It’s simply a disk layout that a Mac computer uses. Don’t let this technical sounding jargon worry you.

When you’re creating a partition for Mac and Windows to share, you need your external hard drive formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Your faithful Mac creates the partitions on your external hard drive.īut before we jump straight in, there are some things you need to have in place before you begin. How To Partition An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows Why Is The Shared Partition For Mac And Windows Created As ExFAT? What Happens When You Plug Your External Hard Drive Into Your Colleague Or Kids Windows PC?.Choosing A File System For Your Partition To Partition The External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows PC Pick The External Hard Drive You're Going To Partition For Mac And Windows You'll Be Using A Piece Of Software Called Disk Utility Creating The Partition for Mac And Windows.How To Partition An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows.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. Set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) 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. 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.Click View in the upper left and select Show All Devices.To open Disk Utility - Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility 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. If you need to go between macOS and Windows then format your drive ExFAT on macOS Mac OS Extended (Journaled) does not work natively with Windows.Starting with Big Sur, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is no longer the default when using Time Machine.It is important to keep the following in mind when formatting Mac OS Extended (Journaled): Not sure what version you are using? Click here to determine your version of macOS IMPORTANT: This article applies to the following macOS versions:

Disk utility format for mac and pc