- Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Partition
- Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Apple
- Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc On Windows 7
FonePaw - Solution - Eraser - Format A Hard Drive for MacOS
It is obviously that you can use Seagate external hard drive or flash drive with Mac and Windows computer as long as you format Seagate drive for Mac and PC. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve your goal. If you simply want to have a data drive that can be shared across Mac and PC just format the drive in ExFAT. External drives come partitioned, you simply want to reformat it with an ExFAT partition. Just make sure you are using SP1 or later in Vista to enable ExFAT. The problem is Windows uses NFTS and Mac uses HFS. Now, Windows can’t read HFS, and Mac can’t read NTFS. That’s why you should go for the FAT and exFAT filesystems. So now carefully read the tips guide below and format an external hard drive on Mac, Windows PC.
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.
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:
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
![Format external hard drive for mac and pc windows 8 Format external hard drive for mac and pc windows 8](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134054059/246647208.png)
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
![Format external hard drive for mac and pc exfat Format external hard drive for mac and pc exfat](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134054059/985092456.png)
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. 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.
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.
DownloadDownload
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.
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. Connected for life mack 10 letra. Android for mac photos. 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.
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.
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!
- Hot Articles
- macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra Installation is Stuck or Frozen [Fixed]
- SOLVED: White Screen on Mac Computer
- Mac Won't Turn On? Here Are Fixes
- RE: How to Fix MacBook Stuck on Loading Screen
- Mac Screen Goes Black? Here's Why and How
- How Can I Fix My MacBook Won't Shut Down
- Complete Guide to Format A Hard Drive on Windows 10/8/7
- Easiest Way to Recover Files from Formatted Hard Drive
- How to Format USB Drive and Recover Files After Formatted
Updated on January 7th, 2019
This article shows you how to format an external hard drive via different methods, and you can follow these methods to format external hard drive for PC, Mac or Linux.
External hard drive is popular storage device and it can be used to store all kinds of digital information such as images, documents, apps, emails, etc. You can connect external hard drive to computer via USB cable and then transfer data with internal hard drive. Regardless of the brand or model, the first thing you may need to do after purchasing an external hard drive might be partitioning and formatting it.
Formatting external disk can be done via various methods and it can be formatted to a range of file system so that you can use the disk under different operating system platforms. The formatting process removes all data on the partition and thus causes data loss. You should create a backup for important data before formatting if the disk contains significant files.
A brand-new external hard drive is usually partitioned into s single partition with NTFS file system. Still many users would like to format the external hard drives and people do that due to various reasons:
- Format external hard drive to required file system. The brand-new disk you purchase might not be formatted to the file system type you need. To change file system type, formatting should be done.
- To quickly remove content from external hard drive. Quick formatting is able to format a partition within seconds, and all data on the volume will be deleted. This is a good solution to delete data and free up disk space.
- To optimization performance for disk. Formatting can clear data fragmentation quickly and easily.
- Remove virus or malware. Since external hard drive might be used on many computers, it tends to infect virus. Many users would format it to clear virus and avoid more damages.
- To fix file system errors. Sometimes external hard drive may become RAW or reports errors like “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”, you can fix these errors by formatting the volume after file recovery.
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive with your computer and open Windows Explorer to check if it can be recognized.
Note: if you have stored data to the drive, please back it up before formatting the disk.
Step 2: Right-click on the external hard disk and select “Format” option from context menu.
Step 3: On the formatting window, select Quick Format option, choose file system format, and click Start. Also you can enter a name for the drive under Volume Label.
Step 4: System prompts formatting removes all data and asks confirmation for the action. Click OK and formatting starts.
This method formats external hard drive using Windows built-in utility Disk Management. If your external hard drive does not show up in Windows Explorer, you can follow this instruction to complete the formatting.
Step 1: Access Windows 10 Disk Management by right-clicking Start menu and selecting “Disk Management” item from the list.
Step 2: Locate the external hard drive in Disk Management and check its status.
If there is not partition on the disk or the disk is marked with Not Initialized, you cannot format it directly.
The next step assumes the external hard drive is full of unallocated space and shows how to format it.
Step 3: Right-click on unallocated disk space and select New Simple Volume from the context menu.
Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Partition
Step 4: You can see the “Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard” now. Click Next button to proceed.
Step 5: The wizard will ask you to select set partition size, drive letter, file system, format method, etc. step by step. You can follow suggested option to complete the process.
Want to use external hard drive under both Windows PC and Mac? In this case, you should consider the hurdle that these operating systems support different filesystems. The default file system in Windows is NTFS, while Mac OS users HFS. The filesystem that is compatible with Windows and Mac is exFAT and FAT32.
exFAT VS FAT32, which one should be chosen for Max and PC? It is recommended to use exFAT by many experts, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit and exFAT does not has such limitation, and exFAT also performs better than FAT32. FAT32 is also a good choice if you do not store files whose single size does not exceed 4GB.
FAT32 and exFAT file system is supported by Windows though, they are originally designed for removable storage devices like USB flash drive, SD card. When you try to format an external hard drive which has very large capacity in Windows, FAT32 or exFAT may not be available. Also, some users may encounter error “The volume is too big for FAT32”. In this section, we’ll use a free Windows partition manager to complete the formatting task.
Eassos PartitionGuru is free Windows partition manager and it supports various file systems such as FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, etc. and the formatting process is very simple.
Step 1: Install and launch Eassos PartitionGuru from your computer and find the external disk you want to format.
Step 2: Right-click on the partition to be formatted and select “Format Current Partition” option from context menu.
Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Apple
Step 3: Select Filesystem type from the drop-down list and click Format button.
Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc On Windows 7
Step 4: Click Yes button when Eassos PartitionGuru asks confirmation for the operation.
This part of this guide applies to format external or portable hard drive to Ext2, Ext3 or Ext4 file system under Windows 10/8/7, so that the drive can be used under Linux.
Step 1: Connect the portable drive to computer and launch Eassos PartitionGuru. Then you can see the drive is displayed in the software.
Step 2: Select the partition you want to format to Linux file system, and click “Format” button from toolbar.
Step 3: The Format window pops up and you can select Linux filesystem from Ext4, Ext3 and Ext3 from drop-down list. Then click Format button.
Step 4: Click Yes button to continue and formatting will be completed within a couple of seconds.