So, whether you wish to format the internal hard drive, external drive, or a usb flash drive, the procedure is the same for all. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. However, it is not possible to format hard drive to exfat, the only option under the window of format file system is ntfs default. Step 1 connect the external hard drive you want to format to your mac, then start the disk utility app that you can find under applications utilities. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. After you erase your hard drive it will be ready for a clean installation of the operating system. Choose the hard drive that you want to format or reformat. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as fat32. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac by jp zhang updated feb 8, 2020 60 comments so, you just bought a new external hard drive or a portable ssd and wanted to use it on your mac. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between mac and pc, you need to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another.
How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. Sometimes, you may want to try format directly to format your external hard drive partition to exfat for mac and windows. But it is also dangerous as it can result in loosing data or corrupting the drive when it. Connect the external drive or the usb drive to the mac. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. Download disk formatting software for mac doyourdata.
This drive will only be used for audio and i was told to format the drive in mac os extended with journaling disabled and a single partition. If not, restart your computer and hold down command and r at the same time until you see the apple logo. For most reasons to erase, you should erase the disk, which also erases all volumes on that disk. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. Need to reformat wd hard drive for mac if you connect your wd hard drive without reformatting, youll be unable to copy files to the disk as mac read only supports ntfs file system.
Here is the step by step guide you need to follow to format the hard disk on mac. Looking to share an external hard drive between a mac and pc. You can format your hard drive on both windows and mac. Simply put, your ps4 isnt recognizing the file system of your drive, which is most probably ntfs. Reformatting an external hard drive for mac step 1. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. This will display the following popup on the screen. Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make. How to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. Now ntfs works fine with computers and is the standard file system, but for some reasons, developers decided that. Reinstall from macos recovery macos recovery makes it easy to reinstall the mac operating system, even if you need to erase your startup disk first. And it also wipes out all the bugs and harmful files that might harm your mac. Click on the erase option from the four options available in the main window. Why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc.
How to format a hard drive for a mac tech talk america. Enter a name for the disk or volume, such as macintosh hd. Formatting a hard drive for windows will be discussed in another article. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. Open finder and choose applications utilities disk utility to launch the app on your mac.
How to format an external drive for mac compatibility. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Open disk utility by clicking finder applications utilities and finally click disk utility. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both mac and windows by using the exfat file system.
Click on the erase button in the end and confirm your choice as mac would format the selected disk. You can give the partition drive a label, select its partition scheme, and specify its file format as well. Be sure to choose your wd elements drive at the top level. Your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and 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. You can select the exfat format when using the disk utility to format the drive. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. Before you start formatting any hard drives, make sure youve backed up your data. In this guide i will show you how you can properly format reformat a hard drive for mac os. Follow these easy steps, format the fusion drive on mac as format one simple hard drive. Once disk utility is open youll see the list of available drives on the left. If you are trying to format mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows.
Formatting your toshiba hard drive for mac is important, as it makes the hard drive best suitable for the mac by formatting it with the osspecific file system and drivers. In security options, move the slider to select how many times you want the system to erase over the data. So if you are formatting a drive that has already been used, be sure to copy any files you will ever want to see again onto a computer or backup drive. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. You can have problems with your mac refusing to format your elements drive if its not picked at the right level. You can check the progress by watching the formatting. How to format a hard drive for mac internal, external or.
The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at the same time and type in disk utility to find the program. This wikihow teaches you how to format your computers builtin hard drive. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Formatting an external hard drive will delete any information on the device, likewise reformatting your system will essentially bring your mac back to a clean factory state, thus removing all information youve stored on it. If you chose a quick format, your hard drive should only take several seconds to format. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. This is a great thing to do when you first purchase a drive or when you are looking to. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities.
On mac computers, use the finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. In this video we look at the process of formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or ssd on an apple computer. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems. Click the erase button or tab, then complete these fields. Well show you everything you need to know about the. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them.
This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through all connections, be they usb, firewire, or thunderbolt. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Select disk utility from the utilities window in macos recovery. Reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. You should already be in the utilities window after erasing your mac. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. 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 os.
First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. How to format an external drive for mac launch disk utility. Formatting a drive will erase all data and partitions on the disk. Formatting is a very simple procedure which is operated in a similar way for all sorts of storage media. Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for mac. Okay, so you may have a lot of files that you want to get rid of, but you definitely have some files you want to keep. Locate the drive name from the left hand side of disk utility and click on it click on the erase tab across the top next to format. Choose your wd elements external hard drive on your mac s external drives list. The yellow arrow in the internalexternal picture above shows you where to click.
Formatting an external hard drive or internal hard drive partition. You just need to know how to format external hard drive for ps4. How to format wd external drive for mac more less apple footer this site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community.
How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. 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. Step 2 on the left side of the utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. How to share an external drive between a mac and a pc. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Go through this article and find out the easiest way to format your toshiba drive for mac.
How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive step 1 back up your files. Click the current volume scheme drop down menu and. External hard drives use either spinning disks or solid memory to save your files. However, when you format your hard drive with super eraser for mac, all your data will be permanently lost.
Formatting and reformatting a hard drive or hard disk is an easy task if you know how. If you plan on formatting an external hard drive then make sure its plugged in an appears on your desktop. Rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. You cannot format the whole hard drive doing so would erase your operating systembut you can format a portion of the hard drive after creating a partition. Download doyourdata super eraser for mac, securely formatwipe fusion drive on mac by 1 click. Today im going to show you how to format any hard drive so you can use it to back up your mac as. During the formatting process, the system erases and writes over old data, preventing old information from being accessed through.
Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. Use the security options to format a previously used hard drive. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Make sure that the sidebar in disk utility shows the name of your startup disk.
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