
Although the PS5 and Xbox Series X can't run games off external drives, transferring the games between the two is fast and efficient. The internal SSDs in the Xbox Series X and PS5 can only stretch so far. That's why you want to have the best external hard drive to store them. Not physical space, but storage space: Games are bigger than ever. The process of formatting a drive to be compatible with Windows PC and Mac OS X requires a different format choice, but is otherwise quite similar.Gaming can be an expensive hobby that takes up a lot of time and space. Should you intend to make an Mac OS installer drive (for OS X Mavericks, OS X El Capitan, OS X Yosemite, etc) or create any other bootable Mac OS X volume from a drive, or use a new drive as a fully compatible Time Machine backup drive, you will also need to complete this process. Similarly, you can perform the same type of process in Mac OS X for making a USB flash drive compatible with Mac OS using the Disk Utility in Mac OS X, as you can see, it’s a quick procedure that is done in short order on any Mac: The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full Mac OS X compatibility, this uses the new Disk Utility in modern versions of Mac OS X: When completed, the drive will be formatted to the Mac OS X compatible HFS+ filesystem.

Smaller external hard drives, SSD’s, and USB flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. That’s all there is to it, the drive will now format and erase everything on it.

This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through all connections, be they USB, Firewire, or Thunderbolt.

How to Format an External Drive for Mac Compatibility If you have never formatted a drive before on the Mac, don’t worry, it’s super easy and we’ll walk you through the entire process.
