Dec 29, 2015 the instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as well. Solve external hard drive not showing up in windows 10. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. Format your external drive with exfat for both mac and. Then click the second partition, name it mac, and change its format to mac os extended journaled.
A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. Format external hard drive with multiple partitions easeus. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods revealed. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. Apple mac machines support a different file system. It should show up on the left panel under external. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. The posts title pretty much spells out what im trying to do.
With large capacity, external hard drive, also called portable hard drive, is always used to store or back up data. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. Make sure your external hard drive is attached and mounted to. Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. Rightclick in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select new simple volume. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem.
I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. Your first step to using your toshiba external drive on your mac is to plug your toshiba drive in. Continue below to format an external hard drive or learn more about disk management. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. Jan 17, 2019 starting clean how to format new hard drive on windows 10 formatting is an essential task before starting to use a new drive, and in this guide, well show you how to do it on windows 10.
Sep 16, 2019 the data stored in the hard disk obviously overvalues the disk itself. 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. For example, formatting typically removes most of the data on a drive, making it a quicker way to erase a large drive than simply deleting everything on it. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities.
Apr 17, 2020 to format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. To make it compatible with both macos and windows, you need to reformat the external hard drive. But dont forget to back up your important data in the drive into a safe place before formatting. If this is the case for you, rightclick the drive you want to format and click initialize disk. First, connect the external drive to your computer using the usb port. How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. 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 reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. Now, click on the top partition, name it windows, and change its format to msdos.
Choose erase hard drive option, and you should see a list of the drives connected to your pcmac including the external hard drive you want to reformat. Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for mac. This will prompt a new window asking you to select a partition style for your disk. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. Do you save backups of your hard drive onto an external hard drive. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system. Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on mac. Lacie setup assistant helps you to quickly format the storage device according to your needs. But you occasionally might need to format one yourself. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. If the external hard drive is pre formatted for mac, disk management will list 3 partitions and you will not be able to delete the health efi system partition because its a protected partition.
How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. Moving files from mac formatted external hard drive to pc i have an external hard drive where i moved all of my mac photos to. To save important data on the hard drive, please backup disk beforehand. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. How to reformat an internal or external hard drive on windows.
Erase files, erase hard drive, and erase free space. Dec, 2019 you can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. Both fat32 and exfat can be used on windows pc and mac. There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions.
But somehow, macos doesnt allow you to write data to the drive. It is not as complicated to reformat an external hard drive for use with mac os x as it may look. This file system is specifically for mac systems and windows cant read this file system. I need to free up some space on my pcs windows hdd and that requires me to find a way to move stuff onto an external hard drive i have that is formatted for use with my macbook.
However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. Thats all because its been initialized with windows nt file system ntfs, which is primarily for pcs. Remember, this will erase all the files on the drive. In this guide i will show you how you can properly format reformat a hard drive for mac os. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Dont think the formatting will delete everything on external hard drive, it data still remain the hard drive waiting for next data and easily be recovered by some free data recovery, this article gives three ways to delete files on hard drive. Feb 21, 2012 looking to share an external hard drive between a mac and pc. Formatting an external hard drive will delete any information on the device, likewise reformatting your system will essentially bring your mac back to. There are a number of tools that can help you in this regard. Click the file menu and select load file system from device. How to convert mac only external hdd to windows compatible. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Locate your external drive from the list of devices and drives.
As the default file system in windows, it can only read by mac os, writing to it is not available. Then click the second partition, name it mac, and change its format to mac os extended. Sometimes, users need to use the same external hard drive interchangeably on mac and pc. Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. You can use your toshiba canvio drive as a destination for your time machine backups but you can only use drives formatted as mac os extended journaled file system for a time machine backup. If youre going to be using the drive with a version of windows prior to windows vista, youre going to want to go with mbr. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. If youre using an imac, you may find the usb ports on the side of your keyboard or on the back of the imacs screen. In most case, external hard drive or second hard drive will present automatically after connected to your computer. How to format an external hard drive for windows 10. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. Choose the external hard drive and click erase button at the bottom of the screen. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive.
While most external hard drives are already designed to work for windows computers, there are times when you need to reformat one. If you see the drive is ntfs then youll either need to reformat the drive or use a ntfs driver. Writing to a macformatted external hard drive on windows. 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. 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. From what i understand, windows doesnt always like the way mac s do the formatting on some larger drives, though, so give it a try and if your windows machines dont like it, just format the drive with windows. The reason is perhaps that seagate external hard drive has been well known for a long time as one of the most reliable drives for storing data. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Understanding hard drive partitioning with disk management.
Luckily, there are thirdparty tools to help you do so. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. Use the exfat file system and never format your external. 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. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. Follow the below instructions to format your usb or hard drive to exfat file system. A lot of people including you, storing important data on seagate external hard drive instead of on your pc mac hard drive. To format your external drive hard drive in windows which works with both platforms, first plugin your drive with windows. Give your settings a final lookover and click apply. Sep 12, 2019 what you need to do first is wiping hard drive. 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.
How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Is there any way i can reformat the hd to work on my pc without losing the movie. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Be absolutely sure you have your files off the drive and that youve selected the correct drive you want to format. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. This this tutorial should work just the same on windows 7 and windows 10. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc.
Formatting a hard drive for windows will be discussed in another article. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. I now have a pc with windows 10, but i cant find a way to save the photos onto my computer. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers. 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. I have an external hard drive which is formatted for mac and has been loaded with movies stored on a mac computer. In this video i help you guys convert your mac only external hdd into a windows compatible one. Format your western digital my passport external hard drive to fat32 or exfat format so to transfer the data between a mac and windows system conveniently. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both windows and mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with windows pc and mac. Erase the mac partitions, including the efi system partition. Using your toshiba external hard drive to backup to. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex.
The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. You might want a drive that works with macs and pcs, or maybe you want to partition it, which will split it up into two different formats. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without. Buying an external hard drive is one of the best options for adding the storage space to the mac computer system. To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between mac and pc, you need to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. Aborted lacie setup assistant while it was formatting. Can you reformat it without losing all of your data. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. How to properly format a new hard drive on windows 10. 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.
However, you have to reformat the drive to make it functional with your mac computer. Mar 31, 2020 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. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. Oct, 2015 in this video i demonstrate how to reformat an external hard drive in windows 88. 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. Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer internal ones or external ones connected via usb. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it.
Right click the start button to open disk management, look for the device in the drive map by scrolling down to find it by size. There are specific thirdparty systems, like digital camcorders, and sony playstation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either fat32 or exfat format to perform read from and. Format mac hard drive with time machine formatting an external hard drive with time machine is as easy as formatting it with disk utility. Though this format has some limitations, it enjoys nearly universal support. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. Meanwhile, the performance of the hard disk greatly affects the computer operation and the users experience. However, you need to reformat external hard drive or internal ssdhdd if it was partitioned before.
Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard drive so make sure you back up your data elsewhere before starting. No matter what motivation you have, the question, how to reformat a hard drive, is much more important now. Sep 17, 2019 right click on your toshiba external hard drive icon and pick get info from the menu. Looking to share an external hard drive between a mac and pc. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. A drive can be formatted with exfat using either a windows or a mac computer. The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as fat32.
To access the disk management tool, click the windows icon and type disk management. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. While you have bought this drive, you will find the drive already formatted for your mac or windows system. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Jul 21, 2017 most hard drives come preformatted and ready to use these days.
Follow onscreen prompts to choose mac os extended journaled file system and allow the disk to format. Will formatting an external hard drive erase everything. Some hard drives may also include drivers, firmware, or format wizards so be sure to check the user manual before formatting the hard drive. How to share an external drive between a mac and a pc. Format external hard drive for mac reformat external hard. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step. Feb 08, 2020 so, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable ssd and wanted to use it on your mac. Insert the drives usb cable into one of the thin, rectangular slots in your computers casing. From what i understand, windows doesnt always like the way macs do the formatting on some larger drives, though, so give it a try and if your windows machines dont like it, just format the drive with windows. Starting clean how to format new hard drive on windows 10 formatting is an essential task before starting to use a new drive, and in this guide, well show you how to do it on windows 10. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as well. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side.
You can use lacie setup assistant to format your lacie hard drive when it is first connected to a computer mac or windows. Jan 04, 2012 smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. If you are a windows 10 user, do you know how to reformat an internal or external hard drive. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first. But what happens if that drive becomes corrupted, and you have to reformat it to make it accessible again. How to use same external usb or hard disk with mac and.
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