Find the hard drive you want to format, and highlight it. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. The hard drives location within the mid2012 macbook pro is circled in red within the next photo. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, flash drive, or other storage device for mac. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. Alternatively, you can search in spotlight for disk utility and click on it. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Open disk management, the hard drive manager included with all. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Before continuing, make sure that you have a backup of any files that you want to keep. Format external hard drive with windows builtin tool. Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online.
How to format a startup drive for a mac if you want to format a drive that will be used as your macs startup disk, the procedure is a little different from formatting it for use as a secondary. For example, here wed type select disk 2 finally, type clean and press enter. If you have any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device. Just like windows, macos also gives us a seamless option to format hard drive for mac and pc. Connect your external hard drive to your windows 10 pc. For an instance, when you format macbook to invert the impacts of a virus, choose a time machine backup which was maintained before the installation of the virus on your macbook system. Release the keys when you see the apple logo, and until the. You will be prompted to either add an apfs volume or a partition. In disk utility on mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your mac.
Which mac file system is best for an external drive. The operating system has an inbuilt tool, which is known as disk utility. I did have to buy a special screw driver to get the brackets off my old hard drive and onto the new one. Name your disk and click erase you can now name your disk and then click on the erase option. This may be apfs, or it may be mac os extended journaled depending on how the drive is currently formatted and whether you using macos. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. Macbook hard drive was wiped installed macos base system and when trying to reinstall macos sierra hard disk is now locked, how do i unlock the hard disk to reinstall macos sierra. How to format a new internal ssd in macos high sierra. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. Disk utility on mac supports several file system formats.
From the format dropdown menu, select the mac os extended journaled option. How to identify and fix hard disk problems on a mac. Hard drive format software for mac mac disk format software. Once in the folder, youll see an application named disk utility, doubleclick on it to launch the program. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with. This process erases everything on the disk, including its files and all its partitions.
If you desire encryption, then select mac os extended journaled, encrypted. How to reset macbook pro or air if you are selling. While apfs is optimized for the flashssd storage used in recent mac computers, it can also be used with older systems with traditional hard disk drives hdd. Be sure to doublecheck this you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here. Then, to format a disk in mac os x or in macbook air running mac os sierra or high sierra you have to select your disk pen drive you want to format in the left panel of the disk utility and select. Now in this interface, you will see a format option. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac. Arrived on time and fit perfectly in my late 2009 macbook pro with a failed hard drive. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to. Disk utility can erase disks, add volumes, check disks for errors, and more. How to format a disk in macbook air and mac os sierra or.
What disk utility looks like in lion through yosemite. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving. Disk utility will automatically choose the format for you. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Disk utility is a smart hard drive format tool built in mac system. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. To erase this partition, well have to wipe the entire disk. How to hard reset macbook pro or air and reinstall macos x.
You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management. To make it easier for users to format macbook entirely, apple has come up with an inbuilt tool disk utility. File system formats available in disk utility on mac apple support. Erasing a disk or volume permanently deletes all of its files. The volume your mac started up from is named macintosh hd, unless. Youve just removed your hard disk, which is still working we hope. Dont click the format disk button or windows will erase the contents of the driveclick cancel. You can do that by typing disk format or disk management in windows search or going to control panel administrative tools create and format hard disk. Using apples free disk utility app, you can easily format the drive, give it a label, or even.
For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac, you should erase your entire disk. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. B if the ssd is not showing up terminal sould be used to format the drive, which is outlined in the remaining steps. Format external hard drive or usb drive for mac easeus. You can try connecting the sata to usb cable you used to format and transfer data to the new. Then proceed to highlight your computers hard drive. When prompted, select the mac os extended journaled format. Use the disk utility application to erase the drive. Download disk formatting software for mac doyourdata.
Seagate backup plus slim 1tb external hard drive portable hdd black usb 3. Just run it on your mac, it will show all the hard drives and external devices on your mac. The mac exhibits all the same symptoms as a failed hard drive. With my previous laptops pcs, ive always stored my data on an external hard drive. How to replace and upgrade a macbook pro hard disk. To format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Note, the photo shows the new ssd drive installed in place of the old 5400rpm traditional hard. Rightclick on the start button and select disk management on the popup menu. How to fix a corrupted external hard drive on macmacbook. To reset a macbook, turn it on and immediately hold down one of these. Uses the apfs format and is casesensitive to file and folder names. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want.
Follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista, or windows xp. The 4 disk formatting software for mac above can help you easily format hard drive, usb flash drive, memory. The macbook and macbook pros come with an ssd to store data and an os. Heres how to format a drive if you are planning to use it with a mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. To learn how to format in mac your hard drive, follow these steps. Now, i have a new macbook pro and all my data is still on that external hd. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed on the lefthand sidebar. Select your time machine backup disk, then select the time machine backup you want restored. Then you can choose one of the hard drive and format it by click on format button.
Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. How to create a partition on your mac to install macos. Once the format is complete the ssd is ready for the os to be installed. If you have a macbook pro, the ribbon cable that connects the hard drive to the rest of the computer can go bad. Set the format type to mac os extended journaled, and then enter a name for the hard drive that will be reformatted. In this video we look at the process of formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or ssd on an apple computer. Apfs apple file system this is the new file system that apple bought to macs with high sierra and it will be the default if you are using that. Follow the steps to format your toshiba hard drive for mac step 1 connect your toshiba hard drive to your mac using a compatible medium and make sure the connection remains uninterrupted. Open the disk utility app on your mac using one of the following methods, depending on the type of disk or volume you want to erase.
You can do that by typing disk format or disk management in windows search or going to control panel administrative tools create and format. Using it, you can erase a hard drive, create new partitions, and even repair your disk as well. Format usb or external hard drive for mac using mac disk utility format usb or external hard drive for mac on windows pc using thirdparty usb format tool. This tutorial will install the latest os x yosemite on your mac. Erase and reformat a storage device in disk utility on mac. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions whether. For example, folders named homework and homework are two. Just select the one you want to format and click on the erase tab. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. Open the disk management tool by rightclicking this pc. By default, its the disk built into your mac, named macintosh hd. When you use a hard disk drive, time machine will take a while to back up your mac.
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