Published on October 20th, 2013
I am looking to purchase a Seagate External Hard Drive for my MacBook Air. The products claims it works only with PC (windows), however, I have read multiple places that I can just format the drive and it will work fine with a mac. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in MacOS. These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. The following is based on Mac OS X version 10.10.5. How to Format a Seagate Hard Drive for Mac. This wikiHow teaches you how to format a Seagate Hard Drive on a Mac computer. You can format a drive using the Disk Utility in Mac. Before formatting any hard drive, it's a good idea to backup. 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.
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How to properly Format/Reformat a hard drive for Mac OS
A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for PC (Windows) or for Mac. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the Operating System that you are using. In this guide I will show you how you can properly format/reformat a hard drive for Mac OS. Formatting a hard drive for Windows will be discussed in another article.
Formatting and Reformatting a hard drive or hard disk is an easy task (if you know how). But it is also dangerous as it can result in loosing data or corrupting the drive when it is not done properly.
Before I proceed, I will be explaining some few things regarding formatting a hard drive. But if you want to know the instructions in formatting and reformatting a hard drive, just scroll down to the instructions below.
First, why do we need to format and/or reformat a hard drive. I will name some reasons, common reasons why we need to do this.
1. Some hard drives are already pre-formatted for a certain platform or system, like when you buy it out of the box it’s already formatted for Mac or Windows. But when it is not, we need to format the drive.
2. Hard drives are formatted so that a particular platform or operating system will be able to read and recognize the drive, whether it is an internal drive or external drive.
3. Hard drives are reformatted because sometimes we need to do clean up and we just want to wipe everything out that is written in the drive.
4. Formatting/Reformatting a drive can also remove soft bad sectors. But not necessarily always. Sometimes when a drive has a physical bad sector, reformatting it could spread the damage.
5. We reformat a hard drive if we are switching from one platform to another (Windows to Mac and vice verse)
Back to the main topic, below is a step by step instruction on how to Format/Reformat a hard drive for Mac OS.
Calendars 5 for mac desktop. Warning: FORMATTING and REFORMATTING A DRIVE ERASES EVERYTHING. Proceed with caution. Do backup your files first.
Formatting/Reformatting a hard drive for a Mac
1. Open Disk Utility by clicking Finder -> Applications -> Utilities and finally click Disk Utility.
2. Choose the hard drive that you want to format or reformat. Make sure that it is the correct hard drive!
3. Go to the Partition Tab
4. Click the Current Volume Scheme drop down menu and choose One (1) partition.
5. Click Options, and from the Partition Scheme provided choose “GUID Partition Table” radio button or “Apple Partition Map” radio button.
6. Then click OK. Then key-in in the other options like Volume Name, Format and Size.
In this juncture, in the Format option, choose Mac OS for Mac OS X. Or MS-DOS File System otherwise.
7. Click Apply and the Partition Disk screen will open.
8. Click Partition. During this time the drive or volume will dismount and it will be partitioned and formatted. DO NOT TURN OFF OR RESTART your computer during this time!
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Time Machine may pop up asking you to use the newly formatted drive for backups. Just cancel it to proceed.
9. After that, just exit Disk Utility and your done!
Hope this “format/reformat a hard drive for Mac” guide helped!
Below are some recommended Internal Hard drive and External Hard Drives that you might like. All of them are best sellers.
Currently Best Selling Internal Hard Drives
1. WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache – WD10EZEX
2. WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache – WD30EFRX
3. Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop 3.5″ Hard Drive
4. Seagate Barracuda 3 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 7200 RPM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM001
5. Western Digital 4 TB WD Green SATA III 5400 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD40EZRX
Currently Best Selling External Hard Drives
1. WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup
2. WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Storage
3. WD My Passport Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0
4. WD My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0
5. Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Related Posts
> Mac Data Wipe > Completely Wipe Western Digital, Seagate External Hard Drive on Mac
by Shirly Chen, 2016-08-29
When you want to permanently delete all files from your 4TB Western Digital portable hard drive on Mac, you may spend much time on cleaning up all your data. And the deleted data can be recovered by Mac data recovery software. In order permanently and completely wipe Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive on Mac, you need a powerful data erasing tool.
Mac data erasing software like Super Eraser for Mac can solve your problem. It offers secure and easy way to wipe data from hard drive on Mac. If you have a Western Digital or Seagate external hard disk drive, you can run it to completely wipe data on the Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive. Quickly download it on your Mac, and install it within 10 seconds.
Format Seagate Hard Drive
Two outstanding advantages of Super Eraser for Mac makes data erasure become easy and safe. The first one is clean interface, the interface is so easy. Any user can easily use it to wipe data from Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive. The second advantage is safety. The wiped data will be lost forever, can’t be recovered by any data recovery software or service. So when you are going to sell, donate, giveaway your Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive, Super Eraser for Mac is a good option to destroy your data.
1-Click to Completely Wipe Western Digital, Seagate External Hard Drive Data on Mac
Advanced technology makes data recovery become impossible after wiping data from Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive. However, the operation is very simple. When you connect your portable hard drive to your Mac, you just need to select it to wipe. 1 - CLICK on wipe now button, the software will automatically help you erase all the data on the Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive. See the screenshot below.
Please note that once the wipe process gets finished, all the data including the existing and deleted data will be permanently erased from the Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive. So before you completely wipe Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive data on Mac, you should back up your useful files to your computer.
With Super Eraser for Mac, you can easily wipe data from Western Digital, Seagate external hard drive on your Mac. It also can wipe data from other portable hard drives such as Samsung external hard drive, Toshiba external hard drive, Hitachi external hard drive and Maxtor, IBM, Fujitsu, external hard drives, etc. It is the most powerful Mac data erasing software. Before you resell, donate, giveaway your hard drives or lent your device to other people, you can use it to permanently wipe your sensitive data.
It also offers other modes to wipe data under different situations. It allows you to selectively erase files or folders. And it can wipe the unused disk space to permanently wipe deleted or formatted data on the hard drive.
Wipe NTFS WD/Seagate Hard Drive on Mac
If the file system in WD/Seagate external hard drive is NTFS, you have to format it for Mac at first. Run the Disk Utility on Mac, then click on “Erase” button, choose file system, then erase it for your Mac.
Format Seagate For Mac
Then run DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac computer, now it can wipe the WD and Seagate hard drive. Just choose mode “Wipe Hard Drive”, select the WD or Seagate hard drive and wipe it.
Download DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac:
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