I am trying to format my USB flash drive so I can read and write on my mac and on windows. Can someone help please?
I think if you use MS DOS (FAT) as the format type from Disk Utilities, you can use it for BOTH OSs. I'm not sure as I'm not on a Mac right now to check.
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Erase the USB disk using exFAT. exFAT is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6.5 or newer, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. To erase the disk, open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities folder), select the USB drive in the sidebar, go to Erase tab and select exFAT on Format
In addition to mende1's suggestion, exFAT is also compatible with Windows XP, though you do first need to install the free add on in Win XP.
Thanks do much guys- fingers crossed it works tomorrow!
You may also need to repartition the drive with the Master Boot Record partition scheme. I don't think that Apple's default GUID partiton scheme is Windows compatible, even if it contains Windows-compatible filesystems like FAT.
How do I format a USB flash drive to work with both mac and windows?
