Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for Mac. Whether you are trying to backup Mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you need to format the hard drive on your Mac or PC.

But before you can do anything, you need to make it clear that the hard drive you want to wipe or format would be an external hard drive or an internal hard drive. We can easily format external hard drive for Mac. But when it comes to format internal hard drive for mac, things are getting a little more complicated. Maybe we will go through with the way to format a startup drive for Mac later. But now in this guide, we will cover the situation of formatting an external hard drive in steps.

Jul 09, 2020  Format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or ex-FAT format so to transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system conveniently. There are specific third-party systems, like Digital Camcorders, and Sony PlayStation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either FAT32 or ex-FAT format to perform read from. Dec 22, 2019  How to format external hard drive Mac: Buying an external hard drive is one of the best options for adding the storage space to the Mac computer system. While you have bought this drive, you will find the drive already formatted for your Mac or Windows system. However, you have to reformat the drive to make it functional with your Mac computer. Mar 15, 2018  Don’t Format the Drive! (Yet) When you connect a Mac-formatted drive to Windows, you’ll be informed that “you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” Don’t click the “Format disk” button or Windows will erase the contents of the drive–click “Cancel”! Dec 29, 2015  The instructions below are for Windows 10, but other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exFAT for use with Mac as well. Connect the drive. May 25, 2020  Format external hard drive with third party software AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a great free partition format tool that allows you to format external hard drive to Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, etc.

Notice that you need to backup your importanct files on the hard drive you are going to format as the procedure would delete all of the data and bring it back to the factory settings.

Format an external hard drive for Mac

How to Format External Hard Drive for Mac

If you are trying to format Mac external hard drive, you can go over the process step by step:

Step 1. Connect your hard drive to your Mac.

Step 2. Open Finder and choose 'Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility' to launch the app on your Mac.

Step 3. Once you open the Disk Utility app, you can see all the drives on your Mac are listed on the left-hand sidebar. Just select the one you want to format and click on the 'Erase' tab.

Format an external hard drive for Mac

Step 4. Now in this interface, you will see a 'Format' option. In this drop-down box, you are allowed to choose different format.

OS X Extended (Journaled) should be selected if you are going to use the drive as a system or 'boot' drive on macOS.

Mac OS Extended should be selected if you will be using the drive as a media or 'scratch' drive on Mac.

Mac OS (FAT) is compatible with both PC and Mac platforms. However, there's a limit to transfer files within 4GB.

ExFAT is similar with Mac OS (FAT) but it can work with files as large as 16EB (exabytes)

So if you are going to use an external drive for both your Windows PC and your Mac, you should choose the ExFAT or FAT format.

Choose format for hard drive

Step 5. Name your drive you like but it would be better to choose something specific, so that you can make things clear every time when you look at its name.

Step 6. Click on the 'Security Options' button and you are able to choose the way (fastest or more secure) to format your external disk. The fastest way will save your time but it erases the drive only by removing the header information. That is to say, you can easily restore the hard drive using a data recovery software if the files haven't been overwritten. It is not good and the format process is meaningless in some way. So maybe you can try the more secure one. It may take quite a long time, but it will erase the drive in a deeper way.

Step 7. Click on the 'Erase' button to start erasing the external hard drive or USB. Formatting a hard drive will take a while and wait for it patiently. Once the progress bar is at 100%, the job is done!

How to Recover Formatted Hard Drive on Mac

As it is mentioned above, after formatting a hard drive, all data on the hard drive will be erased. But what if you have second thought and need to recover files from the formatted drive? Is it possible to recover files from formatted drive on Mac? Yes, it is possible. But you'll need FonePaw Data Recovery, a Mac data recovery program that can recover deleted files from hard drive, SD card, USB drive even the drive has been formatted.

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Step 1. Run FonePaw Data Recovery on your Mac. Remember that you should not install the application on the formatted drive. Otherwise, some of the files could be overwritten by the application.

Step 2. When the application is open, select the files you want to retrieve from the formatted drive. Tick the formatted hard drive. And click Scan.

Step 3. The application will first quickly scan some easy-to-get files on the formatted hard drive. If you need more files. Click Deep Scan to find files that are buried deeper.

Step 4. View the results by file types or path. Tick the files you need and click Recover. If you have deleted files that haven't been found, do not save the recovered files on the formatted drive. Instead, save them on other drive, such as your USB drive.

If you have any problem when following the steps to format hard drive for Mac, please leave us a message on the comment box below!

by Shirly Chen, updated on 2017-02-07 to Mac Data Wipe

Formatting is a prior method to delete all data from local/external hard drive or fix disk error. For Windows users, it is very easy to format a hard drive using built-in quick format feature. However, when a Mac user right-clicks a hard drive on Mac, he can’t see the quick format option. Especially for the new Mac users, it seems difficult to find a solution to format local hard drive or external hard drive under Mac OS. In this article, we will introduce some Mac disk formatting software tools to help Mac users easily and securely format hard drive, USB flash drive, memory card or other device under Mac OS.

Three Useful Disk Formatting Software for Mac

1. Super Eraser for Mac - best Mac Disk Format Software

Super Eraser for Mac is a very powerful tool to permanently erase data from Mac hard drive or storage media. It can easily format hard drives, storage devices and permanently erase all the data on the targeted media. It also can format SSD hard drive and erase data under Mac OS. Free download the best Mac disk formatting software - Super Eraser for Mac.

This mode ‘Wipe Hard Drive’ will help you format a selected hard drive/device and erase all data from it. You just need to select the hard drive you want to format, and then click on 'Wipe Now' button. Then Super Eraser for Mac will help you format and erase the selected hard drive/device. Please note that all the existing data and history data on the selected hard drive will be permanently removed, can’t be recovered by any data recovery software or manual data recovery service.

This Mac hard drive formatting tool also can erase free disk space to permanently erase deleted/lost data on the hard drive. This option is used for erasing deleted files and formatted files on your Mac, without affecting the existing data.

If you are going to sell, donate your Mac/device or just want to completely remove unwanted files and fix disk errors, Super Eraser for Mac is the best Mac disk formatting tool for you. It can help you regain a brand new disk.

Note: formatted data will be permanently lost, can’t be recovered by any software or method.

2. Mac Disk Utility

Note: formatted data can be recovered by data recovery software.

Disk Utility is a built-in app in macOS. When you open this app, it will show all the hard drives and devices on your Mac. You can use the erase function to format a hard drive or device. However, when the hard drive has been erased by Disk Utility, most of the formatted data can be recovered by data recovery software.

3. Start Menu for Mac

Note: formatted data can be recovered by data recovery software.

Mac Software To Find And Format External Hard Drive For Mac

Start Menu for Mac is an all-in-one Mac manager. It offers a feature – format. You can run it on your Mac, and use it to format external hard drive or device on your Mac. It is the fastest way to format an external hard drive/device under Mac OS.

4. MacClean360

MacClean360 is one of the best disk cleaning and management software for Mac OS. It offers more than 9 tools to help you optimize and manage your Mac computer. The Disk Manager tool is able to list all hard drives and external devices on your Mac. Then you can choose one of the hard drive and format it by click on 'Format' button.

The 4 disk formatting software for Mac above can help you easily format hard drive, USB flash drive, memory card, and other storage media under Mac OS. However, when you format your hard drive with Super Eraser for Mac, all your data will be permanently lost. So please back up your important files before you run Super Eraser for Mac to format your hard drive or other device under Mac OS.

FREE download DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac to help you format hard drive, external hard drive or storage media on Mac.

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