
To share a USB drive between a Mac and a Windows PC, there are two disk formats to choose from: exFAT and FAT32. The other formats -- Microsoft's NTFS and Apple's Mac OS Extended -- don't work well on the other operating system. How to format a USB drive to FAT32 on a Mac The main reason for formatting a USB drive as Fat32 on a Mac is that you want to be able to use the drive on a Windows PC, as well as a Mac — perhaps to transfer files between the two machines. How To Format A USB Drive On A Mac? To format a USB drive, follow these steps: – Connect USB drive into the given socket. The latest MacBook Pro or another MacBook has only USB-C type connectors, so if you have the recent Mac’s, you will require an adaptor to convert from USB-C to USB-A. Click the fresh Finder window. Then select the drive. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or USB flash key to a Mac will generally read and work fine as is because the Mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including Windows MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFat, and NTFS formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, formatting it to be entirely Mac compatible.