In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your backup files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. The 8 best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Usually, when we connect the external drive to mac, it shows up quickly on the desktop. Now she wants to turn off time machine for one of her two hard drives, so that she can backup the macbook pro hard drive and the other external hard drive onto it. But when you dont find the external drive on the desktop, then it is frustrating cause you cant copy or post anything on. The seagate portable drives receive their power from your mac by the usb cable. Lacie 2tb mobile drive external hard drive usbc usb 3. Macbook pro 16inch, 2019 macbook pro inch, 2016 and later macbook pro 15inch, 2016 2019. You can only read your elements external hard drive. Heres how to access the contents on a usb drive that wont open on your mac. I recently switched from a crashed hp to a macbook and am trying to reformat my external hard drive, but it looks like every option requires me to delete the files on my hard drive. Your other option is to reformat your toshiba external drive.
How to use your seagate external hard drive on macbook pro, air or imac. This external hard drive was easy to set up and recognized by my laptop, and the transfer speeds match up to what you would expect from a 3. Any hard drive can be formatted for mac and here is how you do it. Formatting can be done with the mac os x disk utility, found in the applicationsutilities folder. How to erase everything on macbook pro hard drive befre. If you need to erase everything on macbook pro, only. There are a few reasons to reformat your drive this way. Ms windows requires reformatting for mac os maximum capacity. How to use seagate external hard drive on mac, 16 ways. Erase and reformat a storage device in disk utility on mac. Or perhaps you are setting up an external drive for backups.
Learn more about erasing hard disks on mac from apple. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Macbook external hard drive not recognized how to reformat western digital hard drive for mac. My wife has a macbook pro and two external hard drives. How to open an external drive thats not showing on mac. For more security, consider turning on filevault encryption when you start using your ssd drive. How can i reformat the internal drive and install mountain. I needed a handy sized external hard drive to act as a timemachine for my 2017 macbook pro.
We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both mac and pc users. My hard drive crashed on my imac took it to computer repair they installed new hard drive, tried to recover data but could not, when we presented the imac to the apple store they told me i would have to buy back my old hd from them um hello no way, so thats why we went to another place that works on macs, so apple said i had lion on the mac, i. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. Macbook imac mac pro mac mini mac software iphone ipad ipod. It doesnt matter how the drive is formatted out of the box, since you can reformat any way you like. How to format your hard drive seagate support asean. Reformatting a hard drive is often done just to erase all of its contents.
Insert the drives usb cable into one of the thin, rectangular slots in your computers casing. After the wiping process is complete, an intimating message will be displayed. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the western digital my passport 4tb, which is a mechanical hard drive. How to reformat a macbook pro 2011 hard d apple community. Gtechnology 1tb gdrive mobile ssd rseries storage next gallery image. But when you want to put documents on the drive, or update any files on the drive your mac says no. Heres how to set up an automatic backup with time machine on your mac with an external hard drive. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition.
This command will reinstall the version of os x that was previously installed on your macbook pro. Reformatting external hard drive without apple community. In this article, im going to show you how to back up your mac data to an external drive. Any external hard drive will work with pcs or macs, as long as the connectors are there firewire, usb, etc. Including how to format a drive to be used on a mac and a pc and. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. But since i have the new macbook pro 2011 only a few months since i got it it didnt come with an installation disc, but instead already came with all the applications.
Kindly note that the products chosen below are mainly based on our personal preferences and the guidelines as shown above. How to backup a mac to time machine with any hard drive. 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. I could hear the disk making strange sounds whenever i would attempt to start up the computer. For now wed advise against formatting in apfs because it wont be readable by macs that arent running. Its a good idea to backup your data for your mac using time machine. In disk utility on mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your mac. Best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc image credit. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. This post serves as the table of the contents of this series. The first 1 tb hard drive i received from this company wouldnt format with my 2010 macbook pro, so i exchanged it for a new one quite easily and i was pleased with the new hard drive for the first 4 months. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers. On mac computers, use the finder app to browse and manage files on your computer and external hard drives. Your seagate external hard drive connects to your mac by its usb cable.
Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. How to format an external hard drive for mac youtube. You can always refer back to this table of contents for each step. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. Formatting your macbook pro involves reinstalling os x, and can be useful when your computer runs slow or malfunctions due to the installation of adware or faulty software, you accidentally installed an. Macos external drive not showing not reformatting fix.
Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. You can find out the pro s and cons of using your toshiba external hard drive without reformatting in my article here. Before you sell, give away, or trade in your mac, you should back up your computer, disable some features and services, and restore to factory settings by erasing the hard drive and reinstalling macos. Reformatting the disk will delete all of the data off of it. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Gtechnology 12tb graid with thunderbolt 3 hard drive storage system previous gallery image. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage. Wd external hard drive set up guide how to use on mac.
How to backup mac to an external hard drive 5 steps. Three weeks ago, i bought a brand new 2tb seagate expansion to backup my macbook pro before i updated it to the latest macos. With my previous laptops pcs, ive always stored my data on an external hard drive. Keep in mind that a mac can generally read other file formats, but for the best performance. Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with. If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first.
How can i reformat the internal drive and install mountain lion from an external drive. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. The only limitation to fat32 is that you cant copy files onto your external hard drive that are above 4 gigs. What you need to reformat macbook pro this post back up your macbook hard drive with time machine. Best external hard drives for macs in 2020 techradar. Before a hard drive can read or write data, it must first be formatted, or erased and reconfigured. This you can take advantage of the fast speeds on your mac or macbook pro, and. If youre using an imac, you may find the usb ports on the side of your keyboard or on the back of the imacs screen. The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. Upon confirming your wiping mode, click the start wiping button to being wiping your macbook pro. Reformatting external hard drive without losing files. Im not extremely techsavvy and would like some help in plain english as to how i would go about reformatting my element. To determine what os your mac notebook or desktop shipped with you can use mac os x versions builds for computers.
It seems that the hard drive is formatted for windows but it does work read and write. Professional photographers and videographers have their hands laid upon various digital devices. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. We also have a tutorial on using disk utility on a mac here. But since i have the new macbook pro 2011 only a few months since i got it it didnt come with an installation disc, but instead already came with all the. If you want a reliable external hard drive that has a decent amount of storage, is super easy to carry around and has a very affordable price tag, the seagate backup plus slim is the best option for most people.
How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. Reformat macbook pro to make brand new again josh benson. Tips to fix mac doesnt recognize external hard drive on macbook pro mba imac pro. So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both oss then you.
Since formatting an external hard drive will erase all of its. I already backed up all the files i wanted to save. I just retired my dell latitude and was expecting to be able to use my wd element external hard drive on my new macbook pro but am confused as to how to reformat my external hd for use on my mac. Gtechnology 1tb g drive mobile ssd rseries storage next gallery image.
Read about it and found that id have to reformat it in mac os extended journaled. Please be advised that this video is not meant for data recovery. When i did this with my macbook air, i restarted it after i had erased the drive, so i dont know if it is possible to reinstall os x from the. Ok, at this point you should have the serial number and the model identifier at least.
Reformatting wd element to use for macbook pro external. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. Hard drive on mac 2019 macbook pro, imac, mac mini, mac pro. Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with apple macos, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with your comp. Reformatting an external hard drive macrumors forums. A lot of people including you, storing important data on seagate external hard drive instead of on your pcmac hard drive.
Now, i have a new macbook pro and all my data is still on that external hd. Why is it working on my imac and not on my macbook pro. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Gtechnology 10tb gdrive usbc desktop external hard drive. If youre erasing an external drive, make sure that its connected directly to your. With a solidstate drive ssd, secure erase options are not available in disk utility. Macbook external hard drive not recognized how to reformat. If you want to make use of your macs thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for macs. Macbook pro, imac, macbook air, laptop mac, desktop, computer apple, macbook retina display, macbook air, mac mini, mac pro. Reformatting an external hard drive for mac step 1. The reason is perhaps that seagate external hard drive has been well known for a long time as one of the most reliable drives for storing data.
When youre planning to use your seagate drive only for your mac. Connect the external drive or the usb drive to the mac. When formatting a hard drive with disk utility, make sure to. Step 3 start to wipe your macbook pro hard drive data.
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