Jan 04, 2012 smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. Well, after some analysis it seems your best option is some recover for mac. However, when we connect a ntfs formatted disk to mac, mac os x doesnt allow us to write files to the drive neither edit files, though it can read a ntfs drive. Apr 15, 2020 how to perform ps4 external hard drive format. Apart from formatting the internal drive, we have also listed a smart solution to format external devices as well. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Mar 29, 2019 how to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. You can get to know how to reformat wd hard drive for mac and pc from this post, if you need to use a western digital external hard drive, like wd elements both under mac and pc. Jan 15, 2020 learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods.
Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make. 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. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Run mac os x on an appletv with an external hard drive how to. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided. Youll want to do it before you sell your machine, for sure, but its also one of the steps you take when you. So if youre trying to connect an external hard drive to a mac, you might. 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. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. To format a drive on a mac, youll need the builtin disk utility application. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your backup files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. How hard is it to reformat the hard drive on a mac computer. You can say no and just copy files off the drive onto your mac.
Understanding hard drive partitioning with disk management. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Select the drive you want to reformat in the lefthand sidebar and go to the erase tab. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with. If it were you, would you go ahead and replace the hard drive.
Simply put, your ps4 isnt recognizing the file system of your drive, which is most probably ntfs. Open disk utility by clicking finder applications utilities and finally click disk utility. Go through this article and find out the easiest way to format your toshiba drive for mac. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. You are ready to go in a few quick measures, so you can transfer your backup data to the hard disk, keep your documents safe so give you peace of mind. Choose the hard drive that you want to format or reformat. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag.
How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Aug 30, 2016 this is an article for mac, it is erasing a hard drive from a mac command line, it is not a windows tutorial. It is not as complicated to reformat an external hard drive for use with mac os x as it may look. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the operating system that you are using. After you connect an external drive to your mac, open the applications folder from the finder window. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with your computer.
There will be an opportunity to click an options button to save existing files. In fact, aomei partition assistant has more powerful features, such as migrate os to ssd, resizemove partition, command line partition etc. 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. Feb 27, 2018 before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. The disk utility application is located in the utilities subfolder. Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Mar 10, 2020 how to format hard drive and fix disk format errors on your mac errors can damage your hard disk and prevent it from functioning properly. Before you sell, donate your mac computer, youd better format the fusion drive and permanently erase the sensitive data on the fusion drive. Select disk utility from the utilities window in macos recovery. 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. When youve plugged in your toshiba drive for the first time your mac may well ask you to format the drive.
How to reformat an external hard drive for a mac techwalla. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive step 1 back up your files. Time machine, however, gives you the possibility to create an automatic backup of the data on your hard drive before formatting. Feb 03, 2020 use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. There is only one rule that you need to keep in mind when reformatting a drive. You can select the exfat format when using the disk. Insert the mac os x install disc and restart your computer while holding down. Since formatting an external hard drive will erase all of its files if you wish to save them you must back them up copy. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities.
Before continuing, make sure that you have a backup of any files that you want to keep. Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for mac. Format external hard drive for mac reformat external hard. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac.
Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system. With aomei partition assistant, you can reformat to fat32 or reformat to ntfs file system as well. In this post, youll learn how to format an external drive to a mac compatible file system and recover files from a reformatted hard drive. Again, formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep. Keep in mind that a mac can generally read other file formats, but for the best performance. In this tutorial, i will show you how to reformat the hard drive in your mac and reinstall os x for that factory fresh finish.
Reformatting an external hard drive for mac step 1. Heres how to format a drive if you are planning to use it with a mac. In this video we look at the process of formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or ssd on an apple computer. If you work solely on a mac, but need to send files to someone working on a pc, your external hard drive needs to be set up for both operating systems. Click the erase tab, choose a volume format from the dropdown menu and then type a. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. How do i reformat my imac internal hard drive and restore from a time machine backup.
How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. You just need to know how to format external hard drive for ps4. Lets take a look at the different types of formats, and which are best for video production. Many people think it is hard to format the windows drive on macintosh. This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through. For example, if you need to reinstall mac os x on a macbook in your office and. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. An external hard drive for ps4 provides a handy option to store games with ample storage space.
Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. Your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. Launch disk utility and then click to select the external hard drive listed on the left. All your job, all your files and all your pictures went poof. Formatting the hard drive a vast majority of video production will be done on a mac or windows operating system, so we arent going to cover linux. 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. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. If i do this, wont i lose my networkability, and therefore lose access to time machine backups.
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. This post will teach you how to format your macs hard disk and fix common errors. Erase the mac partitions, including the efi system partition. Backup files, reformat disk and restore backed up files. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community. Formatting a fusion drive is simple, but if you also want to permanently erase data on the fusion drive, it becomes a bit complicated. How to properly format reformat a hard drive for mac os. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows.
Aug 30, 2019 today this video will show you how to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. The below steps for formatting external drive is for windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of windows. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. However, you need to reformat external hard drive or internal ssdhdd if it was partitioned before. Now ntfs works fine with computers and is the standard file system, but for some reasons, developers decided that the ps4 wont support this file system. To format your external drive hard drive in windows which works with both platforms, first plugin your drive with windows machine. A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for pc windows or for mac. For instance, is the hard drive internal or external.
How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both mac and windows by using the exfat file system. Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. And you should now see your toshiba external hard drive on your desktop. No worry, actually it is not impossible to realize it no matter you use an external or internal drive of your windows system. It is essential to know which file system ps4 supports and the method to do ps4 external hard drive form. Should i select erase, mac os extended journaled, erase. To save important data on the hard drive, please backup disk beforehand. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been formatted for a mac when i plug it into my pc i cant access it. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. No matter what motivation you have, the question, how to reformat a hard dr ive, is much more important now. Sep 12, 2019 easy and fast, the question, how to reformat a hard drive, has been solved completely.
Create a bootable install usb drive of mac os x 10. How to format a hard drive using the command prompt toms. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. 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. How to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. Dec 29, 2015 your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. How you format a mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. How to format hard drive and fix disk format errors on mac. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. And it also wipes out all the bugs and harmful files that might harm your mac. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc.
We here will show you the full guides on how to format fat32 and ntfs drives on mac as an example. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. I was a windows user and i dont know to how to format a hard drive under macos 10. Erasing a disk or volume permanently deletes all of its files. How to format an external drive for mac compatibility. Make sure that the sidebar in disk utility shows the name of your startup disk. You cannot reformat a volume when you are currently booted to an operating system on. There may be occasions, however, when you want to reformat your mac s hard drive.
Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Open finder and choose applications utilities disk utility to launch the app on your mac. You can, however, format a windows hard drive from a mac if you connect the windows hard drive to the mac and format it through disk utility, or the command line as described above. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. If you are trying to format mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step. 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. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. Proceed based on whether youre erasing your startup disk or some other disk. Format external hard drive for mac reformat external. Have you ever wondered how to reformat, partition and readytouse an external mac hard drive. Now you can easily format hard drive for mac and pc like a pro, without facing any trouble. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. Connect the external drive or the usb drive to the mac. Most external hard drives are designed to work for windows computers.
339 348 1669 1474 1077 555 1404 1191 439 172 381 990 1318 1450 1623 299 537 1294 1480 1412 504 1585 41 1051 382 354 1497 704 456 1402 164 1206 621 500 740 365 611 1448 277 204