First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. Doing mac reformat external hard drive isnt as complicated as you might think in the first place. If youre looking for similar speed but a different form factor, the gdrive mobile ssd is a. These steps can be used for both internal and external drives.
But reformatting will clean all data stored on the external hard drive. Either way there is a solution to having an existing external hard drive for mac and pc. For the purpose of reformatting, you need to start by selecting the physical drive that you wish to reformat. Windows and mac reformatting required internal storage. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. If disk utility failed to fix the corrupted external hard drive for you, the file system of your external hard drive could be seriously corrupted and need to be reformatted with a new file system. Seagate backup plus slim 1tb portable external hard drive. Buy seagate backup plus slim 1tb portable external hard drive for mac usb 3. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. I have an external hard drive where i moved all of my mac photos to. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra. How to format your hard drive seagate support asean. Do you save backups of your hard drive onto an external hard drive. How can i regain read and write permissions on my seagate. If you use the drive for backups only though, backups would be an appropriate name emoticon. I hope you enjoyed my article on how to make an external hard drive compatible with mac and pc without reformatting. To format external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. 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. The following is based on the latest version of macos. External hard drive not recognized after accidental unplugging.
Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. I can read and write when i connect back to the pc, and i even. Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in macos. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. How to reformat my seagate external hard drive quora. When i tried using the freeagent drive back to the macbook i can only read the files. Ive been having issues with my xbox one not recognizing my seagate external drive since last week when all the games from the drive got put into the ready to install section and my xbox acted like the drive wasnt even connected. My seagate 1tb external hard drive was used with my dish dvr. Ive used my 1tb drive on my mac with lion, then connected the drive to my pc for some work. I am looking to purchase a seagate external hard drive for my macbook air. How to set up seagate external hard drive on macbook pro, mac mini, mac.
When youre planning to use your seagate drive only for your mac. Data storage free delivery possible on eligible purchases. 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. The hard drive is recognized in disk management, but does not appear under devices. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here connect the drive to your mac. Formatting and reformatting a hard drive or hard disk is an easy task if you know how. You can get to know how to reformat wd hard drive for mac and pc from this post, if you need to use a western digital external hard drive, like wd elements both under mac and pc.
I would like to format it to my pc without losing my photos. Reformatting an external hard drive dell community. Two ways for reformatting wd hard drive for mac and pc. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. 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. How to format a windows disk drive for a mac seagate blog. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Follow these instructions if you plan to share an external hard drive between pc and mac computers. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. A lot of people including you, storing important data on seagate external hard drive instead of on your pc mac hard drive. Youll want to do it before you sell your machine, for sure, but its also one of the steps you take when you. How an external drive connects to your pc or mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in.
Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. External hard drive compatible with mac and pc without. There are a few reasons to reformat your drive this way. We now know that youre already sure to reformat your mac hard drive, considering youre reaching this part. How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive youtube. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. I would like to reformat it to use it on my computer now that i no longer have dish network. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive. The steps below help you format and partition a storage device. But in order to do so, the external drive should be.
If you are willing to reformat your seagate external hard drive then you should have decided to which file system you want to format your hard drive in. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been. External seagate hard drive for mac compatibility ask different. While the title of this thread is kinda simple, im actually kinda stumped as to what to do in my situation. But what happens if that drive becomes corrupted, and you have to reformat it to make it accessible again.
However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. One option is to fully encrypt the external drive and lock it with password. Its a foregone conclusion that reformatting the drive is the only way for mac users. I now have a pc with windows 10, but i cant find a way to save the photos onto my computer. When your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Need to reformat my seagate 1tb external hard drive. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. One day the directory file on my hitachi 100gb hard drive decided to corrupt itself or something. I know mac operating system doesnt fully support ntfs formatted drive.
How you format a mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognitionno software requiredand enjoy plug and play simplicity with the. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with. Seagate backup plus hub user manual optional formatting and. Seagate backup plus slim 500gb portable hard drive for mac usb 3. Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in. With 2tb of available storage, the seagate backup plus 2tb desktop hard drive offers massive capacity to back up your digital files. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without. How to fixrepair corrupted external hard drives on mac. How to use seagate external hard drive on mac, 16 ways.
While mac os x can read hard drives formatted as ntfs, write access is not available. Formatting a hard drive for windows will be discussed in another article. Designed to work with windows or mac computers, this compact external hard drive makes backup a snap. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting.
If chkdsk fails to fix external hard drive not recognized after accidental unplugging on windows, the last choice is to reformat the corrupted external hard drive. Fixrepair the corrupted external hard drive by reformatting. Whether you go the software or hardware route depends on your situation. Back up using seagate with time machine, formatting seagate. The best external hard drives for 2020 pcmag india.
I assume it is but i am new to osx and like to check. Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac. Compatible with both mac and pc, this 2tb desktop external hard drive uses usb 3. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10 i have a lacie d2 quadra 1tb external hard drive. 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. My computer will not recognize it to allow me to reformat it. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. If you are willing to reformat it for windows pc then fat32 or ntfs should be used where as fo. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Well show you everything you need to know about the. Now, im trying to format it so that i can use it on pc instead of mac. I actually meant convert to ntfs versus reformatting my external hard drive. Fortunately, mac os x provides a few native solutions to help you protect your data on external hard drives.
Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it. Seagate backup plus 500gb portable external hard drive for mac usb 3. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra duration. 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 samsung t5 is the best external hard drive for mac, but you shouldnt discount our other picks. In this guide i will show you how you can properly formatreformat a hard drive for mac os. How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. It is obviously that you can use seagate external hard drive or flash drive with mac and windows computer as long as you format seagate drive for mac and pc. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility step 2 follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with time machine on your mac system part 3. You can use disk utility on the mac to format the drive, but i.
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