Tech Tip: Using ExFAT to format External Drives for Both PC & Mac

This is an excellent, step-by-step guide to formatting your external drives using ExFAT. When you format an external drive using ExFAT it can be recognized and used by both Windows and Mac IOS machines. This is very important for video editors and producers who work in a mixed format facility or who outsourse editing, graphics or other parts of thier productions. I know many event videographers who are constantly sharing drives that will benefit greatly from this guide. Great job PremiumBeat!!

Premium Beat by Michael Maher Video editors will often find that they need to share files between a PC and a Mac. Use these steps to format external hard drives for both operating systems. Formatting the Hard Drive A vast majority of video production will be done on a Mac or Windows operating system, so we aren’t going to cover Linux. Hard drives set up for use on Windows machines only will often use NTFS, while Macs will use HFS+. That said, if you are using both a PC and Mac in the workflow, you’ll need to use a different format. You may be using only Macs or PCs in your own office, but you will also need to take into account what type of machines your client is using. If you need to send them RAW files or an edited sequence, you will need to make sure the external hard drive is set up for both operating systems. To do this, you will need to use either exFAT or FAT32 formats. This will allow you to use the hard drive on both a Mac and PC. FAT32 is often used among general users, but FAT32 has limitations that can affect filmmakers. FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB per file. The limitation affects both Mac and PC users. A single high resolution file can easily go over 4 GB, so Fat32 may not the best format. The best format for video production is exFAT. The maximum individual file size for exFAT is 16 EB. 1 EB, or exabyte, is 1 billion GB. That said, if you are using smaller file sizes — FAT32 can suffice. read more...