Formatted a USB drive on my Mac and now my Windows PC and the office printer will not read it. I need one drive that works on both Mac and Windows. What format should I use and how do I set it without losing the option later?
How to format a thumb drive on Mac for use with Windows?
Solved Data Recovery
RK
Rachel Kim November 19, 2021
2 replies
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Reviewed by moderators
The Mac probably formatted it as APFS or Mac OS Extended, which Windows cannot read.
1
For cross platform use format as exFAT. Both Mac and Windows read and write it, and it has no 4GB file size cap unlike old FAT32.
2
On Mac: Disk Utility, select the drive, Erase, choose exFAT as the format, and set the scheme to GUID Partition Map.
3
Back up anything on the drive first, formatting wipes it. If you already lost files to the earlier reformat, a recovery tool can often still pull them back before you reformat again.
exFAT from Disk Utility and it reads on Windows and the printer now. Solved.