how to format an external hard drive for mac osx

Format An External Hard Drive Software To Format

Format An External Hard Drive Software To Format

You can still use the software to format a startup driveits similar to the steps in the previous version.

If youre using an older version of Disk Utility, the steps are here.

To format an external storage device, connect it to one of the ports on your Mac.

To boot into Recovery mode, start up your Mac and hold down Command-R.

You should see a window labeled OS X Utilities.

Note: if you format your Macs internal drive, this will erase all of the data on the drive, including your apps, file, and the operating system.).

If you booted into Recovery mode, select Disk Utility at the bottom of the window (see below).

Disk Utilitys left pane shows the storage devices connected to your Mac.

Click the pop-up menu for Format, and you can select one of the formats.

The default selection is OS X Extended (Journaled); if you want a layer of security, you can go with OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted), which will encrypt your storage device.

If you dont see the Encrypted options, thats probably because the drive you are formatting is currently not using a GUID Partition Map.

Select OS X Extended (Journaled), proceed to step 5, and then come back to step 4, repeating the step but with an Encrypted option selected.).

So, for example, three files named FILE, File, and file can exist in the same folder.

Since were formatting a Mac startup drive, you can ignore these two.

There are two other options you can ignore: Master Boot Record is for Windows, and Apple Partition Map is for PowerPC-based Macs (remember those).

When you click Erase, Disk Utility will erase the data, reformat the storage device, and mount the drive on your desktop.

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How To Format An External Hard Drive For Mac Osx