- How to format my hard drive for windows and mac how to#
- How to format my hard drive for windows and mac mac os x#
- How to format my hard drive for windows and mac mac os#
- How to format my hard drive for windows and mac pro#
- How to format my hard drive for windows and mac software#
How to format my hard drive for windows and mac how to#
You’ll find an article that shows you how to do it right here on the site. And you want to format and partition your drive. When you have a new hard drive that’s a decent size. What If I Want To Partition A New Hard Drive For Windows And Mac? Run a check on your external hard drive to make sure all is well with it. And it’s all ready for you to use.Īnd when you’re ready to pack your drive away be sure to Eject your drive first.Ĭlick on ‘First Aid’ at the top of your pop up window. You’ll see it with the name you’ve given it underneath. Your drive’s icon will show up on your Mac’s desktop. But of course your external hard drive is way bigger. When formatted you can use your drive just as you would a USB stick. You’ve formatted your external disk drive On Your Mac. You can then dismiss the Disk Utility window. And once done your external drive is ready for you to use. Your Mac will take a few minutes to format a hard drive. The red arrows in the picture show you where you can find the format and scheme list of options. Still pick GUID Partition Map for your Mac. Then format again.ĪPFS will come up as an option you can pick the second time round.
How to format my hard drive for windows and mac mac os#
Pick Mac OS Extended (Journaled) the first time you format. Can’t See APFS (Apple File System) As An Option? Or you’ll have all sorts of odd problems using your drive later on your Mac. Your Mac needs the GUID Partition Map scheme. So, don’t use for OS X versions older than that.) 6. (APFS support for Time Machine was only available since Mac OS Big Sur. Pick ExFAT if you want your drive read and writeable by both Mac and a Windows PC.Īll the above formats allow you to copy and paste from your Mac to your drive.ĭrag and drop any file to your external hard drive.īut only APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) can you use for a backup of your Mac with Time Machine. Because you can’t read an APFS external drive on those older Mac operating system versions.
How to format my hard drive for windows and mac mac os x#
But you can format your hard drive as APFS if you want.īut not for a Mac running a Mac OS X version that’s earlier than Sierra. Mac OS X Extended is the file format that’s the most compatible with newer and older Macs. Your drive will have a USB type A cable end. The last thing you want is your Mac running out of power part way through formatting. Particularly if your external hard drive is one powered by its USB cable.
How to format my hard drive for windows and mac pro#
Log In And Connect Your External Hard Drive.Ĭharge your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air or connected it to power. Ready for your walk through? Let’s format your drive. Then read my article “ External Hard Drive Compatible with Mac & PC without Reformatting” to find out how to do that. And if they are important files you’ll be seeking the services of a data recovery company to recover data.īut, if you’d prefer not to reformat your drive. Because after formatting those files will be gone. And you want to use that software.Ĭopy those files off first.
How to format my hard drive for windows and mac software#
Or you know that your brand new external hard drive comes with software installed on it. If the drive you want to format has files on it. Or reformatting an external hard disk for your Mac means you’ll lose any files already on the drive.įor instance. If these are very important files, you can also back them up to a (paid) cloud storage service using something like DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or iCloud Drive.Formatting. If you store these files on one external hard drive, you should use a second external hard drive for the Time Machine backups, and configure Time Machine to backup the first external hard drive. Data corruption can occur as well, turning the contents into an unrecoverable mess. After the fourth year of ownership/usage, hard drive failure rates skyrocket. If these are important files, you should always keep two copies of them at an absolute minimum (three is strongly recommended.) External hard drives fail all of the time for many different reasons, sometimes without warning, and hardware data recovery can range from $400-3,000 per incident. This, while free, is not a good idea as this is an experimental feature that is not predictable, and data loss while using this feature has been reported.) (4 - enable OS X's experimental NTFS write support. (3 - use a cloud storage service to act as a temporary storage medium ) (Some strong opinions exist on the practicality of using Apps for NTFS write support.) IMO, this is less ideal than option number 1. Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced.Ģ - purchase an App like Tuxera, Fuse, or Paragon that allows you to read and write to NTFS drives. I agree with others - you have two viable options:ġ - purchase a second hard drive, format the new hard drive in HFS+, transfer the files from the NTFS drive into the new HFS+ external, and then format the old NTFS drive to HFS+, ExFAT, or FAT32.