![]() Note: if your hard drive is not showing on the left panel, it must have been hidden. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”. The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. They might be different if your Mac is on a relatively new macOS version. Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on an older version of macOS. How to Format an External Drive for MacĪs explained above, you need to format your drive from NTFS to Mac OS Extended. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a third-party app which usually costs money. What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here you can read more on Wikipedia. It showed this format: Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS) I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac. It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”. When I opened it, the default content was all there. ![]() When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this. I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated it to the latest macOS. Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFSĭuring the last several years, I’ve used a few external drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others. How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac.How to Format an External Drive for Mac.Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS.Once this process has been completed, you will be able to successfully use the external drive. Choose the drive format you would like: exFAT or FAT32.Remember to properly eject the drive before disconnecting from the computer.Set the Volume Format to MS-DOS (FAT32).Navigate to Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility).Make a backup of ALL of your data contained on the drive.The drive will need to be recognized by the computer before the formatting can begin. Before you begin, make sure the drive is securely connected to the computer and powered on. This process will apply to USB, Firewire, and Thunderbolt hard drives and thumb drives, as well as SD cards. Some Mac applications may not run from the drive as FAT32 does not adequately handle the permissions structure of Mac OS X.While both computer platforms can read the FAT32 format, there are a few other things to keep in mind: Microsoft Windows can not read the Mac OS Extended file system format at all. Mac OS is able to read the Microsoft Windows file system format, however, it can not write to it. It is the commonly recommended volume format. The FAT systems, specifically FAT32, can be read by both Mac and PC computers. Mac OS Extended is exclusive to Apple Computers and NTFS is exclusive to Windows. Hard Drives can run in various different formats. Why Is It Important To Format Hard Drives? Modified on: Fri, 27 May, 2022 at 3:43 PM Solution home DJ System Optimization SSD/HDD Optimization Formatting a Hard Drive for DJ Performance
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |