Many people think it is hard to format the windows drive on Macintosh. No worry, actually it is not impossible to realize it no matter you use an external or internal drive of your windows system. We here will show you the full guides on how to format FAT32 and NTFS drives on Mac as an example. Don’t Format the Drive! (Yet) When you connect a Mac-formatted drive to Windows, you’ll be informed that “you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” Don’t click the “Format disk” button or Windows will erase the contents of the drive–click “Cancel”! Format and external hard drive on Mac. First, let’s see how to format an external hard drive or USB drive in macOS which works with both Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive in macOS machine. Open Disk Utility on your macOS, press cmd + spacebar keys and type Disk Utility in the spotlight search. Open Disk Utility from the search. External hard drive: external hard drive is the hardware component like HDD and SSD that you used to store the data. In Mac Disk Utility, it shows in the first line of the whole disk directory (e.g.
- Format External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
- Format Of External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
- Best Way To Format Mac External Drive
- Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc 2019
- Reformat External Hard Drive Windows
Prepare your drive
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). However, you can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups. Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click the triangle button , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click the lock button to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.*
- After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Delete original library to save space
After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.
* If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.
Format Any External Hard Drive for an Apple Mac | Tutorial with Images
So you’re shopping for a new hard drive for your mac but you noticed a few things on the box.
- Some don’t specify they are Apple Mac Compatible
- The ones that say Apple compatible are sometimes more expensive
The great news is it does not matter which brand you buy. You can easily format the drive in a few simple steps that I will show you. I’ve even heard sales staff in shops try to up-sell a more expensive hard drive to customers because they used an Apple Mac.
How I Pick an External Hard Drive
Me personally, I shop based on hard disk drive size and price. Usually, but not always I get great deals on Western Digital Drives or Seagate external hard drives. Whatever is the least expensive with the biggest capacity is the one I will get.
No Mention of Mac Compatibility on the Box? No Problems!
I just purchased a Seagate 2TB Expansion drive from a local office supplies store. One the side of the box it says “Compatible with Windows”. There’s no mention of Apple anywhere on the side. This means the disk is pre-formatted so you can plug it into a PC and it will just work fine. The great news is we can re-format the disk to work for mac in 8 easy steps listed below.
How to format any drive to work with an Apple Mac in 8 Easy Steps
STEP 1: Unbox the hard drive and plug this side of the cable into the hard drive.
STEP 2: Plug the blue USB connection (below) into a free port on the computer. The blue color denotes that this hard drive is USB 3.0 Speed. If your cable is plain black it could be a USB 2.0-speed drive. It doesn’t matter either way for storage usage. USB 3.0 is faster to transfer files but it’s not a big deal.
Once you have the hard drive plugged in you can see it come up on the Desktop
If you double click inside the drive you see files already in the drive. This is usually the case for any Windows drive because it comes with free software we don’t even need. Let me show you how to format this drive properly for Mac.
STEP 3: Click on the Launchpad Icon from the Task Bar
Format External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
STEP 4: Start Typing “Disk” and “Disk Utilities” will come up. Click on the Disk Utilities Icon
STEP 5: You are now presented with the Apple Mac Disk Utility Tool. Click on the new hard drive you just installed. Usually, it has the name of the brand on the drive. As you can see below the new drive in my case is called Seagate Expansion. If you purchased a WD drive it will say Western Digital or WD for example.
STEP 6: After selecting the proper drive click the “Erase” button at the top of this same view.
STEP 7: After clicking Erase on the prior step you are greeted with this popup. You can now rename the drive easily to anything you like. For my use I am calling it YouTube 2019 as I will be storing all the new video files I produce on this drive.
STEP 8: This step is critical or it won’t work. Please use the format drop-down menu and click MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Next click Erase
Disk Utilities will go through the following steps automatically:
Once you see the Green Tick you are all done! ✅
Format Of External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
Congratulations! You have now formatted your new external Hard Drive to work with your Apple Mac running Mojave.
Best Way To Format Mac External Drive
Please Remember:
This is the process for formatting any External Hard Disk Drive to work with an Apple Mac running OS Mojave or High Sierra. The process is also the same for the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac Pro, iMac, and MacMini computers.
It doesn’t matter what brand of hard drive you buy. It all comes down to the formatting applied to the drive. This process will work for Solid State (SSD) drives as well as any other hard disk drive not pre-formatted for Apple Mac. There’s no need to spend the extra dollars on a drive that is pre-formatted. Once you have done this once the process is so simple I’m sure you’ll now be able to show your friends how to do the same exact thing as this article.
Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc 2019
If this tutorial is helpful please share it with anyone who might require help with this topic.