what disk format can be read by mac and windows

However, Windows does not make it easy to format a partition larger than 32 GB with the FAT32 file system. In order to overcome the volume size limit for FAT16 which is 2 GB, the largest volume size FAT32 supports is 2 terabytes with a cluster size of 512 bytes and 16TB with a cluster size of 4,096 bytes. It is widely used for USB flash drives, flash memory cards, and external hard drives for compatibility between all platforms. It is a disk format or file system used to store, organize, and retrieve files stored on a disk drive.

How to format a USB drive to FAT32 on Mac?įAT32 (File Allocation Table32) is the 32-bit version of the FAT file system designed by Microsoft and introduced in 1996 with Windows 95 OSR2.

Read below to know what FAT32 is, how it performs on Mac, and how to format a USB drive to FAT32 on Mac. Mac can read and recognize any device that comes with a FAT32 file system and mount it automatically with full access in the Finder and the desktop. FAT32 is ideal for a storage larger than 2GB and want to use it on Windows, macOS, PlayStation, camera, or car stereo for its universality. The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives come with FAT32 or NTFS.

What disk format can be read by mac and windows