Find the hard drive you want to format, and highlight it. Formatting hard drive in mac os 9 setup apple community. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. As complicated as that might sound, its not really difficult to format a hard drive in any version of windows. How to recover data from formatted external hard drive on mac.
Choose mac os extended journaled partition for the volume format. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. Format your external drive with exfat for both mac and. Dont worry, the top 5 disk formatting tools bellow are 100% safe disk formatting tool for windows or mac os. The program can be applied in various data loss situations, for example, system crash, hard drive formatting, virus attack, partition loss, and other unknown reasons in mac os x. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Ive ordered a usb to sata cable to format the drive from another mac, but can i format the drive, as os x extended journaled, in windows. Power on the computer while holding down the option key. Once disk utility is open youll see the list of available drives on the left. Step one if your hard drive is an external drive, connect it to the computer. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with.
How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. You can also open a finder window, select applications in the sidebar, and head to utilities disk utility. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Formatting the hard drive a vast majority of video production will be done on a mac or windows operating system, so we arent going to cover linux. How to install os x after formatting your hard drive. Erase mac hard drive when you erase a hard drive, you basically format ntfs on mac and change the format to a compatible one like afps or mac os x extended journaled.
Launch disk utility and then click to select the external hard drive listed on the left. This wikihow teaches you how to format your computers builtin hard drive. How to format an external disk or a flash drive for mac. To format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Fat32 is the crossplatform format for windows and mac os x.
Accidentally, you formatted the hard drive on your mac. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. Open finder and choose applications utilities disk utility to launch. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex. The format is good for handling the files between both os under 4gb size. Partitioning a hard drive is the process of dividing a hard drive into separate, discrete sections, called volumes. The format apple support for mac owners for time machine is mac os extended journaled. If youre preparing a mac for resale or troubleshooting a misbehaving machine, you might opt to format your mac s hard drive. Create a bootable install usb drive of mac os x 10. If its an internal drive partition then it should also appear in. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. When the installer screen appears, do not click continue.
When done, quit disk utility to return to the utilities window. Your mac can boot from the cd with no hard drive at all. Here are the following most common reasons why would you like to format an external disk or a flash drive for mac under mac os extended journaled. You can, however, format a windows hard drive from a mac if you connect the windows hard drive to the mac and format it through disk utility, or the command line as described above.
Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. To format a drive on a mac, youll need the builtin disk utility application. Click the erase tab, choose a volume format from the dropdown menu and then type a name for the drive. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. You cannot format the whole hard drive doing so would erase your operating systembut you can format a portion of the hard drive after c. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. In this article, we will introduce you a few tools you can use for formatting hard drive under macos 10. You can format a drive in os x using two applications. 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 a hard drive for both windows and mac.
Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. To format a hard drive means to erase any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. Where, i am seeing instruction links, for mac operating system, for as far back as mac os x 10. How to format an external drive for mac launch disk utility. When you want to recover data, close all programs that might access or use the formatted drive, and do not reformat the hard drive after data loss. If the drive is shown in the list of devices, you should be able to initialize it. Your mac downloads the latest compatible version of macos or os x over the internet and installs it on your hard drive.
Make your mac feel like new again with a fresh install of os x. When you have the need to format a hard drive under macos 10. How to format a startup drive for a mac if you want to format a drive that will be used as your mac s startup disk, the procedure is a little different from formatting it for use as a secondary. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. Formatting a drive will erase all data and partitions on the disk. Click on disk utility then continue first of all to get your macs hard drive wiped. How to wipe your mac memory and reset to default settings. How to format external ssd for mac time machine mashtips. If its an external hard drive then it should appear in the left nav bar. The first option allows you to restore your machine to the latest time machine backup, if you have one.
Follow the onscreen prompts to complete your macos or os x installation. Mac os x can only be installed on a hard drive formatted in mac os extended journaled, filesystem. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Wait as the os x utilities window appears on the screen. Following the erasing of your mac s hard drive, you are returned to the os x utilities options. If you are having a hard time using the command line, try the disk utility app, which is simpler and uses the gui. The usb drivers come with the fat format by default. Once booted from the cd, look in the utilities folder on the cd for drive setup. Select your startup drive on the left typically macintosh hd, switch to the erase tab and choose mac os. Not only formatted hard drive, disk which is attacked by virus, or system crash can also be found within few simple clicks.
Formatting an external drive on your mac is quite easy, though it isnt as evident and obvious as it is on a pc. How to restore data from a formatted hard drive on mac os x. Click install and select your hard drive as the destination. Mac os x installation basics sata drive seagate support us. Select the volume format from the volume format popup. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. Disk utility shows the recommended mac format by default. This method should work on all apple computers and with all recent versions of mac os.
If you are trying to format mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step. And they will never cause any damage to your hard drive or shorten the service life of the hard drive ssdusb flash drive. Enter a name for the disk or volume, such as macintosh hd. How to install macos or os x on a new hard drive for your mac. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Format a hard drive using mac os x disk utility iclarified. The mac os x extended volume format is optimal for macs.
A drive can be formatted with exfat using either a windows or a mac computer. These are instructions on how to format a hard drive using mac os x disk utility. In this video i show you how to reinstall mac os x on your apple computer. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. Make sure to select the parent hard disk in the sidebar. Where and with working to reformat my new hd, i have been directed to base support and then knowledge base answer id 3865. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. All without the need for a recovery disc or thumb drive. Fortunately disk utility, built right into macos, can help.
Recover data like photos, videos, audio, documents, emails, etc. Click on the erase option from the four options available in the main window. Then you want to find the solution to unformat your mac hard drive to recover your files on it. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in macos. You can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. 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.
These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. This is the new file system that apple bought to macs with high sierra and it will be. This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through. Run mac os x on an appletv with an external hard drive how to. They will efficiently format hard drive or external device under windows or mac os. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the. From this you can select one of two options in order to restore the operating system.
Unformat mac hard drive recover formatted hard drive on. How to format an external drive for mac compatibility. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. Immediately after the startup sound, press and hold the c key to start up from cd.
With easeus data recovery wizard the accomplished data recovery software, you can easily achieve your goal of recovering the formatted hard drive on your mac. Heres a look at how to use disk utility to perform this function. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. Connect the hard drive or usb key to the mac launch disk utility, located in applications utilities locate the drive name from the left hand side of disk utility and click on it. But luckily, there are file systems well supported by both mac and windows pc, and they are fat32 it might be called msdos on mac and exfat. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive.