Want to use one external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac machine? One hurdle you'll face is that, by default, these platforms use different filesystems. Windows uses NTFS while Mac OS uses HFS, and they're incompatible with each other. However, you can format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac by using the exFAT filesystem. Here's how.
How Do I Reformat My External Hard Drive For Mac
Yes, connecting an external hard drive or USB flash key to a Mac will generally read and work fine as is because the Mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including Windows MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFat, and NTFS formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, formatting it to be entirely Mac compatible filesystem is highly recommended, and necessary for Time Machine and to make disks bootable.
I purchased a 4TB WD external drive and having a heck of a time reformatting this drive. I have tried all the above advice without getting to have this new hard drive formatted. Any other suggestions? I just keep getting the error Disk erase failed.
Try a different USB port and make sure the hard drive USB is plugged directly into the Mac and not through a USB hub. For whatever reason the Mac commonly struggles with USB hubs, I think because they are not powered. I get similar errors constantly when using USB hubs on Mac with external drives, but when plugged directly into Mac the hard drives work.
Having the identical problem connected directly to USB on the back of iMac. Since the Disk Utility changed I have not been able to reformat Seagate drives, Western Digital are fine. How do you tell if it is locked?
You just got a new external hard drive and want to use it on your Mac. However, the Mac OS does not allow you to write data to the drive. Then you may start to wonder why, and more importantly, how to solve the problem.
The truth is, if you want to use the external hard drive on your Mac, it's necessary to reformat it to make it compatible with the Mac OS. Follow the tutorial below, you'll learn everything concerning reformatting external hard drive on Mac, as well as how to recover data from formatted external hard drive.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled/HFS+): If you didn't update your Mac OS to High Sierra, the default file system on your Mac shoule be Mac OS Extended. Mac OS Extended (encrypted) would be an ideal option if you probably carry your laptop or external drive here and there. You can encrypt it so that no one can access the contents on your drive.
Reformatting an external hard drive for use with Mac OS 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. Keep in mind that Mac OS can generally read other file formats, but for the best performance and to create a bootable disk, formatting exclusively for your Mac based on its version is required.
Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another.
In case you forgot to backup files before reformatting the external drive, you would lose you data stored on the drive before. But don't worry and get into panic. Here comes the cure - AnyRecover - a one-stop solution to recover deleted, lost or formatted files from Mac.
In this post, we've talked about how to reformat external hard drive on Mac to meet the needs and better make use of the device. What's more, a perfect fix is provided to recover lost data from the formatted drive.
Before you format Macintosh hard drive or external drives, consider which file type you should use. This choice comes down to how you work, which computers you use, whether others need access to the files, and if older file types are important for your workflow.
Disk Drill for Mac searches your hard drive and external drives for files that may be hiding. It retrieves data seemingly lost, no matter what caused the file to become hidden in the first place. Whether the files were corrupted, you removed them unintentionally, or Disk Utility returned an error, Disk Drill can help.
The first thing you want to do is maintain your drive and back up any data, which is why we recommend Get Backup Pro and CleanMyMac X. These apps are the perfect combination for fostering an environment for your external drive where the disk is error-free and the files are always backed up.
Both macOS and Windows allow users to format their hard drives using built-in utilities. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive.
If you purchased an external hard drive and need to format it, you should use the APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. These are the newest data formats available and will give you the best performance. APFS( Apple File System) is the file format from Apple and should be used if able.
The file format standard you use for your external drive will depend on how you plan on using the drive. But before I can dig into what makes sense when, look over this quick rundown of the different standards and which OS each one is compatible with.
According to the list above, formatting your hard drive to exFAT so that you can read and write on either a PC or Mac seems like the obvious solution. And if that's how you plan on using your drive, then you're right -- exFAT is the way to go. However, if you plan on only using a drive on your Mac and it has MacOS High Sierra or newer installed, you'll want to stick to Apple's APFS format. And the same can be said for a Windows HD, if you only plan on connecting it to a PC, then NTFS is the way to go.
If you keep your hard drive's out-of-the-box NTFS format, you'll be able to read the drive when it's connected to a Mac, but you won't be able to write to it. In other words, you can look at files saved on the drive, but you can't save any new files from your Mac. In order to enable read/write access, you'll need to purchase a third-party solution such as Paragon NTFS. It's $20, and is compatible with all Macs, even the more recently announced M1 Macs.
Conversely, you can format the HD to APFS and use Paragon's APFS for Windows to read and write to the Mac-formatted hard drive. The only downside is that it's $50. With it installed, you'll be able to read/write to APFS drives on a Windows PC.
This solution is a little different than the previous two because instead of having one hard drive that works with both machines, you're splitting your HD into two sections, each dedicated to a different OS. For example, if you have a 1TB hard drive, 500GB of storage can be used with your Windows computer, and 500 will be dedicated to your Mac computer.
To do that, connect the empty external HD to your Mac and launch Disk Utility. Select the drive from the left sidebar, then click the Partition tab. Click the + sign to add a second partition, then drag the lines to adjust the size of each partition. For example, you might want more storage for your Mac than you do for your PC. Name one partition Windows and change its format to exFAT. Then click the second partition, name it Mac and change its format to APFS. Give your settings a final lookover and click Apply. Going forward, you should be able to use the drive and its dual partitions on their respective operating systems.
Seagate Backup Plus Hub is available in two models, Windows and Mac. The Windows model is formatted as NTFS while the Mac model is formatted as Mac OS extended (Journaled), also known as HFS+. While Mac OS X can read hard drives formatted as NTFS, write access is not available. Windows cannot read or write to hard drives formatted as Mac OS extended (Journaled).
NTFS: since it is the native file system for Windows, volumes created in NTFS are read and write with computers running Windows. Mac OS can read and write to NTFS volumes with the help of the Paragon driver for Mac. Mac OS Extended (HFS+): the native hard drive file system for Mac. Windows users can read and write to HFS+ (journaled) hard drives by installing the Paragon driver for Windows. exFAT: generally compatible with Mac and Windows. exFAT is not a journaled file system which means it can be more susceptible to data corruption when errors occur or the drive is not disconnected properly from the computer. FAT32: compatible with Mac and Windows. However, FAT32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. A FAT32 partition can reach up to 32GB when formatted on a Windows PC.
Aside from the primary C drive (C:), you can also format an internal drive or an external hard drive. Your Windows hard drive may be partitioned into several different drives. Smaller internal drives with names like D, E, F, etc. are your internal drives. An external drive is hardware like a USB drive or another external storage device.
On Windows, your primary hard drive or C drive (C:) is the internal hard disk where the operating system (OS) resides. You may also have additional internal drives to store more files on your computer. This happens when your disk is partitioned (separated) between the primary drive and additional internal drives.
An external hard drive is located outside of your computer, and it can be a flash drive (also called thumb drive or USB) or a larger drive that can contain either a solid-state drive (SSD) or hard disk drive (HDD).
The steps to format external drives and flash drives (also called thumb drives and USB drives) are the same as formatting internal drives. That means that learning how to format an external hard drive is fairly straightforward. 2ff7e9595c
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