- #HOW TO FORMAT WD ELEMENTS 2T HARD DRIVE FOR MAC HOW TO#
- #HOW TO FORMAT WD ELEMENTS 2T HARD DRIVE FOR MAC PORTABLE#
FAT32 was introduced in Windows 95 in 1997, but it remains useful because nearly every system can use it.
Many backup archives and video files are larger than 4 GB. NTFS has huge file and partition size limits that you won't hit that makes it a better choice than FAT32, which has a 4 GB size limit per file. macOS and Linux, however, can only read files stored on such a drive they cannot write to an NTFS-formatted drive. NTFS is native to Windows, and most hard drives are preformatted for this file system.
By default, Macs can only read NTFS and not write to them.
#HOW TO FORMAT WD ELEMENTS 2T HARD DRIVE FOR MAC PORTABLE#
If you buy an external drive-such as one of our recommended desktop hard drives, portable hard drives, or USB 3.0 flash drives-you may need to reformat it to work with your operating system of choice, since different operating systems use different file systems to process data.Īlthough it's true that any drive is compatible with both Windows and macOS, most drives come preformatted for Windows out of the box.
#HOW TO FORMAT WD ELEMENTS 2T HARD DRIVE FOR MAC HOW TO#