The two most popular operating systems, windows and mac os both have formatting utilities builtin, which makes formatting external drives even more convenient. In this article, we will learn how to format the hard disk in. External hard drive compatible with mac and pc without. If you want to reformat the entire disk, including the volume with installed windows os, you need a recovery disk or installation disk of windows xp, windows vista or windows 7. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service.
Reformatting your drive will get rid of your files, of course, but it also gets rid of any errors. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. Apr 29, 2020 follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista, or windows xp. Macs may also create a protected efi partition on these drives that you cant delete with the usual diskpartitioning tools. Then proceed to highlight your computers hard drive.
How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. Follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista, or windows xp. Dec 24, 2010 reformatting a hard drive on windows machines let us see how to format a hard drive on windows machines. Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac, you should erase your entire disk. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. First of all go on the start menu and do the search for the control panel and choose the latest result from the search. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. Now, lets take a look at some ways you can format your usb drive on windows 10. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for time machine. Erase the mac partitions, including the efi system partition. Windows 2000 might let you as well, but i am not sure. With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to reinstall windows any version.
If you have any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device. Dec 29, 2015 windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other. Click the scheme popup menu, then choose master boot. If you are using a mac, you can run the builtin disk utility to quickly format a hard drive or external hard. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. How to convert an external hard drive from apple to pc. Reformatting an external hard drive dell community. Press the win key, type disk management and select create and format hard disk partitions. Click the file menu and select load file system from device. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system.
You may have to get a program such as partitionmagic to format the whole drive into fat32 if you want partitions greater than 32gb or use win98. Understanding hard drive partitioning with disk management. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. Should i just wait until i get the new laptop and attempt to reformat the drive on it. For windows, it offers quick format feature when you rightclick the hard drive on the computer. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Either way there is a solution to having an existing external hard drive for mac and pc. Erase and reformat a storage device in disk utility on mac. To help maintain and resolve performance issues, reformatting the hard drive every year is advisable. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. To format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac duration. In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with windows computers. Reformatting a drive means taking the drive back to a blank piece of hardware.
How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Then, click erase at the bottom to format the drive. But to get a hard drive to be compatible with both mac and pc, you have to. In disk utility on mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your mac. I hope you enjoyed my article on how to make an external hard drive compatible with mac and pc without reformatting. There are specific thirdparty systems, like digital camcorders, and sony playstation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either fat32 or exfat format to perform read from and. How to format the hard disk drive in windows 7 computer. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the operating system that you are using. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons.
How to clone your boot drive to ssd without having to reinstall windows or. How to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. Formatted external hard drive without backup and want to recover the data. How to format a hard drive to work on mac and pc youtube. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by.
But if you try to use an external hard drive thats been formatted for mac os. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. However, windows xp does not let you format a drive into fat32 unless you partition the drive into 32gb or smaller pieces. Mar 31, 2020 if you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be.
Jan 17, 2019 rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. To use hfsexplorer, connect your mac formatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. You may need to reformat it to work with both computers. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. Formatting hard drives and external hard drives is usually a fairly straightforward process. How to format hard drive and fix disk format errors on mac. It can also mean putting the same file system in the drive to fix it if its faulty. Please note that reformatting the drive will erase all the information on the drive. Oct 18, 2019 this wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drive s format on windows and mac computers. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support.
Seagate backup plus desktop user manual optional formatting. Reformatting external hard drive without apple community. If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first. Here youll see all the hard drives internal and external connected to your pc. How to format ps4 hard drive for pc in windows 1087. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. In the value label field, type a descriptive name for the drive. Jul 16, 2016 how to format an external hard drive on windows and mac duration. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers operating system, as well as fix any nonphysical errors on the drive itself. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet.
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. Mar 15, 2018 to use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. Mar 11, 2020 to wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all its information. 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 its a protected partition. To do this, you have to create an installation media either a bootable cd or usb flash drive with the windows 10 media creation tool. But to get a hard drive to be compatible with both mac and pc, you have. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods revealed. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Use the file system dropdown menu, and select ntfs recommended. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or. There would be any number of similar utilities on the net i would have thought try googling it maybe. Mar 29, 2019 reformatting your laptop involves completely erasing the hard drive and it is the surest and most effective way to clean your computer.
Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. Jan 23, 2020 i hope you enjoyed my article on how to make an external hard drive compatible with mac and pc without reformatting. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Reformatting a hard drive on windows machines let us see how to format a hard drive on windows machines. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. How to format a hard drive so it can be read on both a mac and pc. Youll need to take an extra step to wipe the hard drive so the data cannot be easily reconstructed later. Windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other.
If youve just inserted a new hard drive, it should be listed. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. Format your western digital my passport external hard drive to fat32 or exfat format so to transfer the data between a mac and windows system conveniently. Click erase button, the external hard drive will be formatted. Please see the link below for instructions on how to format the drive on a windows computer.
Whether you go the software or hardware route depends on your situation. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo software. Keep clicking next to progress through, you can also choose a name for the drive under the volume label. This is the easiest way and simply requires you to plug in your usb drive, open the windows file explorer and right click your drive to view a number of actions that you can perform. Reformatting a drive in windows vista is usually a pretty simple process, which might lull you into the misconception that reformatting a drive in windows vista is no big deal. How to format a hard drive in windows 10 make tech easier. Both windows and mac os offer builtin disk formatting tool.
How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by using the exfat filesystem. Jan 15, 2020 learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. Open disk management, the hard drive manager included with all versions of windows. Well show you everything you need to know about the. To wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all its information. Opening disk management can be done a number of ways depending on your version of windows, but the easiest method is to type diskmgmt. How to wipe a hard drive permanently erase everything. Jun 12, 2006 reformatting hdd when i bought my lacie drive it came with its own format utility for mac and pc formats. I attached a macformatted lacie 320gb ruggedized drive to the pc and opened computer management to reformat the drive as ntfs. Since the mac can read the old drive, an external drive formatted mac os extended could be attached as well.
But dont forget to back up your important data in the drive into a safe place. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been formatted for a mac when i plug it into my pc i cant access it. Rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. A computers hard drive experiences malfunctions over time, which are caused by multiple factors like viruses, or sketchy or incompatible software, or the computers old age. Reformatting 3tb wd my book for mac to windows wd community. How to install and run windows on an external usb drive. How to format usb drives on windows 10 make tech easier. The manufacturer either provides the owner with a copy of the operating system os or they create a restoration partition on the hard drive. What disk utility looks like in lion through yosemite. A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for pc windows or for mac.
Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives. There is the best method to reformat hard drive on windows 10 by using the windows builtin disk management tool. Thanks for watching and supporting brennans tech bite. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. How to reformat hard drive you can think of reformatting your drive as a way to reset it by putting a new file system into the drive to supplant the old one. Format hard drive on windows 10 if you have windows 10, you can format hard drive from bios via the command prompt.
May 25, 2017 with a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to reinstall windows any version. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. Deleting everything does not wipe a hard drive and formatting does not usually wipe a hard drive. Or you can choose wipe hard drive to completely delete the hard drive. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. When the wizard is finished you will now have a new drive available in windows explorer for the old ps4 hard drive. The procedure to reformat a laptop is rather simple in todays world.
How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing data. Open the disk utility app on your mac using one of the following methods, depending on the type of disk or volume you want to erase. Rightclick the hard drive and choose wipe hard drive. Reformatting is a destructive process, so if you want the drive in a different format such as mac os extended you will need to copy the files off to another location temporarily and then bring them back once the drive is reformatted. Youll want to do it before you sell your machine, for sure, but its also one of the steps you take when you. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. How to properly formatreformat a hard drive for mac os. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or msdos. I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. To get a clearer picture of things, go to the disk management utility in windows. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive.
Nov 26, 2017 connect the ps4 hard drive to the computer e. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Hard drives advertised as being compatible with windows and mac os may have misled. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. Ok, maybe i need to be a little bit clearer reformatting a drive will wipe out everything, however if you just want to change the file system from fat to ntfs you do not have to reformat the drive you can do this by converting the file system and this means you can leave the files in place afterwards, assuming the convert runs cleanly, you should be able to access them just as before. Need to reformat wd hard drive for mac if you connect your wd hard drive without reformatting, youll be unable to copy files to the disk as mac read only supports ntfs file system. Apr 30, 2020 to format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below.
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