Optional Formatting And Partitioning; About File System Form Ats; Mac; Windows - Seagate Innov8 User Manual

Op onal Forma ng and Par oning
Your Innov8 is formatted as exFAT for compatibility with Windows and Mac out of the box. If you intend to
use your Innov8 with only one computer, you can change it to the operating system's native format. Review
the details below to learn which format is best for you.
About file system formats

Mac

Mac OS Extended (HFS+): compatible with Mac only. Mac OS Extended refers to the file system used by
Mac OS X.
exFAT: compatible with Mac and Windows. exFAT is used as an alternative to FAT32 since it does not share
the same limitations. It is therefore an excellent cross-platform file system.
FAT32: compatible with Mac and Windows. A FAT32 partition can reach 2TB when formatted on a Mac. The
individual file size is limited to 4GB. FAT32 can affect your hard drive's performance.
Mac file system formats
Use HFS+ if:
...you will be using the storage device on Macs only.
Use exFAT if:
...you will be using your storage device with Mac and Windows computers.
Use FAT32 if:
...you will be using your storage device with Windows and Mac computers and at least one of these
computers is incompatible with exFAT.

Windows

NTFS: since it is the native file system for Windows, volumes created in NTFS are read and write with
computers running Windows. Mac OS X 10.5 or higher may read and write to the NTFS partitions with the
help of third-party drivers. There are two formats for NTFS, MBR and GPT. The maximum volume size for
MBR is 2TB while the more recent GPT format does not assign limits to file or partition sizes.
exFAT: compatible with Mac and Windows. exFAT is used as an alternative to FAT32 since it does not share
the same limitations. It is therefore an excellent cross-platform file system.
FAT32: compatible with Mac and Windows. A FAT32 partition can reach up to 32GB when formatted with
Windows. The individual file size is limited to 4GB. FAT32 can affect your hard drive's performance.
Windows file system formats
Use NTFS if:
...you will be using the storage device only with Windows computers. Performance is optimal when
compared to exFAT or FAT32.
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