Now you can use your external hard drive with both Windows and MacOS. But, remember, your Mac will only be able to write to the MacOS partition while your PC can only write to the NTFS-formatted.

External hard drives are the storage devices used to store and retrieve digital information, personal and official data like files, documents and other stuff. These are attached to systems through FireWire or USB connection or wirelessly to transfer data from the internal drive to hard disk drives. If you are looking for new operating system or selling your old computers or laptops, then you need to set up an external hard drive for backups by erasing and formatting the existing data in the storage devices. • • Part 1:　How to Format an External Hard Drive on Windows The Windows users who are going to format external hard drive for the first time, they will get complete information and stepwise procedure of formatting drives. Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Windows: • Before formatting an external hard drive on Windows, back up all the informational data like files, music and official data into safe place. • To format an external hard drive, plug in the device into system or a wall outlet. • After plug in hard drive into the system, you will get option to open Windows Explorer and by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your hard drive get attached to your system.

• When you will do right click on the hard drive icon, you will get option to choose 'Format'? • After that, you can opt any file system that you want to use for the operating systems. • Mention your hard drive with a name under Volume Label and check out the Quick Format box. • To initiate the formatting process, click on the start button and within a few seconds, you will get notification when the process get completed. • Open the hard drive in Windows Explorer and start dragging documents and files into it.

Follow the stepwise procedure to and make sure it will not show similar free space as it displays on the box as the systems determine the space differently as it is marked on the box. Part 2: How to Format an External Drive on Mac Mac users can select any file system that supports their operating system. In order to format an external drive on Mac, you can follow stepwise procedure as discussed below: Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Mac: • Before starting storage device formatting process, you need to backup all informational data in a separate folder for the future use. • Plug in the storage drive into Mac. • The drive when get connected to the system, you can see the storage device icon on the screen. • Now open the finder and check out the applications/utilities.

After that, operate double click on the disk utility. • To format external hard drive, opt your storage device in the left hand sidebar and click on the erase tab. Best speakers for mac pro desktop. • After that, you will see format menu where you can select the file system that are compatible with your operating system.