WARNING: Formatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. Check step 2 to confirm Disk Utility is Showing All Devices NOTE: If you don’t see Scheme, then make sure that all devices are showing and the non-indented entry is selected. You can name the new drive according to your requirement or liking however, if you want native macOS compatibility, choose MacOS Extended (Journaled) as the file system type, then click Erase. Select the non-indented entry, you will see Media in the nameĬlick the button labelled Erase in the menu which will bring up this window. From the left sidebar, select the USB drive you wish to format.Click View in the upper left and select Show All Devices.

To open Disk Utility - Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility Note: If you would prefer a video tutorial of these steps instead, please click the thumbnail below. IMPORTANT: Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. Select your external hard drive (not just a single partition). Click View and choose the Show all devices option. Launch Disk Utility (located in Applications -> Utilities). Click here to see other formatting options for your operating system Connect the external hard drive to your Mac.Looking for a different formatting option? When using between macOS and Windows, drives should always be formatted on macOS because not all Windows allocation unit sizes (cluster sizes) are supported by macOS which will prevent the drive from mounting.

ExFAT drives must be safely ejected to prevent corruption because ExFAT is not a journaled file system.Starting with Big Sur, APFS is now the default for Time Machine.ExFAT is not compatible with Time Machine.

It is important to keep the following in mind when formatting to ExFAT:

Not seeing your version of macOS? Click here to see other versions of macOS and different formatting options.

Not sure which version you are using? Click here to determine your version of macOS.

IMPORTANT: This article applies to the following macOS version:

Macos external drive format