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. Connect the drive to your.
This how-to shows you the steps using Disk Utility 13 in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, but the process is the same if you’re using OS X 10.9 Mavericks or 10.8 Mountain Lion. Here are the instructions using OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
- Here's how to format a drive if you are planning to use it with a Mac. Launch Disk Utility. Either head to Applications > Utilities, or tap Command + Space and start typing Disk Utility.
- If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than.
- Hard drives set up for use on Windows machines only will often use NTFS, while Macs will use HFS+. That said, if you are using both a PC and Mac in the workflow, you’ll need to use a different format.
- External hard drive is very useful when you want to copy large files between computers, or back up your important files like photos, videos, documents and other data. They typically have large capacities and can be connected to computer via USB sport or FireWire.
- To format a drive on a Mac, you’ll need the built-in Disk Utility application. Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search dialog, type “Disk Utility”, and press “Enter” to launch the app.
Hard Drive Format Tool
Sometimes you want to wipe out all the data that’s on a hard drive or solid-state drive—erase it and start over. The best way to do this is to format the drive, which both erases the drive and prepares it for storing data by mapping out bad sectors, creating address tables for locating the data on the disk, and more.
Similarly, you may have purchased a new drive that was formatted for Windows out of the box. You'll want to reformat that drive for your Mac.
How To Format Hard Drive For Mac
But formatting a drive so that it can be used as your Mac’s startup drive requires a slightly different procedure than formatting it for use as a secondary drive for storing data.