How to Copy Files from Mac to USB

This practical guide walks through how to copy files from Mac to USB, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

Steps to change USB drive format:

Open Finder in your system, then choose Applications> Utilities> Disk Utility . 

Select the USB drive on the left side.

Then click the Erase button in the top right corner of the screen. Select ExFAT in the format drop-down list and start reformatting the drive.

After the drive format is complete, you can copy files from macOS to USB normally.

How to copy files from macOS to a USB drive using the command line

Open a Terminal window and run the following command:

cp -R Documents /usb

-R will copy all the subfolders in the Documents folder to the USB external hard drive.

However the above command may give an error message like:

usb/Pics: No such file or directory.

This is because the USB external hard drive is mounted in the / Volumes folder, so you should add the / Volumes directory before the name of the USB disk when you run the cp command.

cp -R Documents /Volumes/usb-name