How To Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac

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Formatting in context of USB or Hard Drives means deleting everything from that drive and rebuilding the file system so that we can use it with an Operating System. And we usually perform formatting in our USB or External Hard Drive when we want to get rid of viruses, or we want to clean the disk as it was when we purchased it. Also when we buy a new USB or Hard Drive, it often comes with windows compatible not the mac so formatting it even needed in this case. So in this post, I will tell you “How to Format USB on Mac?”.

  1. Format External Hard Drive Mac
  2. How To Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows
  3. How To Configure External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
  4. How To Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
  5. How To Format External Hard Drive For Mac Os High Sierra
  6. How To Format External Hard Drive For Mac

How to Format USB on MAC?

If you never formatted a USB drive then don’t worry it is effortless. And here I will tell you two answers to this question that “How to Format USB on Mac?”.聽First, we will go with the straightforward way of doing it; then we will move to the easy way. 馃槈

An external hard drive is a data storage device that connects to a computer with a cable, typically USB or FireWire. Most external hard drives are cross-platform, giving them the ability to work on a number of different operating systems. Macintosh computers are able to recognize hard drives formatted for both Macintosh and Windows computers. The best ways to format an external drive for Windows and Mac. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with Windows and Mac. And, no: the answer isn't always FAT32.

How to reformat external hard drive for mac time machine

So first, we will use the Disk Utility program, which is a GUI and very straightforward so that any kid can do it. Then in the next method, we will format USB drive from mac terminal. So let’s start.

Format USB on Mac using Disk Utility

  • Connect the USB Drive to your Mac. (This is obvious we need a USB first, then only we can format it 馃槢 )
  • Now we need to open Disk Utility. (Here I will give you one more tip. To open any program in your Mac just press the command + spacebar.聽It will start the Spotlight Search, now from here you can search for any program, but now we need Disk Utility, so search it).
  • Now, on the Disk Utility window you will see External Drives on the left.
  • Here I have my USB Drive connected, and its name is No Name. In the top we have options like First Aid, Partition, Erase, Restore, Unmount. To format the drive we need to click on the Erase Button.

Format USB on Mac

  • Here, we have two options, the first one is the Name that you can set for your USB Drive. The second one is the Format. If you want to make it windows compatible you need to select MS-DOS (FAT) here. And you can also use the Mac OS Format. So its up to you what you want.
  • Now, just click on the Erase Button to complete the format.
  • And thats it. Your drive is formatted.

For formatting any External Hard Drive, we can follow the same steps.聽

Format USB Drive Mac using Terminal

We also have a Command Line Disk Utility interface in Mac. And we can use it to format the USB on Mac as well. Now lets see how we do this.

  • First open the terminal (Again press command + space, write terminal and hit enter).
  • In terminal now type the following command.
  • The above command will display all the disk connected with your machine.
  • Here the USB Drive that is connected, is disk2 and we will format this disk only. To format the USB drive here we will write the following command.
  • In the above command eraseDisk is the format command. Then comes JHFS+ is the Disk Type which is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then Belal is the name of the disk that will be assigned after formatting. Finally we are writing the name of the disk that we need to format, which disk2 is in this case. Now hit enter.
  • And the disk is formatted. 馃槈 Super Easy, isn’t it?

Format External Hard Drive Mac

So that’s it for this tutorial friends if you got some problems then tell me in the comments. And if you think this post was useful for you, or it helped you in any way, then I request you to please SHARE it with your friends. I hope you got the answer very clearly that “How to Format USB on Mac?”. So thank you, guys. Will catch you in the next post.

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> Erase Data > How to Reformat Western Digital Portable Hard Drive?

by Shirly Chen, 2017-12-28

Mac

'Hi, I am going to sell a 2TB WD portable hard drive. I think it is necessary to reformat the WD portable hard drive and permanently erase my private data. Is there any fast way to reformat the WD portable hard drive and erase all the data on the hard drive?' – Norio

Hard

>'Hello, I connect my Western Digital portable hard drive with my computer. But my computer can’t recognize the portable hard drive. Is there any way to reformat the portable hard drive to solve this issue?' – Misa

>'My WD external hard drive is attacked by unknown virus, most of the files on the hard drive are infected. I want to reformat the WD external hard drive and permanently erase the virus-infected files.' – Jimmy

Reformatting is the best way to reset the Western Digital (WD) portable hard drive to factory status. Then the WD portable hard drive is able to securely be reused, resold, recycled or donated to other people. Especially, when you are going to throw an old WD portable hard drive into a trash, you’d better reformat it and permanently erase all your private data on it. However, do you know how to reformat WD portable hard drive? There may be lots of methods to reformat a WD portable hard drive on PC or Mac. Today, we will introduce an easy, secure and efficient way to reformat WD portable hard drive.

WD portable hard drive reformatting software for Windows/Mac

In order to reformat WD portable hard drive and permanently erase the data on the WD portable hard drive, we strongly recommend you to use this tool – Super Eraser to help you reformat the WD portable hard drive. Download this WD portable hard drive reformatting software here:

Super Eraser offers certified data erasure algorithms to help in reformatting and erasing WD portable hard drive. Before you use this tool to reformat your WD portable hard drive, make sure all your important data on the WD portable hard drive has been backed up to another hard drive. Once the WD portable hard drive is reformatted by Super Eraser, all the data on the WD portable hard drive will be permanently erased, can’t be recovered by data recovery software.

Easily reformat WD portable hard drive with Super Eraser

Super Eraser can help you efficient reformat WD portable hard drive on PC or Mac. Here, you can follow these steps to reformat WD portable hard drive with Super Eraser.

Step 1: Connect your WD portable hard drive with the computer.

Just connect your WD portable hard drive with the computer which has installed Super Eraser. Then run Super Eraser on your computer.

Step 2: Reformat the WD portable hard drive.

Choose this mode 'Wipe Hard Drive', select the WD portable hard drive, click on 'Wipe Now' button. Super Eraser will reformat the WD portable hard drive and permanently erase all data on the WD portable hard drive.


Super Eraser is 100% safe data erasure software. It will not shorten the service life of the WD portable hard drive even the WD portable hard drive is erased 35 times by this software. Super Eraser also can help you permanently erase files/folders from WD portable hard drive, and wipe the free disk space of the WD portable hard drive.

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