Compare portable, USB and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. Need to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows Windows PC and Mac use different filesystems. Now, I will show you how to format external hard drive on a Mac using the below steps. by Shirly Chen, updated on 2019-07-08 to Mac Data Wipe USB drives and external hard drives on macOS Catalina are used for storing and backing up important data such as photos, videos, audios, images, notes, messages, music files, PDF files, Word documents, among other files.

How to Format External Hard Drive on a Mac?

Buying and using an external HD is one thing, getting the most out of it is quite another. You can repurpose any hard drive to work with your Mac. Step 2: Connect your NTFS external hard drive to Mac, and iBoysoft NTFS for Mac will automatically mount it.

How to Format an External Drive for Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended) Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. Select the external hard drive on the left-hand side. The Windows uses NTFS and Mac uses HFS. We here will show you the full guides on how to format FAT32 and NTFS drives on Mac as an example.

For instructions on how to format a drive in Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) and above click here. As we can format the drive from Disk utility, Therefore, we will do it with the disk utility option. However, the steps are suitable for Mac OS X 10.6.8 to 10.10.5. Format Hard Drive (Mac) 1. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.

On Mac computers, use the Finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. Mac-formatted external hard drives are often priced higher than their Windows counterparts and are not as widely available.

If you want to format your external hard drive to work with Mac and Windows computers, you should use exFAT. The drive should say unallocated; Note: If it does not you will need to right-click and delete the volume first. So, if you have got your hands on a drive which is formatted as Fat32 of any other format instead of Mac OS Extended or APFS, then you should go through this article. Connect an external hard drive to your Mac.

Step 1 Open Finder, Applications, then go to Utilities and Disk Utility. Format an External Hard Drive. No worry, actually it is not impossible to realize it no matter you use an external or internal drive of your windows system.

You Can Convert NTFS to exFAT in 3 Steps. The following is based on Mac OS X version 10.10.5. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for Mac and PC without losing any data. However, if you want to convert NTFS to exFAT to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC, 3 steps are required. The Best Format for External Hard Drives. Macs running OS 10. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. 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 it's a protected partition. To format an external hard drive for Mac with Time Machine, you must follow the steps below.

Step 1: Free download, install, and launch iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your computer. Make sure that the USB drive is formatted for Time Machine. ; Connect the drive to a USB port on your AirPort base station, then turn it on. They are incompatible with each other. Click Go on the top tool bar, and select Utilities.

With exFAT, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years.

Whether you are trying to backup Mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you