Mar 29, 2019  How to Format a Hard Drive on Mac to Work on Mac and PC. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both Mac and Windows by using the ExFAT file system. You can select the ExFAT format when using the Disk. Mar 22, 2012  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. Formatting erases all data on the drive. 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. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a Mac, please reference the following links: How to format a drive in Mac OS 10.6 to 10.10.

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.

Mar 12, 2019  Q: How hard is it to reformat the hard drive on a Mac computer? A: It’s very easy. There is only one rule that you need to keep in mind when reformatting a drive. You cannot reformat a volume when you are currently booted to an operating system on. Jul 05, 2017  To format a drive on a Mac, you’ll need the built-in Disk Utility application. Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search dialog, type “Disk Utility”, and press “Enter” to launch the app. You can also open a Finder window, select “Applications” in the sidebar, and head to Utilities. In order to do that you need to restart your Mac then hold the Command+R keys simultaneously after you hear the startup chime. From that menu you need to select the Disk Utility, where you can view a list of all volumes and partitions. Click on your hard drive, then choose the Partition tab on the right side. May 09, 2017  How To Use External Hard Drive on Mac Without Formatting As we have said earlier, OS X El Capitan or macOS Sierra cannot write to an NTFS (Windows) formatted drive, but it can read from it. There is a however a “driver” available which will allow your Mac to write to NTFS-formatted drives.

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:

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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.

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.

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. Updates for mac. 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.

How To Format A Hard Drive For Mac And Windows

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.

Mac Hard Drive Format Type

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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.

How To Format A Hard Drive For Mac Using Windows

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.

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.

How To Format A Hard Drive For Mac And Pc On Windows

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.

Macbook Hard Drive Format

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!

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