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- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac High Sierra
- How To Format An External Hard Disk For Mac And Windows
- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows 10
- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Macbook
- How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac Mojave
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac High Sierra
I use external hard drives to store all of my photos and for my backups. External hard drives are great, but they must be formatted properly before you start filling them up with important information. To this day, a PC cannot read from a hard drive that has been formatted for the Mac without additional software. Likewise, the Mac OS X Operating System can read from, but cannot write to, an external drive that has been formatted for a PC using the NTFS file system without additional software.
Regardless of brand or model, the very first thing that you must do when you buy a brand new external hard drive is to format it properly for your system. Format and partition your new disk immediately, before you start using it for backup or for additional file storage. It is essential that you do this right away, before you start using the drive, because the formatting process erases everything on the external disk.
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Most photographers will want to format their new external hard drives using their operating system’s optimal style. NTFS is the standard for Windows users and OS X Extended (Journaled) is the standard for Mac folks.
How To Format An External Hard Disk For Mac And Windows
How to format an external drive (Mac):
A hard drive can be used on any type of computer - PC or Mac. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. This article explains. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for PCs, some for Macs, and some of them have special utilities.
How to format an external drive (Windows):
Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for Mac. Whether you are trying to backup Mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you need to format the hard drive on your Mac or PC. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open. Launch Disk Utility. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left. Click the Erase tab along the top of the window. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field. Click the Erase button. How to Format a Hard Drive For Both Windows and Mac. But other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exFAT for use with Mac as well.
Getting Fancy: Going Cross-Platform
What if you need to use the same external hard drives with both types of computers? If you set the external drive up using NTFS then the Mac can’t write files onto it. Rats. If you set the drive up using OS X Extended then the PC won’t even recognize it. Double-rats. So what to do?
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows 10
The very best solution that I have found to this dilemma is to avoid this whole problem. If you can use one external hard drive for your Mac and a separate drive formatted for a PC when your working with a Windows computer. But if you must use the same drive with both types of computer then you need to install some additional software. PC users who face this problem should look into a super cool program called MacDrive 9. Download google keep. With MacDrive, your PC can both read and write to an OS X Extended hard drive!
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Macbook
Mac users who find themselves in a similar position should look into a program called Paragon NTFS for Mac OS 14. Like MacDrive, this inexpensive utility gives a Mac the ability to both read and write to an NTFS hard drive. Once I have MacDrive installed on my PC, I can use an external hard drive that has been formatted using either the NTFS or OS X Extended system. Likewise, with Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X installed, my Mac suddenly works with either drive format. Problem solved!
How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac Mojave
For more advice on selecting the appropriate drive format I urge you to read this article from the American Society of Media Photographers fantastic dpbestflow.org project. Line for macbook air free download.