2 Ways to Format Seagate Drive for Mac and PC

▶ Can I use Seagate hard drive with both Mac and PC
▶ Should I Format Seagate hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT?
▶ How to format Seagate for Mac and PC?
▶ Verdict

Can I use Seagate hard drive with both Mac and PC?

Can an external hard drive be formatted for both Mac and PC? Yes, you can format an external disk that you can use with both a Microsoft Windows-based computer and a Mac. However, if you want to ensure it can work well, there's something you need to know. In the next section, we will introduce how to format Seagate external hard drive for Mac and Windows and ensure it is compatible with your devices.

Should I Format Seagate hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT?

From the help-seek post in the first part, we can know that you can use NTFS formatted Seagate drive with Mac or HFS+ with Windows if you install certain third-party software, however, these two may not thoroughly compatible with Mac and Windows at the same time. What kind of file system you should format Seagate to for Mac and PC? Maybe you should format the Seagate drive to other file systems.

Both FAT32 and exFAT are suitable for Seagate drive to be used with Mac and PC. Is exFAT the same as FAT32 format? Then, should you format the hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT file system?

Apart from Windows and Mac, FAT32 is compatible with various electronic devices like Xbox One, PS3 and PS4, etc. But there are two defects in FAT32 file system: 4GB limitation of file size and 2TB restriction of volume. If there are large files to be stored in your Seagate drive, it is not advised to adopt FAT32 file system.

As for exFAT, it is inferior in compatibility. But it breaks the limitation of 4GB in file size and 2TB in volume size. If you need to store a large file in a Seagate drive, you can choose exFAT. If you want to use your drive with more devices, choose FAT32. All in all, choose a proper file system according to your specific demands.

How to format Seagate for Mac and PC?

After knowing the differences of FAT32 and exFAT, you should know which file system should be used for your Seagate drive. Then, connect the Seagate drive to your PC and make sure that it can be detected by Windows. And you can follow our detailed tutorial on how to format Seagate drive for Mac and Windows computer in the following text.

✔ Format Seagate external hard drive for Mac and PC via a professional format tool

Usually, you can use Windows built-in tools like Diskpart to format Seagate drive. But they have some limitations. For example, if you use it to format partition over 32GB to FAT32, the error message that the volume is too big will appear.

Therefore, I recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant, which is a free powerful format tool, specially designed for Windows systems. It can support various file systems including NTFS, FAT32,exFAT, Ext2, Ext3 etc. It is able to format Seagate hard drive or USB flash drive as exFAT file system easily and effectively in Windows 10/8.1/8/7. And it can format Seagate drive as FAT32 without the limitation of 32GB in partition size as well. You can get more functions, such as converting MBR system disk into GPT disk without data loss, fill random with hard drive and so on, if you upgrade to its Professional version. 

To use AOMEI Partition Assistant, free download and install it.

AOMEI Partition Assistant

The Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

Then, you can follow the step-by-step instructions about how to format Seagate external hard drive for Mac and Windows given below:

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant. In the main interface, locate the Seagate drive, right-click it and choose “Format Partition”.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose exFAT or FAT32 among the listed file systems (Here exFAT is selected). Then, click “OK”.

Step 3. You’ll return to the main interface. Here you can preview formatting operation and click “Apply” to perform it.

✍ Notices:
✔ This format tool is also suitable for SSDs belonging to other brands like SanDisk, Samsung, Kingston, etc.
✔ This software allows you to convert NTFS into FAT32 without data loss as well. 
✔ If you need to format system drive, you can create a bootable USB or CD/DVD via AOMEI Partition Assistant at first.

✔ Format Seagate drive via Diskpart utility

If the partition on Seagate drive is smaller than 32GB, you are able to use Diskpart utility to format it to FAT32. Or if you want to format Seagate drive to exFAT, Diskpart tool is a nice solution. The detailed steps are presented as follows:

Step 1. Press “Windows” + “R” to open Run Dialogue.

Step 2. In this window, type “diskpart” and hit “Enter” key.

Step 3. In Diskpart window, input the following commands and hit “Enter” after each command.

▪ list disk
▪ select disk n, where “n” is the number of Seagate hard drive or flash drive
▪ list partition
▪ select partition m, where “m” is the number of partition going to be formatted.
▪ format fs=exFAT

Notes:

• If you need to format it to FAT32, replace the last command with “format fs=fat32”.

• When your Seagate drive is formatted as exFAT or FAT32 successfully, you can type “exit” to close this window.

Verdict

It is obvious that you can use Seagate external hard drive or flash drive with Mac and Windows computer as long as you format Seagate drive for Mac and PC. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve your goal. For Windows Server users, they can turn to the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server version.