I have a 320GB simple tech external hard drive that i used for my mac book pro. My mac book pro broke down completely so i bought an Asus laptop which runs Windows 7. I go to plug in the external hard drive, however i cant access it. It does show up under devices and printers but i cant open it. What’s the disk format, FAT32 or non-Microsoft. To format a hard drive means to delete any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. As complicated as that might sound, it's not really difficult to format a hard drive in any version of Windows.
Formatting is the term used in operating system to erase all content in the drive and make it to initial state. You can format both internal and external drives in Windows 10. USB devices are prone to damage and file corruptions due to usage on multiple computers. So, there are many situations you would like to erase all the content on your USB and format it like a new one. Windows supports file systems like NTFS and FAT for formatting drives.
Unfortunately you can’t use the Windows formatted USBs on your Mac for saving content. Though you can mount the drive to view and copy the content, you can’t write on the drive. In order to write on the USB drive on Mac, you need to format the device into Apple supported file systems like APFS or Mac OS Extended. Similar to Windows 10, you can format USB drives on Mac using Disk Utility app. Formatting USB in Windows 10 First off, ensure your flash drive is already plugged in to your PC.
To verify that your system recognizes your flash drive, press “Windows + E” and open “File Explorer”. On the left pane, click on “This PC”. You will see a screen like the one shown below. Under “Devices and drives”, locate your Flash drive. Format Complete Points to Remember. It is necessary to format the USB before creating a bootable flash drive from ISO file. Formatting may fail if there are physical damages on the drive.
Sometimes formatting reduces the size of the drive by ignoring the corrupted segments. Similar to USB, you can format any of the individual partition on the hard drive like C:, D:, etc.
Formatting USB Drive on Mac Insert the USB drive on your Mac and follow the below instructions to format. Press “Command + Spacebar” to open Spotlight Search box and type “disk utility”. Open the “Disk Utility” app from the search results. Disk Utility will show the current file system of the USB drive.
In the below screenshot, it shows as MS-DOS (FAT 32) which is a Windows based file system.