# exFAT and Mac compatibility



## claycad (Jun 27, 2008)

EDIT:
Okay, further research has found the answer and it is NO! Macs can't write to exFAT. So now my question is how come in Vista I only have the options to format it in NTFS or exFAT and not FAT32?

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I have a 500GB seagate free agent go. I am trying to format it in FAT32 because I need to use it on both a PC and a Mac (Mac can't write to NTFS). When I try to format it in Vista I only have the options of NTFS and exFAT, but no FAT32. So question 1 is will exFAT work with Macs? If not why does it not give me the option to format it in FAT32? At first I was thinking maybe the drive is too large, but I believe that when I bought it it came formatted in FAT32 and I reformatted it in NTFS because at the time I didn't plan on using it with a Mac.

I don't want to go ahead and format it in exFAT, transfer all my data to it and then take it to class Monday only to find out that I can't edit my files, so I want to be sure that Mac can read _and_ write to exFAT. I'm hoping they can because of the benefits of exFAT over FAT32.

Thanks.


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## Lead3 (Jun 14, 2006)

Vista can format FAT32 but only up to 32GB.


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## ChronosFT (Jan 25, 2010)

Windows Vista *GUI* programs will only format up to 32GB as FAT32, but using the CMD window you can format up to a 1TB drive.

format [drive]: /FS:FAT32


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