How To Format A Harddrive For Mac

Hard Drive Format for Mac and PC Both Mac OS X 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.

When you purchase a brand-new hard drive, there’s no guarantee that it will be pre-formatted from the factory, nor is there any guarantee that it will come with the right file system. Optimization is another good reason for hard drive formatting.

Data fragmentation remains an issue even in the era of mobile devices, and in some cases formatting is the fastest way how to solve it. Of course, you may also just want to quickly delete the content of an entire hard drive. Regardless of why you want to format your hard drive, there are some considerations to be made before you begin. First and foremost, you need to decide which file system to use. Mac OS X uses the HFS Plus file system, while Windows uses the NTFS file system.

Both Mac OS X and Windows also support the FAT32 file system, but we don’t recommend it for hard drives. Because FAT32 supports only up to 4 GB large files, it should be used only with flash drives. If you need to format external hard drive Mac or Windows, you may also consider the exFAT files system. Developed by Microsoft, this modern file system is optimized for situations where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution, and the file size limit of the standard FAT32 file system is unacceptable. How to Format a Hard Drive for Mac Mac OS X users have at their disposal a handy tool called Disk Utility.

With it, it’s possible to easily format and storage device with just a few clicks. You can launch it from the App list or use Spotlight. The main window of the utility contains a list of storage devices, storage device details, and formatting options. Select your storage device, choose your desire file system, specify the name, and click on the Erase button.

Click on the Erase button again to confirm your decision and wait for the process to end. How to Format a Hard Drive for Windows To format a hard drive for Windows, open the File Explorer and click on This PC. Microsoft office 2016 home and business for mac download. If the hard drive you want to format is connected to your PC, it should be there. Right-click on it and select the Format option from the context menu. Keep in mind that you can only format storage devices that are currently not in use.

To format a hard drive means to delete any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. Formatting the Hard Drive A vast majority of video production will be done on a Mac or Windows operating system, so we aren’t going to cover Linux. Hard drives set up for use on Windows machines only will often use NTFS, while Macs will use HFS+. If you keep your hard drive's out-of-the-box NTFS format for all the reasons FAT32 displeases, there's a workaround that will allow your Mac to read and write files to the drive.

Windows will present you with a formatting window where you can specify various formatting parameters. After you confirm your selection, it should take just a few moments for the formatting process to finish. Recover Data from a Formatted Hard Drive Realizing that you’ve forgot to back up a critically important file from a newly formatted hard drive feels horrible. Without a capable data recovery tool, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s why countless people from around the world have turned to Disk Drill, selecting it as their data recovery tool of choice.

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How to format your hard drive Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for PCs, some for Macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without formatting. Seagate internal drives must be formatted before use. Drives that will be bootable are formatted during the process of installing the operating system (ie, Windows or MacOS). Drives that will be used for storage can be formatted according to the instructions below.

Or, if you have a drive that is formatted for a different type of computer or a drive that is not preformatted, you will need to format the drive before you can use it. Formatting erases all data on the drive. So if you are formatting a drive that has already been used, be sure to copy any files you will ever want to see again onto a computer or backup drive.