Reformatting an external hard drive for use with MAC OSX is not as difficult as it might seem. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your back-up files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. Here's how to format a drive using a Mac - including how to format a drive for Windows and Mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for Time Machine. There are all. Possible Solutions to Format Hard Drive on Mac 1. How to Format External Hard Drive/Disk on Mac using Disk Utility? If you are using an external hard drive, or even an SD Card or a USB stick, make sure that it is properly connected to your computer via the appropriate port.
What is the best file system for USB or external hard drive on Mac?
Windows and Mac OS X use different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format.
So, if you want to use a USB flash drive or an external hard drive with NTFS format on Mac, you should first reformat the devices to the Mac OS Extended file system. It is the best way to ensure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk.
Usually, FAT32 which can be read and wrote on Mac is recommended for maximum compatibility. And if you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and Windows computers, exFAT or MS-DOS (FAT) is better.
How to format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac
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But how can you format USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? Don’t worry! This page will show you two ways to do this job:
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac disk utility
Format USB or external hard drive for Mac on Windows PC using third-party USB format tool
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Now, you can follow these two solutions to format any hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, SSD or any other external storage drive so as to make them work on your Mac now.
Method 1. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using Mac Disk utility
How To Format An External Hard Drive
Windows offers users built-in disk management tool to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac.
- 1. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer.
- 2. Launch the Disk Utility by clicking 'Applications' > 'Utilities'.
- 3. Locate and click on your USB or external hard drive in Disk Utility and then click on 'Erase'.
- 4. Next to 'Format', click the contextual menu and select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.
- 5. Reset the drive name and click 'Erase', confirm the operation on the next pop-up window.
- Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get compatible HFS+ file system on your external hard drive or USB, which will make your device compatible and workable on your Mac.
Method 2. Format USB or external hard drive for Mac using third-party USB format tool on a Windows PC
Formatting A Hard Drive For Mac And Windows
If you need a simpler format tool to format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 to make them work on Mac, you can apply a third-party format tool to format them on Windows PC. EaseUS partition software is a popular disk partition management tool which is available for all hard disk related jobs such as format disk partition, extend system partition, settle low disk space problem.
Now you can try it to format USB or external hard drive on your Windows PC by following the steps below. If you stored important data on the USB or external hard drive, you can try this tool to convert NTFS to FAT32 without formatting.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
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Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
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Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
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After this, you can connect your external hard drive/USB to Mac computer and use it to save data by then.