Shop for Mac external hard drives at Best Buy. Compare and read customer reviews to purchase the Apple hard drive that fits your needs. Launch Disk Utility and then click to select the external hard drive listed on the left. Click the 'Erase' tab, choose a volume format from the drop-down menu and then type a name for the drive. The Mac OS X Extended volume format is optimal for Macs; the Journaled option enables the system to log and keep track of files. May 5, 2017 - The best ways to format external drives for Windows & Mac. Both Mac OS X and Windows allow users to format their hard drives using built-in.

1. External Hard Drive For Mac

How to format an external hard drive for use with a Mac Most external hard drives come pre-formatted for using with a PC/Windows computer. If you have a Mac you should format the drive for Mac immediately, before you start using it. This is really easy to do, but I’ve found so many of my customers didn’t do it or didnt even know they should have performed this important step which will take you a minute or so (and just maybe might save from drive problems and even potentially a lot of money spent on expensive data recovery in the future.) We’ll cover why formatting for Mac is important later, so for now just follow these simple steps to prepare a new hard drive to use with your Mac and prevent some potential headaches in future. HOW TO FORMAT A NEW EXTERNAL DRIVE FOR USE WITH A MAC. Connect the hard drive to your Mac, with the supplied cable to a USB port. Plug it in if it has a separate power supply.

Launch Disk Utility (Located in APPLICATIONS UTILITIES). Locate the drive name from the left hand side of Disk Utility and click on it. If its a 2TB Seagate drive, it might say “SEAGATE 2TB” or something like that) Here you can name the drive what you would like (ie, Backup). For type of format: OS X EXTENDED JOURNALED. Click on the “Erase” tab across the top. You will be warned that “Formatting a drive will erase everything on the drive”.

In our case we know its a new drive and you have nothing you care about on it yet, so you can be sure you won’t lose data. Click OK, wait a 30 seconds or so while its working, and when its done, you are ready with a nice Mac Formatted Hard Drive.

The reason to prepare the drive to use with a Mac is pretty simple but not obvious to many people. It will work best that way. If you just purchased an external hard drive that you will use exclusively with your Mac, its best to prepare it for Mac OS’s file system. Between PC, Linux, and Mac there are a number of different file systems. Windows uses NTFS and FAT. Mac uses HFS+. PC’s can not read Mac drives.

However Mac’s (being better!) – CAN read most PC drives and even write to them. Still though we should format for Mac if we are ONLY using it with the Mac. Your files will be safer and more stable this way (with Apple’s HFS+ file system).

External Hard Drive For Mac

While a PC Disk will theoretically work on your Mac, by not making it a Mac HFS+ formatted drive there is a incraeased possibility of having file problems at some point down the road. If you will be swapping the external drive on a Mac AND also a PC thats different, you would need to use PC formatting as PC’s can’t read a Mac drive. I’ve had a number of clients who have used a drive for years with their Mac, didn’t realize that the drive was a “Windows drive”, and just kept putting files on it like that. One day perhaps they don’t properly disconnect it and bang – suddenly the drive is not being recognized and now they need to rescue data off it, and possibly need Data Recovery, which tends to be either of two things: kinda expensive or very expensive. Long story short, just prep the drive following the steps above so you are never in that boat. Also see (it doesn’t matter that this says “for Aperture”. Its universal). You can buy a drive that says specifically “For Mac” but a) they always charge more for the same drive and b) this is really not needed as the steps to format are as you see really easy and simple. Be sure to think about this before you start putting files on your new drive.

If you intend to use the drive as a TIME MACHINE drive, as soon as you plug a new drive into your computer Mac OS will ask you “do you want to make this a Time Machine drive”. If you want this and answer yes, it will format it for mac automatically. The above formatting instruction is for when you just want to use an external drive as “extra storage” for files.

I do recommend every Mac user have a Time Machine backup drive!