
Whenever you run a hard drive, USB flash drive, or SD card format, you receive the choice of NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. What is exFAT and when is it used? Read on to find out about the exFAT file system that is compatible with many operating systems.
Windows supports three different file systems. NTFS was first introduced with Windows NT, but it is widely used after Windows XP. It is the most modern file system. FAT32 is a file system that was first introduced with Windows 95. It is an older file system that's not as efficient as NTFS. exFAT, Extended File Allocation Table, has large compatibilities and limits on file and partition sizes. It was introduced with Windows XP and Vista operating system. It is a modern replacement for FAT32.
Compatibility: Works for all versions of Windows and Mac. It can also work with Linux if you have downloaded additional software on your PC.
Limits: The maximum cluster size of exFAT is 32 mebibytes.
Where Is exFAT Used?
exFAT is widely used by many manufacturers. Your USB flash drive, SSDs, and HDDs can be in exFAT format. Although there are no technical limitations regarding the file size, exFAT works most efficiently if your device storage is small. Here are the reasons why most people are still using this file format.
- exFAT is useful when working with different operating systems.
- exFAT solves the problems of storing huge files across different platforms.
- exFAT works better on cameras, car radios, media players compared with NTFS.
Also read: the differences between exFAT, FAT32, and NTFS
How to Format Your HDD/USB Flash Drive to exFAT
You can easily convert your device to exFAT in Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7. All you need to do is insert your hard drive or USB flash drive, and follow the steps below.
Step 1. Right-click This PC or My Computer, select 'Manage'.
Step 2. Enter Device Manager and click 'Disk Management'
Step 3. Open Disk Management and right-click the USB flash drive or hard drive, select 'Format'.
Step 4. Select 'exFAT', tick 'Quick Format', and click 'OK' to confirm.
Then, your device will be turned into exFAT.
How to Format exFAT to Other File System Types
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With intensive applications, exFAT often encounters problems, regardless of the operating system or platform. You may want to change it into NTFS or FAT32. EaseUS Partition Master is an all-in-one internal/external hard drive, USB, SD, memory stick FAT32 formatting/reformatting solution. With it, you can convert FAT32 to NTFS without losing data, partition hard drive with simple steps, and extend C drive space from other partitions.
Follow the steps to format exFAT to other file types.
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2. Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3. In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4. Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
Conclusion
In a word, exFAT is a modern replacement for FAT 32 and has more devices and OS support than NTFS. But this file format is not as widespread as FAT32 and NTFS for its limitations.