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Once you have it, your first task is to pick a suitable file system for that drive depending on your intended usage.

Lets take a look at your options, which file system is right for you, and how to get your drive ready for use.

It will likely already be formatted, either for use with Windows (using NTFS) or for maximum compatibility (using FAT32).

For a Mac user, neither of these file systems are desirable.

You should see a list of connected drives and mounted disk images listed in the left-hand sidebar.

Click on one to select it and view its name, current file system, and available space.

An example of this is creating one partition to store your Time Machine backup and another to store data.

Click Erase in the dialog box to begin the formatting process.

Remember that you will lose all data on the drive by doing this.

Its a replacement for Apples Mac OS Extended file system; all new Macs come with macOS preinstalled on an APFS file system.

You should pick this option if youve got an external SSD or a new USB flash drive that you wont use with a Windows machine.

Copy and paste are virtually instantaneous thanks to the way the file system organizes your data.

Theres also a focus on encryption and improved metadata handlingmacOS makes heavy use of metadata when it comes to file storage.

APFS is not natively supported by Windows, but you can read and write to APFS partitions if you purchase Paragon APFS for Windows.

If you bought a Mac between those dates, it shipped with macOS (or OS X, as it was known) installed on an HFS volume.

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If you have older Macs (pre-2016), particularly those too old to update to a recent version of macOS, choosing macOS Extended will enable you to use your external drive with these machines.

In order to access the contents of a Mac OS Extended file system on a Windows PC, youll need additional software like Paragon HFS for Windows.

Its up to you whether or not this trade-off is worth it, or whether youd prefer to use third-party drivers instead.

You should generally avoid using FAT32 for any purpose unless youre dealing with an old computer.

FAT32 had a number of serious limitations, including a maximum file size of 4GB, and a maximum partition size of 2TB.

You can install third-party drivers that allow you to write to NTFS volumes, or enable macOSs experimental support for writing to NTFS volumes.

Avoid doing this if you dont want to risk losing your data, since your Mac could end up corrupting the volume.

These utilities have been tested far more thoroughly, and allow you to not only write to your existing NTFS volumes, but format new drives to NTFS.

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