How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Time machine requires that an external drive be formatted like a mac startup disk. How to recover files from external hard drive without formatting free download and install recoverit data recovery on your computer, connect your external hard drive to your computer and follow the next steps to recover files from external hard drive that is undetected, crahsed, corrupted or dead. If you cant back up or restore your mac using time machine. For most reasons to erase, you should erase the disk, which also erases all volumes on that disk. Well then, how to format an external hard drive to exfat with windows pc. When disk utility cant repair this disk error appears if you forget to make a backup of your external hard drive or other data drives and format it, free download minitool mac data recovery on your mac. The loyal external hard drive may not show up or mount in finder. When you visit our properties and use our products and services, we use scripts and. 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 20, 2020 whether you have mac os sierra, high sierra or mojave the way you format your wd elements drive for mac is the same. There are several reasons why an external hard drive may not be accessible or detected when you connect it to your computer.
Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in. Jan 17, 2020 by this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data. Sep 19, 2014 she has a mac mini and a wd passport external hard drive. If the wd elements to be formatted contains a gpt partition, disk utility will. How can i format this drive in windows 7 home premium.
Operation failed i have a 4 tb wd passport hard disk. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. Apr 10, 2019 backup disks you can use with time machine time machine can back up to an external storage device connected to your mac or supported airport base station. Feb 09, 2020 if you read my previous post about how to format an external drive for mac, you know that i bought a 2tb seagate expansion external hard drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk one for mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use. I have been trying to walk her through reformatting it but nothing is working.
When the disk utility recognizes it the drive is read only. Actually, it is possible to boot mac from external drive or a hard drive, but there are a few specific requirements needed for your mac to become eligible for that process. 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. You can format your external hard drive from either the pc or mac. Have you encountered wd quick formatter failed problem during the format process in windows. The computer recognize its existence on the f drive and disk management says the status is healthy primary partition but it will not format. Format external hard drive with windows builtin tool. Wd my passport for mac portable external hard drive. Partitioning usb hard drives that fail in disk utility with posix error. The hard drive is already formatted in mac os extended. This is a true usbc external hard drive, which comes with a usbc to regular usb cable. There is a button on the top left of the disk utility window for view. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with.
How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. Wd quick formatter failed in formatting external drive. A progress bar will show how the formatting of your drive is going and how long, roughly, it will take to complete. How to fix external hard drive io device error 3 solutions. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or usb flash key to a mac will generally read and work fine as is because the mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including windows msdos, fat, fat32, exfat, and ntfs formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a windows and mac machine, formatting it to be entirely mac compatible filesystem is highly recommended, and necessary for time machine and to make disks bootable. In the volume format list, select mac os extended journaled. After that the hard drive icon shown in disk utility was now grayed. Whether you have mac os sierra, high sierra or mojave the way you format your wd elements drive for mac is the same.
This offers a particularly big productivity boost for ipad pro users hoping to fully replace a computer with their sleek tablet. How to backup mac to an external hard drive 5 steps. How you format a mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. However, if you want to convert ntfs to exfat to make external hard drive compatible with mac and pc, 3 steps are required. Click on the apply button and click on the done button when it is activated. How to recover data from failed hard drive during the hard drive failure repair, the data stored on it might be lost, deleted, formatted or damaged. Jan 16, 2020 when disk utility cant repair this disk error appears if you forget to make a backup of your external hard drive or other data drives and format it, free download minitool mac data recovery on your mac. When you suffer from wd external drive format failed on mac, you. Unable to format a hard drive encrypted with symantec encryption desktop formerly known as pgp whole disk encryption on mac with errors.
This would have changed your raw drive into ntfs file system and the data you have stored in it can be used again. Sep 26, 2018 however, if you want to use the mac to format your external hard drive to exfat, youll face the problem that the external hard drive may not be compatible with the windows pc. One of the changes coming with ipados and ios is the ability to connect an external hard drive to your iphone or ipad. There are various reasons why you might need to format external hard drives. I know their is nothing wrong with my external hard drive because it works on my pc. Formatting an external hard drive for os apple community. Recoverit secure hard drive data recovery software. It can also back up to a mac or networkattached storage device nas on your network. Mac os extended journaled with a guid partition table gpt. Yes, im trying to format it on a mac sorry, i thought i had posted in the mac section. Then, select your hard drive from the left sidebar.
I did restart the computer as you suggested, but again received the message the. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Connect your external hard drive to your windows 10 pc. If you installed lion or mountain lion on a supported harddrive configuration your mac must have an internal drive formatted with a guid. Hi, yesterday i bought a new 8tb wd external hard drive, it came formatted as exfat, i tried to format it to hfs but after a few seconds it failed and i got the message drive failed to unmount, then the driver dissapeared, disk utility would display it as disk5s1 but every attempt at formatting the disk would fail, took it to a pc and formatted again but my imac wound. One way to do this is to convert the raw hard drive to ntfs using the cmd command method. Locate your drive under external drives it should show something like disk1s1 3. Error message when formatting a new drive external drives. Lacie porsche design 2tb usbc mobile hard drive, silver. To get the data back without any hassle, you can turn to a professional and secure hard drive failure recovery program. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. My passport wont format external drives for mac wd. Here we take an example of formatting external hard drive to exfat in a windows 10 pc.
I had the choice to partition it, but i didnt need to since i only save photos to it. How to fix mac osx hard drive formatting issue 2018 youtube. Feb 08, 2020 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. Your pc wont even work if you end up making any change to the settings of this transfer mode.
Dec 29, 2015 follow these instructions if you plan to share an external hard drive between pc and mac computers. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. Hey all 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. Follow these instructions if you plan to share an external hard drive between pc and mac computers. Feb 20, 2019 connect the hard drive to my mac, launch disk utility, then look for and eject the my passport hard drive. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Then, click erase at the bottom to format the drive. High sierra wont format new drives macrumors forums. This menu item is in the upperleft side of the screen. Additionally, the lacie setup software asked me if i wanted to divide the hard drive into two separate drives, on for mac os and one for windows.
I assume youre trying to format it on a mac, probably the error is because it failed to unmount the disk. How to recover files from external hard drive without formatting free download and install recoverit data recovery on your computer, connect your external hard drive to your computer and follow the next steps to recover files from external hard drive that is. The disk utility gives no options for formatting under the erase. In the resulut, your external hard drive will work just fine with mac and windows. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided. Mac external hard drive not mounting or is unrecognized. Be sure to check us out on twitter and the cnet mac forums. And you can be confident that apple hasnt changed the way you format an external drive on a mac. A caution about formatting storage drives afps macrumors forums. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data. The my passport for mac portable hard drive is trusted to store the massive amounts of photos, videos and music you love. Aug 02, 2017 set the format type to mac os extended journaled. Visit us, explore, and be inspired by premium external hard drives, ssds, and raid solutions that give you fieldproven reliability and bold performance.
Click start button and search commond, then rightclick one it and afterward press run as administrator. How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. If you are looking to sell or donate your old drive, you will want to not only reformat your drive, but also erase all the data in a separate action. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. In the disk management, youll see your external hard drive as partition or unallocated space. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. How to fix raw external hard drive without formatting.
When you connect an external hard drive to mac, it mounts and shows up on the desktop. After a drive has been encrypted with symantec drive encryption for the mac operating system, it is not possible to reformat the disk on the mac os and will pro. The package comes with the two cables and the external hard drive. External hard drives are handy tools in storing files, data and documents. In this post, youll learn how to format an external drive to a mac compatible file system and recover files from a reformatted hard drive. If you work solely on a mac, but need to send files to someone working on a pc, your external hard drive needs to be set up for both operating systems.
I had no trouble formatting my external hard drives in older operating systems. Apr 23, 2014 its a good idea to backup your data for your mac using time machine. If youre backing up to an external drive, check the formatting of the drive. In all likelihood, youre more acquainted with formatting an external hard drive than your macs internal one, arent you. Choose 1 partition from the volume scheme and then click on options. Formatting actually reformatting a solid state drive ssd is a quick and simple process to restore the drive to a clean state, similar to when the drive was new. How to format an external hard drive for mac youtube. Under details, it says the operation failed because it couldnt unmount the disk. Seagate official support get the most out of all your data storage devices with howto videos and articles, software downloads, technical support information, and data recovery services. When trying to partition and format various usb hard drives, a number of users are getting errors in disk utility that states disk erase failed with the error. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac.
Feb 26, 2018 this is a tutorial on how to force your hard drive to reformat in mac osx high sierra possibly earlier versions diskutil list diskutil unmountdisk force disk4 sudo dd ifdevzero ofdevdisk4. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac. Open the disk utility and select the external drive. I plug it in, the light is on, but unless i toggle it a bit it wont see the the external drive. Error message when formatting a new drive external drives for mac. Imagine how will one access the videos, documents like spreadsheets etc. Device failure may happen any time without warning. If you purchase an external hard drive as an addition to expand the storage space of your computer, most likely you would need to format it.
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. Aug 14, 2019 if youre backing up to an external drive, check the formatting of the drive. Connect the hard drive to my mac, launch disk utility, then look for and eject the my passport hard drive. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Formatting an external hard drive for os x and xp i apologize if this is not in the best fitting section of the forum for this topic, but i could not find a better location.
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. If you are using it for mac only then select a format specifically for macos. Usb external troubleshooter seagate support singapore. How to format hard drive and fix disk format errors on mac. Every time i try to erase to reformat, it says the process has failed. Hurry to get files off failing hard drive on mac with great tool. Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. Open the disk management tool by rightclicking this pc manage disk management. Well show you everything you need to know about the. For earlier versions of the mac operating system, screens may be slightly different. How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. To deal with the raw external hard drive issue, there might be the need to format the drive to turn the raw files to ntfs. Thus, youd better use the windows machine to format your external hard drive. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and.
Thank you for helping us maintain cnet s great community. I am trying to partition my hard drive so it can be read on both mac and pc. Then, you need to choose the best file system for your external hard drive and follow these steps. This is a tutorial on how to force your hard drive to reformat in mac osx high sierra possibly earlier versions diskutil list diskutil unmountdisk force. If that is the purpose for the new drive then click on the yes options button.
Fix error external hard drive not formatted and recover data. All options, including format, is greyed out except to delete volume. There will be two lines corresponding to the drive. I have an lg external hard drive which i unplugged one day without doing the safe eject. Trouble formatting external hard drive macrumors forums. Wd 2tb black my passport for mac portable external hard drive. How to recover files from a crashed external hard drive.
Its a good idea to backup your data for your mac using time machine. A hard disk error can damage your disk and prevent it from functioning properly. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Primary id channel, device 0 is used for system disk so dont change that. Enter a name for the disk or volume, such as macintosh hd. Unable to format a hard drive encrypted with symantec. It shouldnt be such a pain to format a drive for a mac. This post will teach you how to format your macs hard disk and fix common. Lets take a look at the different types of formats, and which are best for video production. If you need to use a hard drive on different operating systems such as windows, mac and linux, you might need to format it each time. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x.
To resolve this, you must first erase the disk and set the scheme to guid. However, the partition option remains greyed out for my hard drive and when i place the cursor over the greyed out partition. Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. To format or reformat an external hard drive on mac, youll need the builtin disk management tool called disk utility. A caution about formatting storage drives afps macrumors. External hard drive not working with ipad or iphone using. If you select a differently formatted drive for use with time machine, your mac automatically prompts you to erase it for. Mac os extended journaled with a guid partition table. Hi all, i have having problems in regards the process of formatting my external hard drive. When you get a new hard drive, it may already be formatted for windows or mac.
You may be presented with an alert asking if you want to use the new drive as the time machine backup drive. Backup disks you can use with time machine apple support. While it is possible that your external hard drive may have come with bundled software that may be incompatible with newer operating systems, this is typically just back up software, and the drive is not dependent on that software to function. Mar 15, 2017 plug the drive into pc and just delete the partition so you have the whole drive an unallocated space. Formatting failed external drives for mac wd community. Formatting wd elements for mac by quick workarounds. Backup disks you can use with time machine time machine can back up to an external storage device connected to your mac or supported airport base station. The next section describes the 15 worst mac hard drive problems with their solutions. Then, you can share external hard drive between mac and pc.
Connect the raw external hard drive to your pc step 2. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for os xs time machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible. Errors such as the one described in the scenario above are other sadder reasons why hard drive formatting is done. Click the erase button or tab, then complete these fields. How to format seagate external hard drive for both mac. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows.
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