Format a hard drive for mac osx how to#

You will notice a status bar appear with the progress of your format.

button to start.įrom the popup that appears click the Erase button to confirm you would like to format. You can choose: Don't Erase Data, Zero Out Data, 7-Pass Erase, or 35-Pass Erase. there are still a few USB drives that need formatting in order to work with your Mac OS.

Format a hard drive for mac osx how to#

button to specify how to erase the drive. Formatting USB drives on a Mac is actually a simple process. This is useful if a drive is being used under both Operating System (OS)to. Launch Disk Utility from the Applications:Utilities folder.įrom the list on the left select the drive you would like to formatįrom the Volume Format dropdown select the format you would like the drive to be in.Įnter the title for your volume in the Name field. A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and Mac OSX. In the Partition Layout dropdown menu, select 1 Partition. Select your Mac’s hard drive in the lefthand column, to reveal more options, then select the Partition button. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to use the default Mac file system format. Then your Mac can reformat the drive to APFS or HFS+ Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just make sure that any files on the external hard drive or SSD drive are copied off first. All external hard drives can be reformatted by your Mac. If your hard drive is an external drive, connect it to the computer. From OS X Utilities, select Disk Utility. And it’s not a format that your Mac’s Time Machine software can use for a backup. These are instructions on how to format a hard drive using Mac OS X Disk Utility.