- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc On A Mac
- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Both Mac And Pc
How to format using FAT: Open disk Utility on your Mac. (Find it quickly with Spotlight, click on Magnifying glass and start typing Disk Utility.) Select the drive you wish to format. Select the “Erase” tab in Disk Utility. Select MS-DOS (FAT) from the drop down box. Click Erase and follow the prompts. Let it finish, and you’re done. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both Mac and Windows by using the ExFAT file system. You can select the ExFAT format when using the Disk Utility to format the drive. The ExFAT format supports virtually any size hard drive and file, unlike the outdated FAT32 format. Step 1, Click the menu. It’s usually at the bottom-left corner of the screen. This method will delete all of the data on your hard drive and replace it with its original factory settings. Make sure to back up your data before you begin.Step 2, Click Settings. It’s near the bottom of the menu.Step 3, Click Update & security.
Oct 15,2019 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
External hard drives are the storage devices used to store and retrieve digital information, personal and official data like files, documents and other stuff. These are attached to systems through FireWire or USB connection or wirelessly to transfer data from the internal drive to hard disk drives. If you are looking for new operating system or selling your old computers or laptops, then you need to set up an external hard drive for backups by erasing and formatting the existing data in the storage devices.
Part 1: How to Format an External Hard Drive on Windows
The Windows users who are going to format external hard drive for the first time, they will get complete information and stepwise procedure of formatting drives.
Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Windows:
- Before formatting an external hard drive on Windows, back up all the informational data like files, music and official data into safe place.
- To format an external hard drive, plug in the device into system or a wall outlet.
- After plug in hard drive into the system, you will get option to open Windows Explorer and by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your hard drive get attached to your system.
- When you will do right click on the hard drive icon, you will get option to choose 'Format'?.
- After that, you can opt any file system that you want to use for the operating systems.
- Mention your hard drive with a name under Volume Label and check out the Quick Format box.
- To initiate the formatting process, click on the start button and within a few seconds, you will get notification when the process get completed.
- Open the hard drive in Windows Explorer and start dragging documents and files into it.
Follow the stepwise procedure to format an external hard drive and make sure it will not show similar free space as it displays on the box as the systems determine the space differently as it is marked on the box.
Video Tutorial on How to Format External Hard Drive
Part 2: How to Format an External Drive on Mac
Mac users can select any file system that supports their operating system. In order to format an external drive on Mac, you can follow stepwise procedure as discussed below:
Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Mac:
- Before starting storage device formatting process, you need to backup all informational data in a separate folder for the future use.
- Plug in the storage drive into Mac.
- The drive when get connected to the system, you can see the storage device icon on the screen.
- Now open the finder and check out the applications/utilities. After that, operate double click on the disk utility.
- To format external hard drive, opt your storage device in the left hand sidebar and click on the erase tab.
- After that, you will see format menu where you can select the file system that are compatible with your operating system.
- Describe or provide a specific name to your drive and click on erase button. Within a short time span, your storage device will get formatted.
- When you are done with the formatting process, click on the hard drive in the finder and initiate the dragging process or you can also set up as a backup storage device with Time Machine.
![Hard Hard](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134133110/478114695.png)
By following the stepwise procedure mentioned above, you can easily format the storage device on Mac.
What is External Hard Drive Formatting Process?
Formatting external hard drives is a process of deleting or erasing the memory chunks to avail the space for new data. Formatting can be performed at two stages: low level and high level process. Formatting may take few hours to wipe out the existing data, but the process can be hassle-free if you get to know about stepwise instructions of how to format an external hard drive.
Low level formatting is the first process of wiping out data and existing files in the hard disk devices and at the high level, a new file system is generated. Technically, it is the process of writing a new directory structure which allows the documents and files to be overwritten and create space for the new data.
Before formatting external hard drives, backup all important data that you are going to format. Most external hard devices come with backup software that will make process much easier to do. If you have documents, music, photos saved elsewhere on computer then make sure you have copied all stuff before formatting. Remember once all the data get formatted, it will not be recovered at any cost.
File System Explained:
Before proceeding to format external hard drive, you need to know about file systems which are particularly associated with the operating systems. File systems are the key parts of translation from the physical data recording on a hard drive to the files that are read by operating systems only.
Various operating systems like Mac, Windows, Linux and OS X have different file systems to organize and store digital information. The most popular file systems are as discussed below:
- NTFS (New Technology File System): NTFS is developed by Microsoft, started with Windows NT 3.0. It is also known as Window's default file system. Microsoft has launched five versions of NTFS: v1.0 released with Windows NT 3.1, v1.2 with Windows 3.51, v3.0 with Windows 2000, v3.1 and v5.0 with Windows XP. The latest version includes many features like disk usage quotas, link tracking distribution, reparse points, file-level encryption and sparse file support. Windows can write and read to NTFS formatted hard drives while OS X and Linux can read only but can't write unless it is supported by third party devices like NTFS-3G. It has maximum 16 TB file size and 256 TB volume size.
- FAT 32 (File Allocated Table): It was designed in year 1977 for floppy disks and three major file systems variants are: FAT12, FAT16 and FAT 32. The older version of FAT was quite simple and robust. FAT32 has come up with the increased number of bits which is used to address clusters. It also helps to reduce each cluster size due to which it will have great storage capacity and effectively support the large disks up to 2 TB. It can be written and read to by Linux, OS X and Windows. FAT32 offers maximum 4GB file size and 2 TB volume size.
- ExFAT (Extended File Allocated Table): It is quite similar to FAT32 and is less commonly used. ExFAT can store up to 4GB files which make it perfect for flash drives. ExFat formatted drives can be read and written by OS X and Windows.
- HFS Plus (Hierarchical File System): It is developed by Apple Inc. It serves as primary file system of OS X and also known as Mac OS Extended. For those who are operating Windows on Mac with Boot Camp, they can read HFS plus hard drives but can't write to them. However, third party tools like Paragon HFS+ assist the users to write and read to HFS+ drives. HFS plus offers 8 EiB maximum file size and volume size.
These are the popular file systems for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. For those who are running Windows computer, they can format hard drive as NTFS and for the Mac users; ExFAT will be the best and reliable option. Before formatting external hard drives, make sure you have created backup for the all important digital data. Nowadays, it is also possible to convert hard drive without losing any>Recover Your Drive
HomeHow ToMacOSHow to Format External Hard Drive for Mac and PC
You can format an external hard drive or USB so that it’s compatible for both your Mac and your Windows PC.
Without formatting the drive, you won’t be able to use your hard drive across different operating systems.
When you do format a hard drive, you’ll be able to access your data, media and files across any operating system.
This is extremely handy if you use a Mac and Windows operating system because you’ll be able to cross between both platforms and use your USB on anyone.
Remember that everything gets wiped off your hard drive when you format it, so you’ll need to back it up before you follow the steps down below.
Let’s get started…
Format Using MS-DOS FAT
The good thing about changing the format to FAT is that it works with all Macs and PCs, plus it uses less memory and it works faster.
The negatives of using Fat is that it can’t contain files bigger than 4GB.
To format your hard drive to FAT on Mac:
- Click on Spotlight and open Disk Utility
- Click on the USB drive you want to format
- Click the Erase tab at the top
- Choose the MS-DOS (FAT) in the format drop down
- Click Erase and follow the prompts
- Your external hard drive to now formatted
Remember that once you’ve formatted your hard drive, it will get wiped so you’ll need to backup the content on your external drive.
If you’re using a USB, you can simply drag its contents to a folder in your PCs hard drive and upload it back to your external hard drive once it has been formatted.
Format Using ExFAT
The good about formatting to exFAT is that it can handle unlimited file sizes and partition sizes.
The cons of exFAT are that you can only use it with Mac OS X 10.6.5 or newer and your Windows PC needs to be either Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7 and above.
Another problem with exFAT is that it’s extremely slow so moving files to this drive will take several minutes.
To Format using exFAT on Windows PC:
- Plug in your external hard drive in Windows PC
- Open File Explorer
- Right-click on your external drive and select Format
- Choose exFAT in the menu
- Click Start
- Your external drive is now formatted
After formatting your drive, it’s now compatible for both your Mac and your Windows PC.
Fat is the best option to use because you can use it on any OS, however, it can only contain 4GB which may not be enough for you.
If you have a new OS system, I’d definitely recommend exFAT because it can contain unlimited data.
Bottom Line
Going into Disk Unity then clicking the erase tab is the quickest way to format an external drive on your MAC.
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc On A Mac
If you have any questions or you’re having any problems, comment down below and I’ll help you further.
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Both Mac And Pc
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