The filesystem is the invisible mechanism on your hard disk that is responsible for keeping track of all the data stored on the drive. Think of it as a massive table of contents, matching up each filename with its corresponding data stored somewhere on the disk surface. Windows supports several file system types, the top three being:
To convert drive C:, for example, just open a Command Prompt window(cmd.exe) and type: convert c: /fs:ntfs. Note that “c” is the drive letter so make sure to change it to the drive that you want to convert – otherwise you will be converting your local drive C, which is normally the Windows partition.
FAT (File Allocation Table, 16-bit) – FAT is used for all drives under 512 MB, such as flash memory cards and floppy disks. The largest drive supported by the FAT filesystem is 2 GB.
FAT32 (File Allocation Table, 32-bit) – Designed to overcome the 2 GB partition limit with the FAT system, FAT32 is supported by every version of Windows since Windows 95 OSR2. Today, it’s used mostly for flash memory cards larger than 2GB, and on older PCs running Windows 98 and Windows Me.
In addition to the support for larger drives, it also supports smaller file clusters, so it stores information more efficiently than FAT. Read my previous post on how to format an external hard drive in FAT32.
NTFS (NT Filesystem) – NTFS, designed from the ground up to completely replace FAT/FAT32, is the default filesystem on all Windows PCs.
It offers security features like encryption and permissions, compression, and quotas. It’s typically faster and more reliable than FAT/FAT32, and supports drives many terabytes in size. Note that if your computer is not recognizing more than 2 TB on a larger hard disk, it could be because of the type of partition scheme you are using.
If Windows is the only operating system on your computer, you should be using NTFS—no question. The only compelling reason to use another filesystem is if you have a dual-boot setup with a very old version of Windows, in which case you’d need to choose a file system recognized by all operating systems on your computer.
View File System Format in Windows
To find out which file system is currently being used by a particular drive on your PC, just right-click the drive in Windows Explorer and select Properties.
You can also use the Disk Management utility (diskmgmt.msc) to see an overview of all of your drives. Click on Start and type in disk management. The first option, Create and format hard disk partitions, is what you want to click on.
If you’ve upgraded your PC from an earlier version of Windows, there’s a chance you’re still using the FAT32 file system. Assuming you don’t need to keep FAT32 for compatibility with other operating systems, you should convert your drive to NTFS. The process is easy, relatively quick, and won’t harm your data (although you should back up beforehand just to be safe).
Convert from FAT to NFTS
Windows provides the FAT to NTFS Conversion Utility (convert.exe) for this purpose. To convert drive C:, for example, just open a Command Prompt window(cmd.exe) and type:
Note that “c” is the drive letter so make sure to change it to the drive that you want to convert – otherwise you will be converting your local drive C, which is normally the Windows partition.
Include the /v option to run in “verbose” mode, which provides more information as the job is processed. Type convert /? for other, more advanced options.
Note that this is a one-way conversion, at least when using the command prompt in Windows. If you need to convert an NTFS drive to FAT32 for some reason, you’ll need a third-party utility. If you need to do the same thing for a USB drive, read my previous post on how to format USB drives with NTFS. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
The Hard Drives formatted for mac have an HFS+ file system. This file system is specifically for Mac systems and windows can’t read this file system. You can have access to the HFS + file system hard drive on windows with the help of any third party software. There are a number of tools that can help you in this regard. But using a third party all the time for accessing a hard drive on windows is not good. A user has to know how to convert Mac formatted hard drive to Windows formatted.
The Windows system uses a hard drive with a different file system than the Mac systems. Windows-formatted hard drives have either NTFS file system of an FAT32 file system. Thus in order to make the hard drive Windows formatted, you have to convert the file system to NTFS or FAT32. In the further discussion, you will learn how to make a hard drive useful for Windows by changing the formatting of the drive.
Get a Backup
Before going ahead and formatting your hard drive for Windows, you should get a backup. Formatting of any kind can leave the hard drive totally empty by erasing all your data. There are a number of instances when users lose their important data due to formatting. It is very important to save the integrity of your data on the hard drive.
You can take help of any third party tool to make a backup of your hard drive. Or you may opt to make a normal backup in your external drive or another computer. Make sure you perform all the backup properly, an improper operation may leave the hard drive with error and hard drive may ask for formatting before use. However, data from formatted disk error in Windows can be recovered generally with any good tool.
Taking a proper backup is very important for your data before formatting your hard drive. Some of the most important things to take care of involve using a hard drive carefully during any kind of transfer, installation or formatting.
Delete the Mac Formatted Partition
The first step in this regard should be deleting the Mac partition with HFS + file system. In order to make it possible, you have to run the disk management tool. Here is how to do it:
Right-click on Windows icon, select Disk Management.
Select the Mac drive from the list of drives - Make sure this is the drive you want to work on, if you do it for the Windows formatted drive in the list, it may cost you a lot of important data.
Right Click on the partition and select Delete Volume – This will remove the partition.
Right click on the space and select New Simple Volume from the list.
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Set the file system as NTFS or FAT 32 according to your need.
Delete EFI System Partition
Most of the times the mac drives are formatted with an EFI system partition. This is secure than the simple partition and you can’t right click and format the drive. To format such a partition, you have to go through a complete wipe out of your hard drive. If your Mac drive has an EFI partition, follow the steps to format it:
Go to device management window – As explained in the above section.
Locate your drive partition which has Mac format file system.
Note the disk number from the window
To go to command prompt – Type Run in Search Box on Taskbar and press Enter > Type cmd and press Enter
OR
Go to Windows > Type cmd and press Enter
Type diskpart in the command prompt window and press Enter
Type list disk in the diskpart window and press Enter
Find your disk with the disk number that you have seen initially
Type select disk <disk number> and press Enter
Type Clean and press Enter
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This will clean your hard drive all the data will wipe out. Now in order to use this on Windows, you have to designate a file system to the hard drive partitions.
Assign NTFS File System
Once you have wiped out the content of your disk along with file system that was stopping it from use by Windows. you can go ahead and give a file system to the partitions:
Go to disk management again
Select the Mac disk from the list of drives – It shows Not initialized message in the empty disk.
Right-click on the disk and select Initialize disk
Create a partition for your disk
Right click and select New Simple Volume
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Set the file system as NTFS or FAT32 as per your requirement
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The drive is now formatted and ready to use in Windows Operating System.