Reformat External Hard Drive Mac

Reformat External Hard Drive Mac

Most external hard drives are designed to work for Windows computers. So if you’re trying to connect an external hard drive to a Mac, you might have to format the drive before you can use it. Here’s how to do that:

  1. Part 2: Format External Hard Drive for Mac with Disk Utility. 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. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your Mac.
  2. Newer Seagate and LaCie branded external drives come preformatted with the exFAT file system, which allows it to be used on both Mac and Windows without reformatting the drive. Some older drives are formatted specifically for PCs, some specifically for Macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without.
  3. Whenever an external storage device gets infected, it is highly recommended to format the device to make it operable. In this post, let’s talk about how to erase and format external hard drives on Mac and Windows. Erase and Format External Hard Drive on Mac. Step 1: Open your Mac and connect your external hard drive with it.

How to Format a Hard Drive for Mac

Reformat External Hard Drive Mac Terminal

How to Reformat External Hard Drive Mac BONUS TIP: How to Recover Deleted Data from Reformat External Hard Drive Mac Conclusion. How to Reformat External Hard Drive Mac. For you to be able to reformat your external hard drive Mac, here are the steps you need to follow. Plugin Hard Drive- The first thing that you need to do is to have.

Note: If you already used your external hard drive on a PC, be sure to back up any files on it. Formatting your drive will wipe out all the data in it.

  1. Connect an external hard drive to your Mac. Some external hard drives need to be plugged into an outlet to work.
  2. Go to Spotlight Search, type in Disk Utility, and click the first option. This will open the Disk Utility app, where you will find all the internal and external drives that are connected to your Mac.
  3. Then click View in the top-left corner of the window and select Show All Devices.
  4. Click the external hard drive you want to format. You can find this on the left-hand side of the screen under External Hard Drives. For the best result, select the disk (the highest option in the external tree).
  5. On the top menu, click Erase. This will open a small pop-up window with a warning that erasing the drive will delete all data stored on it and that it can’t be undone.
  6. Choose a name, format, and scheme for your drive. You can choose whatever name you want, and you should choose GUID Partition Map for the Scheme in most cases. However, you can choose between the following formats:
    • Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is the best option for most Mac users since it is compatible with all Macs.
    • APFS (Apple File System) is only for newer Macs running macOS 10.13 or later.
    • exFAT is compatible with both PC and Mac.
    • MS-DOS (FAT) is also compatible with Mac and PC, but you can only transfer files smaller than 4GB.
  7. When you’re done with providing the setup details, click Erase. This will immediately wipe the entire drive.
Mac

If you get an error message that states, “Erase process has failed. Click done tocontinue,” don’t freak out about it. This is an issue caused by Time Machine running on your externaldrive.

You will need to turn off Time Machine. You can do this by opening System Preferences and unchecking the boxnext to “Back Up Automatically”.Then click Options beside “ShowTime Machine in menu bar.” This will open another window. Click Cancel and it will turn off the Time Machine.

After you turn off the Time Machine, redo steps 4 to 6.

How to Partition anExternal Hard Drive on Mac

If you have formattedyour drive, you can then partition the drive, which will splitthe drive into two formats. This is perfect for anyone who uses Macs and PCsand wants to transfer files between the different operating systems with anexternal drive. Here’s how to do that:

  1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive that you want to partition. It is best to click View > Show All Devices so you can selectthe disk rather than a container.
  2. In the top menu, select Partition.
  3. Then click the plus sign at the bottom of the pie chart. Every time you click this plus sign, a new partition will becreated.
  4. Choose a name, format and size for each partition. You can also change the size of each of the partitions bydragging the white dots at the edge of the circle.
  5. Finally click Apply.

Why Partition a Hard Drive?

Partitioning an external hard drive allows youto have separate drives for Mac, PC, and any other operating system. Now youdon’t have to go out and buy hard drives for every computer you use.

A partition also gives you a dedicated space foryour Time Machine back-up files or a bootable backup of your operating system.It also helps protect your data if your drive gets infected with malware, as itwould be contained within one of the partitions.

Now that you know how to format an external drive for Mac, check out our blog on the difference between an HDD and an SDD.

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Do you keep a backup of your data on an external hard drive? Hopefully, you do. It’s an intelligent way to keep data safe. But if the external drive gets corrupted, then what?

Worry not; you can reformat the hard drive and make it accessible, but what about the data? Again, there’s nothing to worry about; you can recover that data too. But how?

In this post, we will discuss how to reformat the drive and recover data from the formatted hard drive.

But before that, let’s know what formatting is.

What Does Formatting Hard Drive Mean?

Formatting a hard drive means deleting all the data on the drive and creating new file systems. Generally, when the hard drive media is inaccessible or has errors, formatting is required.

How To Reformat An External Drive?

Reformatting a hard drive on Windows and Mac is simple. To learn how to format a drive on Windows, follow the steps below.

Note: Since we want to recover data, we will do a quick format as it only deletes the organizational structure keeping the actual files there. It’s like throwing empty boxes and keeping the content.

Reformatting external hard drive Windows 10

1. Connect the hard drive and wait for Windows to recognize it

2. Launch File Explorer > This PC

3. Look for the external drive > right-click > select Format

4. Make sure you select the Quick Format box. If you make a mistake here, you will lose all the data.

5. To begin the process, click Start and wait for the process to finish.

Once done, do not perform any operation on the disk as this might overwrite the data, and we may not recover the old data.

Reformatting external hard drive Mac

Note: Since formatting hard drive erases all data, we recommend backing up important files.

1. Connect the external drive

2. Open Applications Folder > Utilities >Disk Utility

3. Look for the external driver you wish to reformat

4. Select and click Erase

5. Follow on-screen instructions and choose exFat. We recommend this as both Windows and Mac support this file format.

6. Click Erase. Once done, don’t perform any operation as this will reduce the chances of data recovery.

How To Recover Data From Reformatted Hard Drive Windows 10 & Mac

After reformatting the external hard drive, we will need to use third-party data recovery software to recover data. Here we enlist the best data recovery apps to restore data on both Windows and Mac. All the programs listed below will help restore as much data as possible.

So, without any delay, let’s read further and know about the best data recovery software.

1. Stellar Data Recovery Software

Using this data recovery app, you can recover data from a reformatted hard disk available for both Windows and Mac. The software helps recover all major file types and formats. Moreover, you can preview files before saving them and can retrieve any kind of data from formatted media.

Nonetheless, in just 3 simple steps, you can get back the data you forgot to backup. To use Stellar, follow the steps below:

1. Download, install, and launch the product.

Reformat External Hard Drive Mac Time Machine

2. Select the type of data you want to recover.

3. Select the folder location or drive volume and click Scan

4. Once the process is done, select a file to recover and click Recover to save recovered data.

Reformat An External Hard Drive Mac

Tip: When recovering data, never save it on the same disk from which you are retrieving it, as this reduces the chances of data recovery.

2. EaseUS Data Recovery

This recovery tool is compatible with both Mac and Windows, and it serves 100+ real-life data loss scenarios like formatting, deleting, etc. With a user-friendly approach, this recovery tool comes in handy, and it helps recover files from reformatted external drives, hard disk, and more. Moreover, it offers different scan modes to help recover more data. The quick scan takes a shorter time while the Deep Scan, as the name suggests, is more thorough and time-consuming. Not only this, when using EaseUS, you can recover data even when the scan is in process. If you find the data you have been looking for during the scan, you can recover it and save time. What’s more EaseUS even works as a photo and video repair tool. This means using this recovery software; you can repair corrupt, damage,d and broken MP4, MOV videos, photos, etc.

To recover data, install the product, select the file type, disk volume, scan it, and retrieve data.

Reformat Mac External Hard Drive Windows 10

3. Recuva – Data Recovery Tool

Offered by Piriform Recuva Professional is available for Windows only. You can recover images, documents, music, emails, and other lost file types using it. Also, it helps recover files from damaged or newly formatted drives. To retrieve a significant amount of data from a reformatted hard disk, we suggest using Deep Scan. This advanced and deep scan helps find traces of all the deleted files and recover them.

Reformat External Hard Drive Mac To Windows

Using any of these tools, you can easily recover data from reformatted hard disk on Windows 10 and Mac. In addition to this, to avoid losing data when the external drive gets corrupt, we suggest keeping multiple backups or using cloud storage. This will help access data even when the disk is corrupt. We hope you find the article useful. Do let us know which tool you used and why in the comments section.