

It is compatible with both Mac and PC, as well as many other media devices such as cameras, smart TVs, and gaming systems. If you format a hard drive as APFS on a Mac, you can read and write data, but a Windows PC won’t even recognize that partition.įAT32 ( F ile A llocation T able) is a file system that is most commonly used for smaller storage devices, primarily USB flash drives and SD cards. However, if you connect the hard drive to a Mac-based computer, you’re limited to only reading the data. Some OS file systems are proprietary, which means there isn’t any native support for other operating systems.įor example, if you format an external hard drive as NTFS, you can read and write data on a Windows PC. There are some instances where you can read ( receive) data from a hard drive partition but won’t be able to write (send) data to it. Not all file systems are universal, though. Because of this, you are always prompted to choose a file system when formatting a storage device partition. Also, the computer wouldn’t be able to detect one file from another in that partition, meaning that it would just think the data is one large individual file. If a partition isn’t formatted to a specified file system, you wouldn’t be able to store any of your files on there. They also specify an index and what types of information can be included on a file (i.e., read and write permissions, file type, file name, etc.)

File systems are how data is arranged, sent, and received to a hard drive partition.
