Best Partition Format For Mac And Windows
Windows includes a built in utility known as Disk Management that can be used to partition and format a hard drive. To partition and format the drive with Disk Management, follow these steps: Click on Start and right-click Computer. Click on Manage. Software to open mobi files on mac. A window called Computer Management will open, displaying two panes. Author Note: Though, the above-listed partition manager software for Windows and Mac OS are quite popular when it comes to partitioning operations, i.e. Creating, deleting, removing, resizing, etc.
Active1 year, 6 months ago
What is currently the best file system to use for drives that are regularly accessed (both reading and writing) from both Windows and OS X on a single machine using BootCamp. The most important points are stability and speed.
I've been using NTFS so far, coming from a Windows background. Free download warcraft for mac. I've tried the NTFS-3G driver with Fuse and, in my tests, it was far slower than native NTFS under Windows. I also tried their commercial driver without much better results.
Afterward I tried Paragon's drivers, which were much faster. They aren't quite native NTFS speed, but they aren't far off either. The problem is I've had crashes with them, and recently had crashes + data loss with them.
I know this question has been asked before, but the posts I saw were older and the driver and filesystem options are maturing.
Options I've seen:
- FAT32: Limited drive size? Limited permission settings
- NTFS: Limited speed/stability under OS X
- HFS+: MacDrive? available for Windows
Follow Up
I have now formatted one of the drives as exFAT and can confirm that this works great for both reading and writing when the machine is booted into either OS X or Windows 7.
Nathanial Woolls
Nathanial WoollsNathanial Woolls
2 Answers
If you're working exclusively with Win7 machines (i.e. no Vista or XP), and 10.6.6 or greater on the Mac side, try exFAT. Native read/write support under Win7 and OS X, and none of the file size limits of FAT32. Disk Utility will happily format your drives using it.
As long as you don't need legacy support, it's probably your best option, as it avoids any user-space filesystem drivers, which personally make me a bit uneasy.
Addendum: XP and Vista do support exFAT, Vista as of SP1, and XP with SP2 and the KB955704 update
robmathersrobmathers34.1k3 gold badges71 silver badges105 bronze badges
If you care about your data stick with ntfs or fat32(4G filesize limit!).
Had multiple drives formatted to exFat in order to use them with both operating systems (osx/win) and i cant remember when i lost so many files in such a short period of time. To my luck I had backups of everything lost.
My best experience with ntfs on mac so far is the driver by paragon - cant tell a difference from a natively supported filesystem. Tuxera and ntfs-3g gave me trouble with performance and reliability.
Access Mac Partition Windows 10
If you want to stick with exFAT you have to disable caching/buffering as this leads to data corruption on any error - be extra cautious on external drives (check connection, unmount before unplugging). exFAT was designed for portable battery powered devices with continiuos uncached writes, like camcorders or digital cameras and doesnt support any kind of journaling.
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Macs format drives with Apple’s HFS+ file system, which Windows won’t recognize or access without third-party software. Neutron 4 izotope. Macs may also create a protected EFI partition on these drives that you can’t delete with the usual disk-partitioning tools.
Some drives are even sold as “Mac-formatted drives” — this just means they come with the Mac HFS+ file system instead of NTFS or FAT32. Macs can read NTFS drives, and can read and write to FAT32 drives.
Back Up the Drive’s Data First
First, back up the data on the Mac-formatted drive if you have anything important on it. This process won’t actually convert the file system. Instead, we’ll just be wiping the drive and starting over from scratch. Any files on the drive will be erased.
If you have a Mac lying around, you can plug the drive into a Mac and back up the files. If you only have Windows systems available, you can use HFSExplorer to copy files from the drive onto your Windows system drive or another drive. HFSExplorer unfortunately requires you install Java to use it, but it’s the only free option here. Smith Micro Poser Pro 11.0.4.32600. You’ll probably want to uninstall Java when you’re done.
Erase the Mac Partitions, Including the EFI System Partition
RELATED:Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Management
First, open the Windows Disk Management tool. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type diskmgmt.msc into the box, and press Enter to open it. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer — internal ones or external ones connected via USB.
Locate the Mac drive in the list of disks. Be sure you’ve identified the Mac drive — if you accidentally delete partitions from another drive, you could damage your Windows installation or lose your files.
If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems.
The Mac drive may have an “EFI System Partition” on it. This partition is marked as protected, so you can’t just right-click and delete it — the delete option will be disabled.
To erase this partition, we’ll have to wipe the entire disk. This process erases everything on the disk, including its files and all its partitions. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management window. For example, in the screenshot below, the Mac-formatted drive is Disk 2.
Next, open a Command Prompt window as administrator. To do this on Windows 8 or Windows 7, press the Windows key once, type cmd , and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
Type diskpart into the Command Prompt window and press Enter.
Type list disk at the DISKPART prompt and press Enter to view a list of disks connected to your computer. Identify the number of your Mac disk in the list. It should be the same as the number of the disk in the Disk Management window.
Be sure to double-check this — you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here.
Type select disk # and press Enter to select the Mac disk, replacing # with the number of the Mac disk. For example, here we’d type select disk 2.
Finally, type clean and press Enter. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions — whether they’re protected or not. You’ll have an empty, uninitialized disk after you do this.
Close the Command Prompt window when you see a message saying “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.”
Create an NTFS or FAT32 Partition
You can now open the Disk Management window again. If you’ve left it open, you may have to click Action > Rescan Disks to update the data.
Locate the Mac disk in the list. It will be completely empty and display a message saying “Not Initialized.” Right-click it and select Initialize Disk.
Select the MBR or GPT partition table format and click OK to create a partition table for the disk.
Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. The drive will now be formatted for use by Windows systems. There will be no space wasted by protected Mac partitions.
Some Mac functions require an HFS+ formatted drive. For example, Time Machine can only back up to HFS+ formatted drives.
Image Credit: Konstantinos Payavlas on Flickr
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