or through the dedicated Disk Utility app preinstalled on macOS. Depending on the size of the drive, the formatting process should be completed momentarily. You can now write and read files to and ...

While the Mac can use a hard drive formatted for Windows, some features may be limited. So it's a good idea to format a new hard drive specifically for macOS.

How to Format an OS X Terminal Hard Disk. Mac OS X Mountain Lion gives users several ways to access the Terminal and three common options for formatting a hard drive.

To start formatting, connect your WD Passport to your Mac; then open "Mac HD" and click "Applications," "Utilities" and "Disk Utility." From the Disk Utility window, select the Passport hard drive.

If you’re both Mac users, swell; with Mac and Windows in the mix, you might be tempted to pick FAT32 when formatting that thumb drive. But FAT32 is distinctly out of date.

If you are struggling to get your Mac-formatted drive to work on your Windows machine, here's a guide to help you read Mac-formatted drives on Windows.

A The disk storage formats used by the Macintosh and Windows operating systems are different. While the Macintosh OS can read both its own file format and the one used by Windows, a Windows PC can ...