Erasing And Formatting New Flash Drive

[jparker402]

Just bought a new flash drive which I plan on using as a utility to move data between my MacBook Air and admin's Windows machine. Started to erase and format when I ran into an option I had forgotten about. Selected ExFat because of Mac/Windows, but then it came to "scheme". Specifically Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Map and Apple Partition Map. What are the differences? Which one should I select in this particular case? Thanks!

 

[NoBoMac]

GUID. More modern vs MBR and portable between Win and Mac. APM is legacy.

Partition schemes available in Disk Utility on Mac

Disk Utility on Mac supports several partition map schemes: GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, and Apple Partition Map.

support.apple.com

 

[jparker402]

GUID. More modern vs MBR and portable between Win and Mac. APM is legacy.

Partition schemes available in Disk Utility on Mac

Disk Utility on Mac supports several partition map schemes: GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, and Apple Partition Map.

support.apple.com

Thank you very much!

 

[justashooter]

My Windows XP machine will not read an ExFat device that is formated in GUID. It must be formated as ExFat with MBR (Master Boot Record). It will then read and write on both Windows and Macs. I have never had problems transfering files to my other computers or clients Windows 9, 10,11, computers when formatted this way.

Yes, I know, very old machine with old OS, but it runs a older high-end film scanner that XP was the last software version that will work.

 

[NoBoMac]

Depends on 32 vs 64 bit XP. 64 should be able to handle GUID, 32 not.

 

[justashooter]

Depends on 32 vs 64 bit XP. 64 should be able to handle GUID, 32 not.

Could be. All I know is that it runs and runs and runs. I bet the scanner/software doesn't run on 64. And I'm going to leave it alone .
ExFat and MBR works for me so I'll leave that alone too!