1 Why to Format External Hard Drive for Mac As it has been discussed there are numerous issues that are associated with the formatting of an external hard drive. This section of the tutorial deals with each and every one of them in great detail. It also allows the users to remain extra cautious so that the issue is never faced in any case. Feb 21, 2012  Looking to share an external hard drive between a Mac and PC? The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as FAT32. Though this format has some limitations, it. Aug 16, 2019  If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between Mac and PC is an often difficult - but it doesn't need to be. We'll show you everything you need to know about the. Oct 27, 2017  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. How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide. Sep 26, 2018  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. Both FAT32 and exFAT can be used on Windows PC and Mac.

1. External Hard Drive Format For Mac Time Machine
2. External Hard Drive Format For Mac And Pc Exfat
3. Formatting External Drive On Mac
4. Hard Drive Format For Mac And Windows
5. Best External Hard Drive Format For Mac

Aug 22, 2018  Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on Mac and Windows. DISCLAIMER: Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard drive so make sure you back up your data elsewhere before starting. How to Reformat in Mac. Step 1: Make sure your external hard drive is attached and mounted to. Format Hard Drive (Mac) 1. Connect the external hard drive to the computer. Click Go on the top tool bar, and select Utilities. Open Disk Utility. Select the external hard drive on the left-hand side. Click the Partition tab. Change the Partition Layout from Current to 1 Partition.

Browsers for mac 10.5.8. Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for Mac. Whether you are trying to backup Mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you need to format the hard drive on your Mac or PC.

But before you can do anything, you need to make it clear that the hard drive you want to wipe or format would be an external hard drive or an internal hard drive. We can easily format external hard drive for Mac. But when it comes to format internal hard drive for mac, things are getting a little more complicated. Maybe we will go through with the way to format a startup drive for Mac later. But now in this guide, we will cover the situation of formatting an external hard drive in steps.

Notice that you need to backup your importanct files on the hard drive you are going to format as the procedure would delete all of the data and bring it back to the factory settings.

Format an external hard drive for Mac

How to Format External Hard Drive for Mac

If you are trying to format Mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step:

Step 1. Connect your hard drive to your Mac.

Step 2. Open Finder and choose 'Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility' to launch the app on your Mac.

Step 3. Once you open the Disk Utility app, you can see all the drives on your Mac are listed on the left-hand sidebar. Just select the one you want to format and click on the 'Erase' tab.

Format an external hard drive for Mac

Step 4. Now in this interface, you will see a 'Format' option. In this drop-down box, you are allowed to choose different format.

OS X Extended (Journaled) should be selected if you are going to use the drive as a system or 'boot' drive on macOS.

Mac OS Extended should be selected if you will be using the drive as a media or 'scratch' drive on Mac.

Mac OS (FAT) is compatible with both PC and Mac platforms. However, there's a limit to transfer files within 4GB.

Free virus protection for mac. It doesn’t include USB scanning, which is a special feature for the paid version.What you do get is a solid anti-virus solution.

ExFAT is similar with Mac OS (FAT) but it can work with files as large as 16EB (exabytes)

So if you are going to use an external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac, you should choose the ExFAT or FAT format.

Choose format for hard drive

Step 5. Name your drive you like but it would be better to choose something specific, so that you can make things clear every time when you look at its name.

External Hard Drive Format For Mac Time Machine

Step 6. Click on the 'Security Options' button and you are able to choose the way (fastest or more secure) to format your external disk. The fastest way will save your time but it erases the drive only by removing the header information. That is to say, you can easily restore the hard drive using a data recovery software if the files haven't been overwritten. It is not good and the format process is meaningless in some way. So maybe you can try the more secure one. It may take quite a long time, but it will erase the drive in a deeper way.

Step 7. Click on the 'Erase' button to start erasing the external hard drive or USB. Formatting a hard drive will take a while and wait for it patiently. Once the progress bar is at 100%, the job is done!

How to Recover Formatted Hard Drive on Mac

As it is mentioned above, after formatting a hard drive, all data on the hard drive will be erased. But what if you have second thought and need to recover files from the formatted drive? Is it possible to recover files from formatted drive on Mac? Yes, it is possible. But you'll need FonePaw Data Recovery, a Mac data recovery program that can recover deleted files from hard drive, SD card, USB drive even the drive has been formatted.

External Hard Drive Format For Mac And Pc Exfat

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Step 1. Run FonePaw Data Recovery on your Mac. Remember that you should not install the application on the formatted drive. Otherwise, some of the files could be overwritten by the application.

Step 2. When the application is open, select the files you want to retrieve from the formatted drive. Tick the formatted hard drive. And click Scan.

Formatting External Drive On Mac

Step 3. The application will first quickly scan some easy-to-get files on the formatted hard drive. If you need more files. Click Deep Scan to find files that are buried deeper.

Step 4. View the results by file types or path. Tick the files you need and click Recover. If you have deleted files that haven't been found, do not save the recovered files on the formatted drive. Instead, save them on other drive, such as your USB drive.

Hard Drive Format For Mac And Windows

If you have any problem when following the steps to format hard drive for Mac, please leave us a message on the comment box below!

Best External Hard Drive Format For Mac