I have a brand new Sandisk USB flash drive that I am trying to copy movie files onto from my Mac's hard drive. For some reason I can copy one of the movie files but not the other, even though they are both Quicktime (.mov) files. In doing some research, it seems the one file will not copy/paste likely because it is over 4 GB in size and the FAT32 filing system on the USB drive prevents files in excess of this size to be copied and pasted.

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc 2018
Best Flash Drives For Macs
Formatting Flash Drive On Mac
Format Flash Drive For Both Mac And Pc

The other is to format your drives with the exFAT file system. This file system can be read and written by both Mac and Windows with support for single files of up to 128 petabytes! Even better, it’s freely included in both operating systems. A drive can be formatted with exFAT using either a Windows or a Mac computer. In this situation, the best way to ensure that both a Mac and a Windows PC can access the videos from the same external device is to make sure the device is in the correct disk format. This article explains how to format a device or disk (e.g. USB flash drive, external hard drive) into the proper format that is accessible by both Mac. Disk Utility is the software on your Mac that will format your external hard drive for Mac and PC. You can find Disk Utility by clicking on the Application folder. Application Folder in Dock Then click on the Utilities folder inside the Application folder. The file system exFAT combines the best of both NTFS and FAT for flash drives by reading and writing larger files at a faster speed. Formatting is not complex either. If you have your flash drive and computer system, you already have all the tools you need. Step 1: Right-click on your flash drive under My Computer and select Format.

My question to anyone who can help me is: How can I get files over 4 GB onto and off of this USB drive AND be able to use it for both Mac and PC computers?

Thanks for any advice.

Shaun

Posted on Jan 1, 2014 2:17 PM

If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. Learn a few ways to make your drive Mac and PC friendly.

Need to access or transfer files between Mac and PC? As simple as this task sounds, it’s not very straightforward for inexperienced users. Since Mac OS X and Windows use totally different file systems, the way a drive is formatted can determine what type of computer it will work with. In fact, there are four ways you can format an external or USB flash drive to achieve varying degrees of compatibility between Macs and PCs. Let’s take a look at them:

HFS+

Mac OS X’s native file system is HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended), and it’s the only one that works with Time Machine. But while HFS+ is the best way to format drives for use on Macs, Windows does not support it. If you’re only going to be using your external or USB flash drive with certain PCs – such as at home or the office – you might be interested in a program called MacDrive. When you install MacDrive on a Windows PC, it will be able to seamlessly read & write to HFS+ drives. This isn’t a good solution if you need your drive to work on any PC without installing software, though.

NTFS

The native Windows file system is NTFS, which is only partially compatible with Mac OS X. Macs can read files on NTFS drives, but it cannot write to them. So if you need to get files from a PC to your Mac, NTFS is a decent option. However, you won’t be able to move files in the other direction, from Mac to PC.

Format Flash Drive For Mac And Pc 2018

FAT32

The most universally supported way to format your drive is with the FAT32 file system. It works with all versions of Mac OS X and Windows. Case closed, right? Well, not so fast. Unfortunately, FAT32 is a very old file system and has some technical limitations. For example, you cannot save files that are larger than 4GB on a FAT32-formatted drive. This is a deal-breaker if you work with huge files. The other limitation is the total size of the partition. If you format your FAT32 drive in Windows, the drive partition cannot be larger than 32GB. If you format it from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, the drive partition can be up to 2TB. Much better, except for that pesky 4GB limit.

exFAT

The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by today’s standards. Awesome, it’s perfect! Almost… since exFAT is fairly new, it isn’t compatible with older Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible. If you know you’ll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems, exFAT is the clear best choice. Plugpc driver.

Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac

Best Flash Drives For Macs

Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.
Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive.
Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.

Formatting Flash Drive On Mac

Format a drive using Windows

Format Flash Drive For Both Mac And Pc

Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP).
Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu.
A window will pop up where you can choose the format – NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.
Click Start to format the drive.