How to choose Master Boot Record when formatting a drive

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
I need to move some stuff between my daughter's old PC and her new PC (both under Windows 10). I was planning to use a large capacity thumb drive but it is presently formatted for use on my Mac. I used to know how to do this, but Disk Utilities seems to have changed on the way to Mojave (or perhaps earlier since I used it.)

I can erase the drive as ex-Fat but it stays with the Guid partition scheme. How do I change it to the Master Boot Record partition scheme (I think) the PC will require?

Dave
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
The reason for this is because the “scheme” option only appears when you format the entire physical device, not just a volume on that device. I’m not sure how you have only the volume showing in DU, but on my thumb drives there is a device name and the volume name underneath that in DU.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
I have a number of thumb drives - a very small MS-DOS (properly) formatted thumb drive done way back in time and a number of macOS drives of various capacities. They all show up in Disk Utility as a single line in the sidebar.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
OK, your answer, Chas, led me to investigate further. I had a setting in DU wrong... I had it set to "Show Only Volumes" but have now changed it to be "Show All Devices.

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 11.30.26 PM.png

I thought I was now home free as I could chose the format and the scheme I wanted...

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 11.27.49 PM.png

But clicking on "Erase" at this stage seemed to complete properly but when viewed later shows the format is now incorrect:

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 11.35.29 PM.png

I then tried the MS-DOS (FAT) format but after saying it completed successfully, it had also reverted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

I am obviously missing something else in this process. I used to be able to do this all the time.

Dave
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Actually, in spite of what I just posted, I think the format did actually change to the proper DOS type format I chose. But when I click on "erase" a second time to try and view it, I believe it just sets up for the macOS format by default assuming that is what any sane person would want. (I then hit "cancel" to back out of this stage.)
Clicking on the volume instead of the device now and then clicking on the "erase" tab shows the desired DOS type format.

They have certainly made this less intuitive than when I last tried this sort of thing.

Dave
 
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