How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac

• How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac Hard Drive
• How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac Os
• How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac High Sierra
• How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro

by Shirly Chen, updated on 2017-12-01 to Mac Data Wipe

A Solid State Drive is primarily used on Mac machine. If you want to recycle a SSD, formatting is the best way to remove all history data from the SSD. Today, we will talk about how to format or reformat SSD on Mac. You can run easy-to-use Mac disk formatting software to easily format internal SSD or external SSD under Mac OS.

Solution 1: format & quick format SSD on Mac

Disk Utility is a useful application inside your Mac system. It can help you format & quick format SSD on Mac. First of all, open it from Launchpad. It will list all hard drives and external hard drives on the Mac. Select the SSD and click on 'Erase' button. Then Disk Utility will quickly format the SSD on your Mac.

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. 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. Then click View in the top-left corner of the window and select Show All Devices. Click the external hard drive you want to format. On Mac computers, use the Finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. Before a hard drive can read or write data, it must first be formatted, or erased and reconfigured. Reformatting a hard drive is often done just to erase all of its contents. When formatting a hard drive with Disk Utility, make sure to. Greetings, Please, do not forget to click the green ACCEPT ANSWER button if you found my answer helpful. When you format your drive, everything on it will be erased. Please, follow the instructions below to format your external drive: - In the top menu bar, click Go Applications folder - Double click the Utility folder - Doulbe click the Disk Utility icon - Choose the external drive from the. 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.

Disk Utility can't format the system SSD. And please note that after the SSD is formatted by Disk Utility, the data still can be recovered by Mac data recovery software. This is very easy solution to format or quick format Mac SSD. If you only want to recycle or reuse the SSD, this is the best solution to remove all old data on the Mac SSD. But if you are going to sell your Mac SSD, this is not the reliable way to remove sensitive data.

Solution 2: reformat or do high-level format on Mac SSD

How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac Hard Drive

If you want to sell, donate, lend or abandon a Mac computer/SSD, you should sure all the sensitive data on the Mac SSD has been permanently erased. Reformat or high-level format can help you permanently erase all data information on Mac SSD. Mac disk formatting software – DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac offers secure solution to reformat or high-level format Mac solid state drive. It will reformat the SSD on Mac and permanently erase all data on the SSD without affecting the service life of the Mac SSD.

DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is pretty simple to use. You can reformat your Mac SSD by only 1 click. First of all, just download and install DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac computer. Then run it to quickly reformat your Mac SSD.

Step 1: Launch DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac.

When you run DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac, you will see three data erasure modes. Choose this mode 'Wipe Hard Drive'.

Step 2: Reformat Mac SSD by 1 click.

DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac will show all hard drives on your Mac. Select the SSD and click on 'Wipe Now' button to reformat the SSD on your Mac.

Once the Mac SSD is reformatted by Mac SSD, all data on the SSD will be permanently lost, can't be recovered by data recovery software. You also can't reformat the system SSD. But DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac offers another solution to permanently erase data on the system SSD. It can erase the free disk space of the system SSD. Then all deleted or lost data on the system SSD will be permanently erased.

If you are going to dispose your old Mac computer or old SSD, DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is the best tool for you to format the SSD on Mac and permanently remove all private data on the SSD.

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You can format the external hard drive or USB drive to make it compatible with both Mac and Windows machines. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesn't worry it's not complex.

If you are techy and use Windows and Mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between Mac and PC. Windows and macOS filesystems are different and you might need to format the drive every time to use on both platforms. You don't need to format the hard drive every time you can choose a filesystem while formating the drive so the hard drive or USB drive work on both Mac and PC

So to get rid of these situations we bring here a guide that will help you to format your drive which works on both platforms and you don't need to format and backup data every time. After cross-compatible formatting, simply unplug the drive from one machine and then plug it to another. Sounds good to you right? So let's started, how this works.

Understand file systems for Mac and PC

There are three common file system types to format an external USB or hard drive, SSD drive, SD card and etc. FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT, let's have a look what's the difference between these formats.

FAT 32 Format

This format is pretty old but supported and it's not efficient as compared to NTFS. It doesn't support big features but offers great compatibility which means it's compatible with all versions of Windows. It can only support 4GB file size and up to 8TB hard drivers. It's not capable to store files larger than 4GB.

NTFS Format

NTFS is a modern format system and Windows also uses this format for itself and for other non-removable drives by default. This format is also compatible with all versions of Windows but limited to none Windows OS as FAT32. Can mac read ntfs.

exFAT Format

exFAT drives are faster at reading and writing as compared to FAT32. This format can store large files and it's also lightweight. It's compatible with all versions of Windows and the best thing it's along with Windows it's also compatible with macOS, Linux, and Android, etc.

• If your drive is formatted as Windows default format NTFS then its only readable to macOS. You can't do more than that or you have to install a separate app on Mac to read write the drive.
• Drive with macOS format HFS+ cant readable to Windows.
• FAT32 format works on both Windows and Mac but the problem is you can only work with the files with Maximum size 4GB.

Learn more: Copy data on NTFS drive in macOS

FAT32 is much better than NTFS and HFS+ coz it works on both operating systems. You can also install drivers on each OS to make work your drive. So exFAT is much better than all of these formats and a simple option but this will not work on Leopard.

Format and external hard drive on Mac

First, let's see how to format an external hard drive or USB drive in macOS which works with both Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive in macOS machine.

1. Open Disk Utility on your macOS, press cmd + spacebar keys and type Disk Utility in the spotlight search. Open Disk Utility from the search results.
2. On the Disk Utility interface, select an external drive click on the Erase button from top of the window (make sure and bcakup your drive before erasing it).
3. Now enter the name for the external drive which will be used after formatting and also select exFAT for Format option and click on the Erase. This will format the drive as ExFAT format and your drive is now compatible with both platforms.

How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac Os

Format hard drive in Windows

Format and external hard drive on Mac

First, let's see how to format an external hard drive or USB drive in macOS which works with both Mac and PC platforms, first plug-in your drive in macOS machine.

1. Open Disk Utility on your macOS, press cmd + spacebar keys and type Disk Utility in the spotlight search. Open Disk Utility from the search results.
2. On the Disk Utility interface, select an external drive click on the Erase button from top of the window (make sure and bcakup your drive before erasing it).
3. Now enter the name for the external drive which will be used after formatting and also select exFAT for Format option and click on the Erase. This will format the drive as ExFAT format and your drive is now compatible with both platforms.

How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac Os

Format hard drive in Windows

The below steps for formatting external drive is for Windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of Windows. To format your external drive hard drive in Windows which works with both platforms, first plug-in your drive with Windows machine. Mac bullet lipstick.

Open Disk Management tool by right-clicking on start menu icon and then select Disk Management. Now right click on the external drive and click on format option (double-check the drive name and capacity to make sure you are going to format the right drive.)

Now enter the Volume label as you need and change the File system for exFat and click Ok. Now you are done.

How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Mac High Sierra

Share your experience, how do you use an external hard drive on both Mac and PC. Did you format the drive as exFAT ? or use any utility that helps the system to read another type of file system. Please leave a comment below.

How Do I Reformat External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro