The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. Select your drive in the lefthand sidebar and go to the erase tab. The file format has to be mac os x journaled and you have to use the guid partition map. Erasing a disk or volume permanently deletes all of its files. How to erase and format a hard drive lifehacker australia.
Rightclick on the icon for your external drive on mac desktop, then select get info. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. You can try the following steps to format a drive with this free tool. Hard drives can be accessed through this pc where files and folders can be created, saved, and loaded. Why recovering formatted external hard drive is possible. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your. Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag.
So, whether you wish to format the internal hard drive, external drive, or a usb flash drive, the procedure is the same for all. Open finder and choose applications utilities disk utility to launch the app on your mac. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Master boot record is appropriate for external drives used with a pc or boot camp. The best format for your external hard drive the hellotech blog. How to format an external drive for mac compatibility.
How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. While its convenient to purchase the hard drive that will work with your computer right out of the box, most external hard drives can also be reformatted so youre not limited to your initial choice. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. How to format a hard drive for mac internal, external or. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. Connect the empty external hd to your mac and launch disk utility. Do you save backups of your hard drive onto an external hard drive. Format external hard drive with multiple partitions easeus. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both windows and mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with windows pc and mac.
Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with apple macos, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want. If you already used your external hard drive on a pc, be sure to back up any files on it. If you are able to fix the hard drive or ssd in your mac or an external drive using disk utility you will hopefully be able to recover your files. How to format a hard drive using the command prompt tom. If you are trying to format mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers. Install, boot, and run mac os x from an external hard drive. All it does is to zero out the index of the items youve saved on the disk, telling the file system that the space those files. Well show you everything you need to know about the. In this tutorial, we explain how you can format a hard drive using the command prompt.
Gtechnology portable external hard drive 2tb from the sleek design to the preformatting, this terabytesized drive is perfect for mac users who need a little extra space and offers the transfer rate up to 140mbs for accessing all your files. Follow these instructions if you plan to share an external hard drive between pc and mac computers. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without. Fat32 works on windows and mac, but has a storage limit of 32 gigabytes with an individual file size of 4 gigabytes. Here then are the best external hard drives for mac of 2020 in order of ranking. How to format a dr ive on a mac heres how to format a dr ive using a mac including how to format a dr ive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use. Can you reformat it without losing all of your data. On mac computers, use the finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. External hard drives, thumb drives, usb drives, flash memory cards, and devices like ipod are examples of storage devices that you can connect to your mac using thunderbolt, usb, or firewire cables, or connect wirelessly using bluetooth. Fortunately disk utility, built right into macos, can help. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with. Select the drive from the left sidebar, then click the partition tab.
Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. The quickest way to do this is a simple spotlight search. What to do when your external hard drive wont show up. My hard drive crashed on my imac took it to computer repair they installed new hard drive, tried to recover data but could not, when we presented the imac to the apple store they told me i would have to buy back my old hd from them um hello no way, so thats why we went to another place that works on macs, so apple said i had lion on the mac, i.
How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. External hard drives back up your most important files, but what happens when they malfunction. Both fat32 and exfat can be used on windows pc and mac. How to backup mac to an external hard drive 5 steps. How to format an external hard drive on windows part 2. How to format an external drive to work with mac from ntfs to mac os extended.
Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. Macs can read ntfs drives, and can read and write to fat32 drives. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. Choose a file system to which you want to format your external drive. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b.
How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. When you format a disk drive, the real data contained in the files are not erased immediately. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. How to format an external hard drive on windows 10. We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both mac and pc users. Whether youre selling your computer, trying a new operating system, or setting up an external drive for backups, sometimes you need to completely erase and format a h ard drive. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. Before you can access the files, it needs to be initialized and formatted. Formatting the drive also allows you to switch to a different file. Then you can choose one of the hard drive and format it by click on format button. External hard drives are computer storage devices which use either a spinning disk or memory chips to save and load your files.
The first thing youre going to need to do is format the external hard drive properly. Open finder and go to applicationsutilities and doubleclick on disk utility. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. How to make external hard drive work with mac and pc youtube. The 4 disk formatting software for mac above can help you easily format hard drive, usb flash drive, memory card, and other storage media under mac. Nevertheless, this older file system is limited to no more than 4gb and there. Looking to add storage, or for a smart way to back up your mac. Apple file system format or the older mac os extended format, and it. Just install it, and mac drives will show up like any other drive. Before continuing, make sure that you have a backup of any files that you want to keep.
All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. Best external drives for mac and pc interchangeable 2020. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Here is the step by step guide you need to follow to format the hard disk on mac. I also have this problem, i want to wipe clean the old external backup drive when right clicking on disk management the format option is not available. Best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc image credit.
When you format your hard drive, you can clean internal as well as external storage media. Formatting is a very simple procedure which is operated in a similar way for all sorts of storage media. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Much like the previous version, exfat also works with both mac and windows operating systems. In this article, im going to show you how to back up your mac data to an external drive. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the western digital my passport 4tb, which is a mechanical hard drive. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. To format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Its ready formatted for use on mac, time machine ready and small enough to fit in your coat pocket. External hard drives use either spinning disks or solid memory to save your files.
The disk manager tool is able to list all hard drives and external devices on your mac. If you are looking for new operating system or selling your old computers or laptops, then you need to set up an external hard drive for backups by erasing and formatting the existing data in the storage devices. But what happens if that drive becomes corrupted, and you have to reformat it to make it accessible again. The 8 best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. It helps to verify and repair a range of issues related to startup hd and external drive problems.
If you read my previous post about how to format an external drive for mac, you know that i bought a 2tb seagate expansion external hard drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk one for mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use. Storage devices such as external hard drives can also be available. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. To format a hard dr ive means to erase any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. Wiping also called formatting a hard drive is a good way to start fresh as well as clear data before selling it to a stranger. The below steps for formatting external drive is for windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of windows. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at. Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open. How to recover data from a formatted external hard drive.
Heres what you need to know, along with our toprated applefriendly drives. Or perhaps you are setting up an external drive for backups. How to format an external hard drive and remove errors. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. To format your external drive hard drive in windows which works with both platforms, first plugin your drive with windows machine. Select the disk or volume in the list on the left panel. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system part 3. Today this video will show you how to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Formatting your drive will wipe out all the data in it. This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through. However, its an older file system and files are limited to 4gb or smaller so its not much. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive.
How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Open the start menu and search for disk management. To do this, open disk utility and connect the drive to your mac. You may wonder how to reformat an external hard drive on mac.
Use external storage devices with mac apple support. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. As complicated as that might sound, its not really difficult to format a hard dr ive in any version of windows. Fat32 file allocation table 32 is an older file system that both windows machines and macs still support. Wd my passport for mac best overall the western digital 2tb my passport for mac is the perfect 2tb portable external hard drive for mac users.