While drives are sold as plugandplay, formatting prior to use will give you optimal performance and compatibility with your mac. Oh well guess this is a question for a different thread. Gtechnology external hard drive for mac, usb have it all. How can i reformat the internal drive and install mountain. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. Any external hard drive will work with pcs or macs, as long as the connectors are there firewire, usb, etc. It didnt hit the floor but it hit one of the legs of the table. My old hard drive crashed on my macbook pro mid 12 and i bought a new hard drive to use. The very first back up is a full back up of your entire macbook pro internal hard drive note this could take some time after that time machine does incremental backups. For instance, you might wish to format as sd card, pen drive, external hard disk, etc.
When i connected the hard drive to the windows xp cd, the music was there but in aiff format itunes doesnt seem to recognize it. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. A lot of people including you, storing important data on seagate external hard drive instead of on your pcmac hard drive. They are great for backing up data, creating extra storage space on your computer and transferring large amounts of data between two or more computers.
We did this because disk utility cant format with ntsf, but the windows installer would recognize msdos. How to install macos or os x on a new hard drive for your mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. It doesnt matter how the drive is formatted out of the box, since you can reformat any way you like. The best format for your external hard drive the hellotech blog. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac. That said, if you are using smaller file sizes fat32 can suffice.
Fortunately disk utility, built right into macos, can help. Which mac file system is best for an external drive. How to set up time machine on an external hard drive for macbook, imac. Now im not too sure how to set this new hard drive up as in putting an os on it and formatting it correctly im not concerned with getting any of my old data back on it, i just want to set. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. If you have done all this, you have successfully erased all of the data on your macbook pro hard drive. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as. If the hard drive is preformatted as ntfs, like most hard drives in the market, the mac os x can only read data from it, not write any data on it. However, if you are using a macbook pro or any mac computer, the hard drive must be formatted with a file system your mac can support. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Now, how can i reformat and install os x from the installer placed in the external hard drive.
The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. Disk utility can be used to format external drives as well. These devices also act as a back up of your data files. The volume your mac started up from is named macintosh hd, unless.
Since formatting an external hard drive will erase all of its. After youre done, dont forget to remove the external hard. Besides, i will also tell you how to recover files from external hard drive for macbook pro, helping you avoiding data loss. Macbook proexternal hard drivewindows pc apple community. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Gtechnology 10tb gdrive usbc desktop external hard drive. Why is it working on my imac and not on my macbook pro. In this video we look at the process of formatting a hard drive, flash drive, or ssd on an apple computer. Your advice on formatting the external hard drive is rather insightful. Macbook pro retina, inch, late 2012 2015 macbook pro retina, 15inch, mid 2012 2015 macbook retina, 12inch, early 2015 2017. Using apples free disk utility app, you can easily format the drive, give it a label, or even partition it and create multiple volumes from a single. It seems that the hard drive is formatted for windows but it does work read and write. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. I have a macbook pro from 2012 and an external hard drive samsung portable something.
Apfs apple file system is only for newer macs running macos 10. The problem is that i can not erase and format the hard drive to work with the operation system in the disk utility. Formatting the drive will permanently erase all the data and files stored on the hard drive forever. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system part 3. My hard drive in my macbook completely broke a few weeks ago didnt have much on it thankfully, so i bought a new hard drive and replaced the old one. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. Apfs apple file system this is the new file system that apple bought to macs with high sierra and it will. External hard drive for macbook pro macrumors forums. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. Formatting the drive will erase all of the data on it.
On a windows computer, i can plug in any external hard drive i have here and slide over folders of info on to it, easy peazy. There may be occasions when you need to format mac hard drive. Macbook pro inch, 2020 macbook pro 16inch, 2019 macbook pro inch, 2016 2019. If the external hard drive is pre formatted for mac, disk management will list 3 partitions and you will not be able to delete the health efi system partition because its a protected partition. Then, as i was moving my computer the hard drive fell down still plugged in. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. To reset a macbook, turn it on and immediately hold down one of these. Most external hard drives hd are sold in a format called ntfs, which is designed to work with windows. Tkd 1tb ssd hard drive replacement for macbook air pro 11 15 a1502 a98 a1465 a1466 late 20, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 mac pro a1481 mojave 5yr warranty. Seagate expansion 1tb portable external hard drive usb 3. Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. This is a great thing to do when you first purchase a drive or when you are looking to. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Three weeks ago, i bought a brand new 2tb seagate expansion to backup my macbook pro before i updated it to the latest macos.
If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. How to recover files from external hard drive for macbook pro. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. I have backed up all my data i dont have enough hard drive space to make a time machine backup. The maximum individual file size for exfat is 16 eb. How to format an external drive for mac launch disk utility. Step 2 on the left side of the utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. How to reformat my hard drive using my macbook air quora. Do i need to format my external hard drive macrumors. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems. For example, you plan to backup dvds to mac hard drive or store other files and need to format an external hard drive for macos to extend storage space you are selling your mac computer and formatting mac startup disk drive to make it clean and new without any personal data. If your mac doesnt work, you can do this using a second mac and an external hard drive caddy. Click on the erase option from the four options available in the main window.
Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. Or perhaps you are setting up an external drive for backups. Lacie 2tb mobile drive external hard drive usbc usb 3. This stepbystep guide will show you how to format an external hard drive on a mac, and how to partition a drive on a mac. External usb hard drives are lightweight, portable and inexpensive. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to speed, durability, price, and information safety, so make sure you know which you prefer. I was a windows guy, who moved over the mac but only recently started saving things to the mac file system on my macbook pro. I have just saved necessary files and also the installer for os x 10.
How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. But dont worry there is a way you can make your own. Be smart and get one for yourself, but before that i need to give you the best external hard drive for macbook pro. Lacie 1tb rugged ssd pro external drive with thunderbolt. Thus, if you wish to format ntfs on mac, then you must be using an external storage unit. Because the external hard drive has been assigned to the virtualbox machine, it is the only drive that will be listed. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive. If you want more detail on setting up an external hard drive for time machine you can check out my article on the site. Its easy to reformat your hard drive using disk utility in macos or os x. For this you will need an usb drive or a blank dvd. An hhd, or hybrid hard drive, uses a combination of these methods.
I copied a cd onto the hard drive using my macbook pro. The reason is perhaps that seagate external hard drive has been well known for a long time as one of the most reliable drives for storing data. Its fast 540 mbs read and write speeds are more than enough to transfer any file. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. Once disk utility is open youll see the list of available drives on the left. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting. Kindly note that the products chosen below are mainly based on our personal preferences and the guidelines as shown above. If you dont want to lose data from your hard drive, export the data or back it up before continuing. I would like to format my external hard drive so that i can edit in on my macbook pro. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac.
You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. If youre erasing an external drive, make sure that its connected. This small compact ssd drive from samsung comes with both a usbc to usbc cable and a usbc to usba, meaning its perfect to use with your macbook or mac. Formatting your macbook pro will erase all personal contents from your computer. Format a hard drive using disk utility which is in your applicationsutilities folder choose the appropriate format. Ntfs is a commonly used file format for windows systems and external devices. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. To format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Amazons choice for external hard drive for macbook pro seagate stgx2000400 portable 2tb external hard drive portable hdd usb 3. Learn more about erasing hard disks on mac from apple.
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