Mac Os X Format External Hard Drive Terminal
Jul 13,2020 • Filed to: Hard Drive Recovery • Proven solutions
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“How to format an external hard drive Mac? What format system to use when reformatting my storage drive for a Mac?”
To format / reformat the drive in Mac OS X Mavericks and below: Connect the External disk drive or Flash Drive and open Disk Utility.app from /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Select the External drive or Flash Drive on the left that shows the capacity. Click on the Erase option across the top in the main window. Dec 31, 2019 3. Next to Format, it should say Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That’s all it takes. You’ve formatted your external drive to be compatible with Mac OS X, and have confirmed that the formatting process was successful. You can now edit, read, and write files, as you wish. Partition External Hard Drive on Mac OS X. Jul 12, 2017 Just launch the Disk Utility, right-click or Control-click the drive containing your APFS partition, and select “Erase”. Choose another file system from the Format box and click “Erase”. This will completely wipe the drive, deleting all the files on it and converting it to whatever file system you choose. Jul 02, 2020 You want to permanently erase all content from your Mac and restore it to factory settings. This is one of the final steps before selling, giving away, or trading in your Mac. You're changing the format of a disk, such as from a PC format (FAT, ExFAT, or NTFS) to a Mac format (APFS or Mac OS.
This is a frequent question asked by first-time, as well as the not-so-tech-savvy, macOS users. Learning how to format an external hard drive Mac is essential. Because saving all your data on the Cloud is nice and all, but physical storage is still popular. Especially if you don’t have a stable internet connection or if most of your files are large.
Luckily, you don’t have to learn rocket science to be able to format an external hard drive for Mac or PC. The operation is pretty straightforward.
When it comes to your Apple device, there are two methods to use. Read on to find out all you need to know about them.
Part 1: What Is the Best Format for External Hard Drive Mac?
The first step to formatting your external drive for a Mac computer is choosing the right format. There are four possible choices:
- APFS (Apple File System)
- HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
- exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
- FAT (MS-DOS)
To understand which is the best for you, let’s have a comprehensive overview of each of them.
Apple File System
The APFS was first introduced in 2017 as a replacement for the HFS+. Nowadays, all new Macs come with the operating system preinstalled on APFS, as this system is optimized for use with SSD and flash storage drives. However, it still works with traditional HDD drives too.
This is the best format to pick if you have an external SSD or USB flash drive that you don’t intend to use with a Windows device.
The biggest strength of this system is the speed, as well as the encryption and metadata handling. However, you won’t be able to use this system with Time Machine.
Mac OS Extended
The HFS+, or Hierarchical File System plus on its real name, was the main file system used for Mac until 2017.
This type of file system is suitable to use with both HDD and SDD drives, but the latter will perform slightly better with the APFS mentioned above. If you have an older Mac, though, choosing the HFS+ is your best bet.
In general, all external drives formatted to HFS+ work nicely with older Mac versions but are incompatible with Windows.
Extended File Allocation Table
Designed by Microsoft, the exFAT is a good choice if you plan to use the external hard drive with both macOS and Windows systems. Yet, you won’t get top performance on either. This choice is more appropriate for USB flash drives, although you can still use it for SDD and HDD units too.
The main issue with exFAT is that your drive will be more prone to fragmentation when used with Apple devices and is less stable than NTFS on Windows. If you really have to share the drive between Mac and Windows machines, that’s your best option though.
MS-DOS
Macs also support FAT32 drives, marked as FAT in Disk Utility. This format should be avoided at all costs unless you’re dealing with a really old Windows computer, which you really have to use in parallel with your Mac system.
Typically, there is no reason to choose this option unless you’re planning to use the external hard drive on a Windows XP or earlier machine.
Part 2: How to Format an External Hard Drive Mac?
Now that you know which format to choose, it’s time to learn how to format an external hard drive for Mac. There are essentially two methods, with Disk Utility or Time Machine function.
Note: If you plan to format an older external drive, perhaps one you used with another device, make sure to backup all data before proceeding. Formatting is a permanent procedure that can’t be reversed. While there are data recovery software you can use if you lost data, it is always better to prevent.
That said, here’s how to format an external hard drive Mac:
Method 1: Format Mac Hard Drive with Disk Utility
Disk Utility is a utility application proprietary to macOS that is used to both format and manage internal and external disks. Here’s how to use it:
Step 1 Connect the external hard drive you want to format to your Mac, then start the Disk Utility app that you can find under Applications -> Utilities.
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. Then, on the top side under the Disk Utility, click on the Erase button.
Step 3 Follow the on-screen prompts to select the desired file system and allow the drive to format. That’s it! After the process is complete, you can either start using the drive or choose to create partitions on it.
Method 2: Format Mac Hard Drive with Time Machine
Formatting an external hard drive with Time Machine is as easy as formatting it with Disk Utility. Time Machine, however, gives you the possibility to create an automatic backup of the data on your hard drive before formatting it.
Before you proceed, therefore, you should first set up the external drive to use with Time Machine.
Reformat External Hard Drive Windows 10
To do this, open System Preferences and select Time Machine after you’ve connected the external drive to your Mac.
Now, click on Select Disk and select the desired drive from the list. Click on the Use Disk button. At this point, the system will run an automatic backup two minutes after you’ve clicked on the Use Disk button, or you can proceed with the formatting if the hard disk is empty.
To format an external hard drive for Mac with Time Machine, you must follow the steps below.
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: Bonus Tip – Data Recovery from Formatted Hard Drive on Mac
Sometimes, it may happen that you accidentally formatted an external hard drive containing important data. Whether it’s your wedding pictures or your bachelor’s degree thesis, chances are you want to get that data back as quickly as possible.
If you have a newer version of Mac, you can use the Apple Time Machine to recover your canceled files, or you could choose to use external software, such as Recoverit Data Recovery.
1. Recover Data with Apple Time Machine
In the former hypothesis, you can try to recover your data with the Time Machine. Bootable mac os flash drive. This app is Apple’s backup feature present on the newer systems. If you followed the steps above before formatting the hard drive with Time Machine and allowed the app to execute the backup, then there are high chances that you can recover any lost data without too much hassle.
To do so, just launch the Time Machine and browse through the folders to see if it has saved the files you require.
For easier browsing, you can use the time stamp feature on the right side of the screen and select the date or time when you executed the backup.
Using an external mobile hard disk to back up all important data first in case of data loss.Right now, there is some third-party software that supports to defrag MacBook pro: iDefragThe latest versions of iDefrag is 5.3.1. Here are two tips that you should remember:. Only if you understand how the process is going on and perform properly, the process will become a safe process. The data on Mac are kept on the first 50% of the hard drive to make sure your defragmentation process running on the track takes more less time to reach them. Part 4: How to Defragment a Mac - 3 WaysIn an effort to run your mac at peak performance. Mac os hard drive defrag windows 10.
Once you found the files, simply click on Restore to get them back.
2. Recover Data with Recoverit Data Recovery
If you didn’t use the Time Machine function or couldn’t find the files you need, you can try to recover any lost files with trusted third-party software, such as Recoverit Data Recovery.
Recoverit (IS)
A Life Saver to Solve Your Data Loss Problems!
- This easy-to-use software allows you to recover unlimited lost or deleted files from your Mac device, including photo, video, and audio data, document files, and more.
- It supports all types of Mac files irrespective of their extension.
- The application is compatible with both internal and external drives, USB pens, memory cards, and other hardware, so you can rest assured it will retrieve your data if it’s there.
- It can retrieve data from accidentally deleted files, lost or formatted partitions, data lost due to virus attacks, system crashes, or data lost by the Time Machine.
- It is free to download and supports all leading macOS versions, including the 10.14 release.
This system is also very easy to use, in just three easy steps:
Step 1 Install the application and choose the desired location
Download and install the software on your Mac computer, then open it and select the external hard drive, partition, or location where you want to retrieve data.
Step 2 Start the scan to retrieve your lost data
Click the Start button. The software will now scan the selected drive and display all retrieved data in an easy-to-scour list.
Step 3 Preview the recovered files and save them in your chosen location
Review and select the target files, then launch the recovery process. That’s it. The software will restore your lost data.
Conclusion
As you can see, how to format an external hard drive Mac is not particularly complicated. The Disk Utility allows you to format the desired drive to the desired system in a blink of an eye. Backing up the data on your drive with Time Machine also allows you to avoid the recovery hassle.
If you still lost some data, you even know which software to use to recover all lost files.
Now it’s your turn. Use this guide to format your external drive, download, and use the data recovery software if needed, and don’t forget to share this article with your Mac-addicted friends. They might make good use of it too.
Format External Ssd On Mac
If you recently purchased an external hard drive or portable SSD for your Mac, you probably noticed that Mac OS X doesn’t allow you to write data on to the drive. This is because the drive has been initialized for Windows NT File system, NTFS for short, and NTFS is primarily for PC use. Mac computers support a different file system. Nonetheless, there’s a way you can format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system.
Before you dive into learning how to format your external drive, there’s an important factor you need to take into account. If your external drive has many useful files on it, you should ensure that you copy or transfer these files elsewhere. This is because when you begin the process of formatting your drive, all of your data will be deleted.
Although you can use a recovery program, such a Data Rescue, in order to recover your files, it will be quite a hassle, and near impossible. It’s better to take precautions beforehand, and back up your files to another safe location. Once you’ve backed up your important files and data elsewhere, follow the instructions below in order to format your external drive.
Format External Drive to Work with Mac OS X
In order to format your external drive, you’ll need to use Disk Utility. Disk Utility comes built-in with your Mac, and is used to erase, format, or manage internal and external storage devices. Disk Utility is also used in order to manage volumes, and organize data into partitions. Overall, this is a very useful tool, that will aid you greatly in the process of formatting your external drive. In order to get started and use Disk Utility to format your external drive, follow the simple instructions below.
1. Launch Disk Utility. You can use Spotlight to do this, by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of your screen. Type in Disk Utility in the search bar, and press the enter/return key.
2. In the left windowpane, you’ll see a list of the available drives. Please select the drive you would like to format. If you don’t see your drive available, ensure that it’s properly connected to your Mac.
3. Click on the Erase tab.
4. A window will now pop-up asking which file system you would like to use, in order to format your external drive. The default option is the Windows NT File system. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), instead.
If you prefer to use your external drive for both Mac and Windows, you can choose ExFAT, instead. You’ll also have the option to rename your external drive, if you wish to do so. Please be patient as the erasing process carries out. This may take some time depending on how much information needs to be erased.
After the process has completed, you can check to see if it was successful. Follow the instructions below, in order to see if your drive was properly formatted.
1. Right-click on the icon for your external drive.
2. Click on Get Info.
3. Next to Format, it should say Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
That’s all it takes. You’ve formatted your external drive to be compatible with Mac OS X, and have confirmed that the formatting process was successful. You can now edit, read, and write files, as you wish.
Partition External Hard Drive on Mac OS X
You should create multiple partitions on your external hard drive, in order to have enhanced file organization. This is very easy to carry out, and only requires a few moments of your time. In order to get started and partition your external hard drive, follow the simple instructions below.
1. Launch Disk Utility. You can use Spotlight to do this, by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of your screen. Type in Disk Utility in the search bar, and press the enter/return key.
2. In the left windowpane, you’ll see a list of the available drives. Please select the drive you would like to format. If you don’t see your drive available, ensure that it’s properly connected to your Mac.
3. Click on the Partition tab.
4. A window will open with a blue circle and the name of your external drive. Click on the + button in order to add a partition to your external drive.
5. Feel free to allocate the desired volume to each partition that you create. You can easily do this by clicking on the small white circle and dragging it around, as you wish.
6. Feel free to rename each partition, as you wish, and select a file system for it.
7. Click on Partition in order to confirm you’d like to carry out the partition.
Please be patient as the process to partition your external drive is carried out. Once the process has completed, you’ll see a Operation successful message. Click on Done when you see this message. That’s all it takes. You’ve now partitioned your external drive. Thanks to Disk Utility, the process was very easy to carry out, and only required a few moments of your time.
Macbook Pro Format External Hard Drive
How To Reformat External Hard Drive Mac
If you’re worried the partition didn’t carry out successfully, there’s an easy way to confirm. All you need to do is navigate to your Mac OS Desktop. On your Desktop, you should now see various icons, representing the partitions that you created, using the instructions above. Although you may think there’s no need to create partitions for your external drive, you’ll soon learn that this is a very neat tool that will allow you to have enhanced file organization.
Reformat Hard Drive Mac To Windows
You can create different partitions for different needs. For example, you can have a backup partition, a personal use partition, a work partition, and other such partitions of the like. This will increase your productivity, as all of your important files and data will be properly organized, and easy to see.