For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. 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. Aug, 2018 need to format portable hard drive for mac and pc if you have a portable hard drive with ntfs file system, you can use it in windows computer easily. Im having issues with formatting a new hard drie in my mac. Select os x extended journaled as the drive format. Make sure your external hard drive is attached and mounted to. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve. How to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device.
Your seagate external hard drive unless its one of seagate s desktop drives. Need to format portable hard drive for mac and pc if you have a portable hard drive with ntfs file system, you can use it in windows computer easily. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. In a previous post i asked about running snow leopard on my mac after a hard drive fail.
Sep 28, 2019 the best format to choose when you plan to use your seagate expansion only for your mac is mac os extended journaled file system. Formatting the drive will permanently erase all the data and files stored on the hard drive forever. 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. Back up using seagate with time machine, formatting seagate. Because mac os x mountain lion does not natively support writing to an external ntfs drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. Here are the steps to create a back up of your seagate hard drives data with macs time machine before you reformat seagate drive. Apr 10, 2020 similar to formatting a hard drive, if you want to partition your hard drive due to various reasons, such as creating two os within one box or saving space for data backup, you may follow steps here to partition the hard drive. In a few moments youll see the drive icon on your desktop. Then super eraser for mac will help you format and erase the selected hard drivedevice.
The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Formatting seagate hdd in mac pro with 2 os window7 and. But dont forget to back up your important data in the drive into a safe place. I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. How to fix a corrupted external hard drive on macmacbook. It can recover multiples of file formats and file types including documents, videos, audios, archives, email, photos, etc. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. I know mac operating system doesnt fully support ntfs formatted drive.
Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. If you select the one below it, the partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable. After replacing this hard drive, i booted my mac up from cd, ran through setup fine until i got to the select a. How to set up seagate external hard drive on macbook pro, mac mini, mac. Mac free seagate external hard drive recovery for mac. It is obvious that you can use seagate external hard drive or flash drive with mac and windows computer as long as you format seagate drive for mac and pc. How to format a seagate hard drive for mac steps backup your hard drive. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. 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. Jan 02, 2014 choose to format the portable hard disk drive by clicking the format button in the small gray menu that pops up. The simple and easy steps to formatting your seagate drive on your mac 1.
Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing data. Oct 09, 2019 this wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. Please remember that all data will be deleted from the drive, so make sure you have made a backup. Consider how youll be saving and transferring files, such as photos, videos, files from tablets, files from pc laptops, or photos from toprated cell phones.
Like the commercials of years gone by, some people are pcs and others are macs. Seagate backup plus comes in a couple varieties one preformatted for mac, the other preformatted for windows but also readable on mac. How to fix seagate external hard drive readonly on mac. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Fix a corrupted external hard drive without formatting formatting usually is the least wanted solution for fixing the problem, so we gather two fixes without formatting here.
Connect your seagate external hard drive into your pc or mac. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. Your macbook can not read or write to a ntfs drive. Transferring data from a mac to pc via an external hard drive.
You just need to select the hard drive you want to format, and then click on wipe now button. But if you connect it to a macbook, you will find that the operating system cannot recognize it. Seagate backup plus desktop user manual optional formatting. Confirm that you would like to format the portable hdd by clicking ok and begin the process of formatting by clicking the ok button on the next screen that appears. 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. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. How to format a seagate freeagent for a macbook synonym. The steps to partition a hard drive resemble to those of formatting a hard drive except the part of erasing data. I have a 2007 black macbook and im trying to run a 160gb sata seagate hard drive. However, when you format your hard drive with super eraser for mac, all your data will be permanently lost. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save. When your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. How to backup mac to an external hard drive 5 steps.
Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. Seagate expansion on mac, want it but can i use on my mac. Fix seagate external hard drive not detectedrecognized error. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. I am planning to get a macbook next month and would like to eventually back that up onto the drive as well. Similar to formatting a hard drive, if you want to partition your hard drive due to various reasons, such as creating two os within one box or saving space for data backup, you may follow steps here to partition the hard drive. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Make sure you select the disk icon right under external. How to reformat a seagate external hard drive for both mac and a pc. The best format to choose when you plan to use your seagate expansion only for your mac is mac os extended journaled file system. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Apr 21, 2020 when your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. To fix a corrupted external hard drive on mac, the solutions are categorized into without formatting and by formatting.
How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. I got a seagate external hard drive so i can back up my first laptop which runs on windows vista yes, i know its the worst operating system but its a long story as to why i am still using it. Go to system preferences and click on time machine. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. This mode wipe hard drive will help you format a selected hard drivedevice and erase all data from it. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here connect the drive to your mac. In the pane on the left, under storage, click disk management. Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in macos. May 01, 2020 how to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. On the left hand side of disk utility youll see a list of drives. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. It is the reliable disk formatting tool for windowsmac.
Once it finishes creating them, you can move the drive between macs and windows pcs, and move files back and forth easily. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. Takes its juice, its power from your mac, along its usb cable and that means youll need enough battery power in your macbook pro or air to drive the seagate drive. Well show you everything you need to know about the. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. Chris besides the formatting difference, there is software on the pc version and no software on the mac version. Recover reformatted seagate external hard disk drive. Windows will format the portable hard disk drive and notify. 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.
It is the file system format that gets tricky, which defines how we store and access files on the hard disk. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive readonly on mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. After replacing this hard drive, i booted my mac up from cd, ran through setup fine until i got to the select a devide to install to the point where my hard drive should be visible. How to format new or second hard drive on windows 10mac. But sometimes a little help is needed, if you decide to start using your windows drive mainly on your new mac. Also, there are two versions of mac products freeagent go pro for mac has usb and firewire 800, and freeagent go for mac usb usb 2. Select the erase tab and choose mac os extended journaled for the format and give it a. Choose to format the portable hard disk drive by clicking the format button in the small gray menu that pops up. Drive speed is measured in revolutions per minute rpm, based on how fast the drive can spin. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility.
The next step is downloading the software aweeraser. Paragon disk wipe allows you to create a bootable usbflash drive or external hard drive that will help you to completely erase a whole hard disk, a separate partition or just clean free space. Hard drives in seagates freeagent line except for the go pro for mac and the go for mac ship with ntfs, a file system designed for windows. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve your goal. These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. Click erase button, the external hard drive will be formatted. To find your best external hard drive for mac, youll want to decide how quickly you want to save and retrieve data. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. Dec 29, 2015 the instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as well. The 4 disk formatting software for mac above can help you easily format hard drive, usb flash drive, memory card, and other storage media under mac os. Mac os x and windows can both read and write to disks in the fat or exfat format. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side.
External seagate hard drive for mac compatibility ask different. Seagate backup plus hub user manual optional formatting and. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. In the format partition section, select the file system.
Make sure the storage device is connected to and mounted on the computer. How to format seagate external hard drive for both mac. However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in disk utility that states it is only being mounted in readonly mode. Do this to connect up your seagate expansion drive. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. Seagate expansion formatting is a process to erase the device to free disk space, and formatted seagate expansion recovery is to restore formatted seagate disk ie unformat seagate hard disk. Make sure it will be connected throughout the process or you may break the hard drive if its unconnected while the reformatting process is running. Since seagate hard disks mostly come with the ntfs file.
It brought me to a webpage on seagates site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a windows pc. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want. How to fix seagate external hard drive not showing. 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. 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. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac.
Download disk formatting software for mac doyourdata. Mac free seagate external hard drive recovery allows you to free recover. How to format a windows disk drive for a mac seagate blog. For some reason i lost half of my space on this hard drive once i. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra. If you wants both pc and mac compatibility you must format it in exfat, but time machine doesnt support exfat. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard drive so make sure you back up your data elsewhere before starting. All connected storage devices, partitions or disk images are displayed in the left column. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. First, connect the seagate external hard drive with your mac.
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