
- REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC HOW TO
- REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC FOR MAC
- REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC MAC OS
- REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC WINDOWS 10
- REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC SOFTWARE
REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC MAC OS
If you’re using it as your Mac’s main drive, APFS is the best choice as it has replaced Mac OS Extended as Apple’s preferred file system for macOS. When you reformat a drive, you can choose which file system to use. For Macs, that file system can be HFS+ (Mac OS Extended Journaled) or APFS (Apple File System).

There are several steps to the process involving: In the simplest terms, reformatting a disk means wiping it clean of data and preparing it for use again, whereas formatting a disk just describes the first time it is prepared for use.
REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC HOW TO
Whatever your reason for reformatting your Mac, we’ll show you how to do it here.

A more likely scenario is that you want to reformat an external drive or USB stick, perhaps one you bought or were given and that was formatted for PC. But, occasionally, if your boot drive has become irreparably corrupt, it may be the only option. It’s a pretty drastic step that should only be contemplated in desperate circumstances. Most of us will never need to reformat our Macintosh. But to help you do it all by yourself, we’ve gathered our best ideas and solutions below.įeatures described in this article refer to the MacPaw site version of CleanMyMac X. You’ll see the basic situation of your hard drives on your computer.So here's a tip for you: Download CleanMyMac to quickly solve some of the issues mentioned in this article. Free download AOMEI Partition Assistant, install, and launch it. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows PC.Ģ. Here are the steps of how to use AOMEI Partition Assistant to format external hard drive.ġ. It is very easy to use that every one can use it to format partition alone. It supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP, both 32 and 64 bit. Format external hard drive with third party softwareĪOMEI 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. Considering using Diskpart to format partition is a danger that one wrong command may cause irrevocable damage, here we highly recommend you to use a simple third-party software.

REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC SOFTWARE
If so, you need to use Diskpart to format partition or try to use a third party software to help you. However, you can find that there is no exFAT option and the only option under the window of Format > File system is NTFS(Default).
REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC FOR MAC
Sometimes, you may want to try Format directly to format your external hard drive partition to exFAT for Mac and Windows. When you move to the Format Partition window, choose exFAT under File system drop-down menu. Then you will get into the New Simple Volume Wizard, follow the hints to specify volume size -> assign drive letter and path. Choose the external hard drive’s partition or the unallocated space you want to format, select New Simple Volume. In Disk Management, you’ll see your external hard drive as partition or unallocated space. Open the Disk Management tool by right-clicking This PC -> Manage -> Disk Management.
REFORMAT A HARD DRIVE FOR MAC WINDOWS 10
Connect your external hard drive to your Windows 10 PC. Format external hard drive with Windows built-in tool

Well then, how to format an external hard drive to exFAT with Windows PC? Here we take an example of formatting external hard drive to exFAT in a Windows 10 PC. Thus, you’d better use the Windows machine to format your external hard drive. However, if you want to use the Mac to format your external hard drive to exFAT, you’ll face the problem that the external hard drive may not be compatible with the Windows PC. You can format the drive from either the Mac or the Windows machine. How to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC? Thus, many users would like to use exFAT instead of FAT32 to make an external hard drive for mac and windows interchangeable. However, FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both Windows and Mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with Windows PC and Mac.īoth FAT32 and exFAT can be used on Windows PC and Mac. Windows PC and Mac use different filesystems. Need to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows
