With more and more people living in a cross-platform world, the need to easily transfer files and documents between Macs and PCs is increasing. One easy way to share files is to use MacDrive.

Today’s Hot Tip will show how to format a Mac external drive direct from Windows.

With MacDrive installed on your PC, go to “My Computer” to see a list of current drives on your system. Find the drive you wish to format and right-click the drive. A context menu (shown right)will appear giving you options for that drive. With MacDrive installed you will see new options, select “Format Mac Disk”.

The MacDrive Disk Manager will open enabling you to “Check Mac Volumes”, which allows you to find and repair errors on Mac volumes or “Modify Mac Volumes”, which allows you to create, format and delete Mac volumes. We will be using the “Modify Mac Volumes” option.

Once you select “Modify Mac Volumes” you will be shown the disks currently on your system. Again, select the disk you wish to format and “Initialize disk”.

You will now create your Mac Volume. You can rename the disk and select the format (Mac OS HFS, Mac OS Extended HFS+ or ). You can also select the size of disk you wish to create.

In mere seconds you will have a newly formatted Mac hard drive on your Windows PC.

Check out what else MacDrive can do for you.