SD cards and external drives come pre-formatted. In this day and age of IoT devices and Linux & macOS co-existence why on earth does Windows try and erase everything it doesn't understand? The same goes for Linux-formatted drives, and it’s a common frustration for multi-platform computer users. Instead, Windows 10 pretends that your Mac disk is equivalent to a corrupt or unformatted disk and doesn’t mind if you accidentally format it and lose all of your data.
It could perhaps license the APFS technology from Apple and include it with Windows 10-or, at the very least, alert you that you’ve inserted a Mac-formatted drive and explain why it can’t be read. If Microsoft really wanted, Windows could attempt to read your Mac-formatted drives.
#Reformat mac drive on windows 10 mac os
RELATED: What's the Difference Between APFS, Mac OS Extended (HFS+), and ExFAT? So Why Does Windows Really Do That? If you click “Format Disk” and go through with the formatting process, you’ll lose all of the data on the disk! And Microsoft doesn’t mind, apparently.
Do you want to format it?” When you see this message while attempting to read a known good disk, always click “Cancel.” (macOS previously used HFS+ in macOS 10.12 and earlier.) If you format a drive as APFS on a Mac, Windows 10 won’t read it, because APFS is a proprietary file system format created by Apple.įor example, if you insert a USB drive formatted as APFS or HFS+ into a Windows 10 PC, you’ll see a warning pop-up that reads “You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it.
Windows 10 uses the NTFS file system, and macOS currently uses APFS.