Feb 20, 2012 - There is PARAGAN PARTITION MANAGER FREE EDITION with wich you can do this, to format in windows partitions to Apple HFS.
Windows 10 hard drive format overview
Now Windows 10 disk format is becoming more and more important. Why? People might need to format partitions in Windows 10 for various reasons such as to do a clean installation of Windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away or some other reasons. However, as a matter of fact, only a few people know how to get the job done properly. It's a problem which is really needed to be settled. Here, we will introduce you how to format hard drive in Windows 10 with Windows built-in disk management tool or third-party partition magic tool. You can read to learn both of the two ways and then choose the one works best for your case.
As formatting is the process which will delete all the data on the hard drive, please make sure that you have successfully backed up your data including photos, videos, music files and other documents before Windows 10 disk format.
Format Hard Drive in Windows 10 with Windows disk management
Windows 10 offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, format, merge partitions. You can try the following steps to format a drive with this free tool.
Step 1: Type Control Panel in the search box.
Step 2: Click 'Control Panel'.
Step 3: Click 'Administrative Tools'.
Step 4: Click 'Computer Management'.
Step 5: Click 'Disk Management'.
Step 6: Right-click on the drive or partition to format and click on 'Format'.
Step 7: Select the file system and set the cluster size.
Step 8: Click 'OK' to format the drive.
Format Hard Drive in Windows 10 with EaseUS partition software
EaseUS partition software is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem, convert MBR to GPT without data loss and vice versa. You can try it whenever you failed to do Windows 10 disk format job with Windows disk management tool.
Step 1: Run EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the hard drive partition you intend to format and choose 'Format'.
Step 2: In the new window, set the Partition label, File system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and Cluster size for the partition to be formatted, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: Then you will see a warning window, click 'OK' in it to continue.
Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting the partition on your hard drive.
Smaller cluster size makes less wasting of disk space. The smaller cluster size is, the bigger file allocation table (FAT) will be. The bigger the FAT is, the slower the operating system works with the disk.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac?
Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format.
So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk.
Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better.
How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac
But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? Don’t worry! This page will show you two ways to do this job:
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool
Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, SSD or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your Mac now.
Method 1. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility
Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac.
- 1. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
- 2. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.
- 3. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'.
- 4. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.
- 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.
- Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac.
Method 2. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC
If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS partition software is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to convert NTFS to FAT32 without formatting.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
After this, you can connect your external hard drive/USB to Mac computer and use it to save data by then.