You will want to change that to either the FAT32 or exFAT format. If you can’t get past this bit then your hard drive is formatted as NTFS or HFS+. You will likely not even care about what format it is using so long as it works. This often is not a problem so long as your usb pen has been formatted to work on both a Mac and a PC, usually in a FAT32 format. Maybe you have a Mac at work and Windows laptop at home or vice versa and you want to take some work from one machine to another. If you have ever tried to work from both a Mac and PC then you have likely experienced the nightmare that is getting external drives to work on both machines properly. But they are far from ideal for using on external drives and devices.

The top two are going to be the ones used on your Mac and Windows machines by default. – exFAT (Works on Mac and PC with better file size restrictions) – FAT32 (Works on Mac and PC with 4gb file size limit) A very basic rundown of the format types available are – Formatting drives sounds very scary and difficult, but it is very simple and can take only a couple of minutes on a fresh drive. It is relatively easy to make a hard drive work between Mac and PC with no file limits.

Mac odd external drive format options