Then why not for unrecognized ExFAT drive? Have a look here. Why Mac cannot recognize the ExFAT drive? There might be two causes here. 1) Mac might be missing some necessary driver software to read the ExFAT drive, after you upgraded from previous OS X. 2) There might be some issue with your ExFAT drive. How to go with further troubleshooting?
- NTSF and exFAT will not work. The 'Quick format' option should be checked. Click 'OK' to confirm that you have read the warning. A few seconds later the process should be done, The USB flash drive is now ready for the software update procedure. Instructions for Mac OS.
- File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac. Disk Utility on Mac supports several file system formats: Apple File System (APFS): The file system used by macOS 10.13 or later. Mac OS Extended: The file system used by macOS 10.12 or earlier. MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT: File systems that are compatible with Windows. Open Disk Utility for me.
- The fsckexfat utility first appeared in Mac OS X 10.6.3. I don't know how you can bypass the required automatic fsck in macos 10.14.4. It is fsckexfat -q that quickly checks to see if the volume was 'cleanly unmounted'. Perhaps that is being automatically run. I don't know if booting into safe mode would stop the automatic check.
Sep 28, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
![Mac Mac](https://stillaslife.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ExFat-Multi-OS-Support-Compass-1024x464.jpg)
If your USB flash drive is not recognized by your Apple Mac computer because it has a different format it is kind of difficult to format it. You may not know how to format your USB flash drive to make it compatible with your Mac system but we do and will show you how to do it in this article.
Overview of Formatting USB Drive on Mac
Mac Systems have a different OS to Windows and this is where most of the problems like. Most USB flash drives on sale are designed to work with Windows operating systems that run on Fat32. Mac devices on the other hand run on either Mac OS Extended or APFS. If your drive is an APFS format or a Mac OS format you can format your drive easily but if it is a FAT32 format this may be a problem. If you have made the mistake of buying a flash drive they run on a FAT32 file format you don't have to discard it altogether. There are ways to format a flash drive that runs in a different format and we will show you steps to take to remedy the situation.
Step to Format a USB Drive to FAT32 on Your Mac
- Plug the drive into the Mac system
- Choose Applications- Utilities then Disk Utility
- From the sidebar pick USB drive
- From the toolbar select Erase
- Name the formatted disk and choose either ExFat or MS-DOS(FAT32) from the menu
- Select erase to format your drive depending on the selection you have picked (FAT32 or ExFAT)
Convert/Format USB Flash drive to FAT32 using Command Line
![Exfat Exfat](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/format-sd-card-mac.jpg)
![10.10 10.10](https://i2.wp.com/www.baatkar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/NTFS252C2BFAT32252C2BexFAT2Bfile2B2Bsystem2Bcompatibility-1.jpg)
- Connect Flash drive to Mac
- Tap CMD and space bar to open Spotlight. Type 'terminal' and press Enter
- Type in :diskutill land locate your USB drive
- Type in sudo.diskutilerasediskFAT32MBRFormat/Dev/disk2
- Sudo will give you the user right
- Diskutill will call in the utility program
- Erasedisk commands will format
- FAT32 will set the file system
- MBRFormat will tell the disk to format with Master Boot
- /Dev/disk2 will be the USB drive location
You will have to wait a while for the format to be completed. Type in : diskutill to check if the process was successful.
If you follow these steps religiously you should be able to resolve the issue quickly. If you're searching for a way that helps you recover formatted USB drive on Mac, download Recoverit Data Recovery software and go to the page telling you how to restore the formatted hard drive.
![Exfat Exfat](https://help.apple.com/assets/5C072579094622C40134BD65/5C07257A094622C40134BD6C/en_US/ae45e25fd06837abc22432abe4e7a3a6.png)
If your USB flash drive is not recognized by your Apple Mac computer because it has a different format it is kind of difficult to format it. You may not know how to format your USB flash drive to make it compatible with your Mac system but we do and will show you how to do it in this article.
Overview of Formatting USB Drive on Mac
Mac Systems have a different OS to Windows and this is where most of the problems like. Most USB flash drives on sale are designed to work with Windows operating systems that run on Fat32. Mac devices on the other hand run on either Mac OS Extended or APFS. If your drive is an APFS format or a Mac OS format you can format your drive easily but if it is a FAT32 format this may be a problem. If you have made the mistake of buying a flash drive they run on a FAT32 file format you don't have to discard it altogether. There are ways to format a flash drive that runs in a different format and we will show you steps to take to remedy the situation.
Step to Format a USB Drive to FAT32 on Your Mac
- Plug the drive into the Mac system
- Choose Applications- Utilities then Disk Utility
- From the sidebar pick USB drive
- From the toolbar select Erase
- Name the formatted disk and choose either ExFat or MS-DOS(FAT32) from the menu
- Select erase to format your drive depending on the selection you have picked (FAT32 or ExFAT)
Convert/Format USB Flash drive to FAT32 using Command Line
- Connect Flash drive to Mac
- Tap CMD and space bar to open Spotlight. Type 'terminal' and press Enter
- Type in :diskutill land locate your USB drive
- Type in sudo.diskutilerasediskFAT32MBRFormat/Dev/disk2
- Sudo will give you the user right
- Diskutill will call in the utility program
- Erasedisk commands will format
- FAT32 will set the file system
- MBRFormat will tell the disk to format with Master Boot
- /Dev/disk2 will be the USB drive location
You will have to wait a while for the format to be completed. Type in : diskutill to check if the process was successful.
If you follow these steps religiously you should be able to resolve the issue quickly. If you're searching for a way that helps you recover formatted USB drive on Mac, download Recoverit Data Recovery software and go to the page telling you how to restore the formatted hard drive.
Video Tutorial on How to Format a USB Flash Drive on Mac
What's Wrong with Mac
- Recover Your Mac
- Fix Your Mac
- Delete Your Mac
- Learn Mac Hacks
TL;DR version
For Mac OS X to read-write exFAT formatted HDD, two options
- Format using Mac:
- Disk Utility ->
- Erase ->
- choose exFAT ->
- OK
- Format using Windows:
- My Computer ->
- Right Click HDD ->
- Format ->
- choose exFAT ->
- AUS 128 kilobytes->
- Start
Background
Turns out exFAT exists so that Mac and Windows can co-exist harmoniously. There are many forum discussions and how-toarticlesoutthererecommending exFAT if you want to share files between Mac and Windows.
What most of them failed to mention is the correct allocation unit size / cluster size necessary for the harmonious relationship to work. Most of them talked about what the allocation unit size does, which might be misleading for the purpose of getting it up and running seamlessly.
My Story
I want to use an external HDD as the scratch disk for a video editing project on a Mac OS X 10.7.5. But my files are on my Windows 8.1 laptop HDD, which was formatted in NTFS. By default, Mac OS X can only read but not write to NTFS HDD. Of course there are NTFS read-write solutions out there for Mac. Among them Tuxera NTFS, Paragon NTFS, or NTFS-3G FUSE.
Disclaimer: I have not tried Tuxera or Paragon. I used NTFS-3G FUSE from 2009-2013 on my Macbook Snow Leopard, so far so good. I have not tried it on later versions of Mac OS X. There is a high chance of it not working on OS X 10.7 and later (see Known Issues).
Then I found out that if I format the HDD in exFAT, it should work for both Windows and OS X. I figured that since most of my files are videos with BIG file sizes, I chose 4096 kilobytes for the AUS. It formatted nicely. But lo and behold, OS X doesn't even recognize the HDD. I tried to force mount it but nope, it doesn't work.
Exfat For Os Mac Os High Sierra
So I figured that if I use OS X's Disk Utility to format, it should work for both Mac and Windows. This time it works! Turns out Disk Utility formatted the HDD with 128 kilobytes AUS (131072 bytes divide by 1024).
Exfat For Mac And Windows
Just for kicks, I used Windows to format it again with AUS 128 kilobytes. Yeap, it works.
Exfat For Os Mac Os 10.13
Conclusion
128 kilobytes is the harmonious constant between Windows and Mac OS X 10.7.5. Use 128 kilobytes AUS while formatting a HDD so that it works for both Windows and Mac OS X.