Choosing the best format to work between Macs and PCs with a flash drive.
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can format a USB flash drive to
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be compatible with both Mac OS 10 and
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windows and be able to fully function
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between both so in this case we're going
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to be working with a 2 GB USB stick and
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it's just a standard one like you buy in
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the store so to work with this flash
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drive we're going to have to do is go
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into dis utility so I'm going to open up
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a new finder window and from here I'm
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going to go to Macintosh HD then
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applications and then scroll down to
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utilities and in utilities will be dis
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utility and I can open that up so in dis
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utility on the sidebar you have all your
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connected drives so I'm just going to
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select this in this case the 2.12 GB
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flash dis media and this is the USB
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flash drive we're working with now to
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first of all see what format your flash
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drive is in you're going to want to
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select the partition tab when you pick
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up a USB it'll probably come in one of
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two formats and that is fat 32 which
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this one is or
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NTFS so if your flash drive is in the
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NTFS format you're going to have an
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issue and that is that you cannot write
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files to it from Mac OS 10 it'll work
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fine with window windows but if you're
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trying to use it between both you won't
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be able to write files from your maap so
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in that case you'll definitely want to
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format it so to format the flash drive
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we're going to click on the erase Tab
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and from here we see a whole bunch of
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different formats if we click on this
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menu now first of all we have Mac OS
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extended journal and this is the
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standard Mac OS 10 format and this is
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great if you're only working with Macs
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but if you're to be working with PCS as
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well you don't want to choose this
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because windows cannot write to diss
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that are in the format of Mac OS
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extended so we also have MS Doss fat
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which is probably the best option you
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can choose this is the fat 32 file
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system and it's great because it works
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with almost every device you could ever
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think of uh be IT cameras any computers
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it doesn't matter it'll most likely work
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with a fat 32 formatted drive now the
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only thing you might want to be aware of
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if you use this is if you tend to use
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the versions tool in Macos 10 lion the
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fat 32 file system does not support that
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so you won't be able to use it and fat
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32 also has a limit of 4 GB file sizes
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so you can't put anything bigger than
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that on there and last we have xat which
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is a newer file system and the nice
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thing about this is you can put files on
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it over 4 GB but the only problem is it
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only works on newer computers so one's
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running Macos 10.6.3 or later as well as
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Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later so
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it's not a lot of compatibility with
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Aller machines which is why if you're
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going to be working between Macs and PCs
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it's best to choose MS DOS fat which is
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the fat 32 operating system then from
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there you can name it and we'll name
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this 2 gigabytes and then I can erase
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the dis and this will format it for me
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and erase it with the fat 32 file system
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so of course now if I go under partition
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you can see that it has the name and the
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format which is Ms do fat otherwise
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known as fat 32 and now your flash drive
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will be fully prepared to work on both
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Macs and PCs and it will be in the
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correct format so there you go there's
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how to format a USB flash drive to work
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on both Macs and PCs if you have
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anything that you'd like to see me do a
4:06
Hu on regarding either iOS or Mac OS 10
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make sure to send me an email I hope you
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found this video useful and thank you
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for watching
#Computer Drives & Storage
#Software
#Operating Systems


