I know mac operating system doesnt fully supports ntfs formatted drive. Follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista, or windows xp. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. I have purchased a 1tb portable external seagate hard drive and i would like to use it with both my mac and windows computer. Rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. Open disk management, the hard drive manager included with all versions of windows. Want to know how to format a hard drive keep reading to bring a hard drive in your use for storage in windows a hard drive needs to be format first. To restore a windows 7 or vista computer, you must have a set of restore discs for the computer or an original windows 7 or vista installation disc. Once the set up is complete, mount your drive and it will be visible on file explorer. Repair a power mac g5 remove the superdrive how to. Boot with the windows 7 dvd, proceed as if you were doing an installation but when you get to the right screen, choose custom installation. Guide how to format hard drive from usb with bootable. How to format a hard drive with ease in windows 1087.
How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. If you wish to boot the drive on a pc or use it with older versions of windows, you may also need to set the partition scheme to master boot record mbr for full windows compatibility. How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with macs. You just need to mount your disk and access all of your files. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. All data has to be put in a file format that the operating system can read off the hard drive. And apfs takes the advantages of strong encryption, space sharing, disk snapshots and is compatible with ssd on new mac. How to format a hard drive using the command prompt tom.
A five day free trial of macdrive is available if you would like to evaluate it before purchasing. To format the primary drive the hard disk where the operating system resides you need to boot into the setup program on windows 7 or. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Other than using the thirdparty tool, you can also format your hard drive from usb with the help of windows installation disk, which, as you will know, is relatively more complicated than using a bootable format tool as shown in method 1 step 1. Windows can read and write to ntfsformatted drives. How to format a mac drive in windows 7 microsoft community. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. Formatting a disk or volume erases all the files on it. Today im going to show you how to format any hard drive so you can use it to back up your mac as well as answer a lot of questions my clients. Use the file system dropdown menu, and select ntfs recommended.
How to format a hard drive on windows or mac avast. Rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac.
Want to format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac apple. In disk utility on your mac, you can format an external disk for a windows computer. With macdrive 9 standard, you can access, manage, and even create and format disk drives for apples mac os from inside windows explorer. Support for windows 7 32bit and 64bit was released in macdrive 8 and is also included in both macdrive 9 standard and macdrive 9 pro. Formatting a hard drive means to delete any existing information on the drive and make up a file system for the drive so that the operating system can write data on the drive and read data from the drive. Hard drive format software for mac mac disk format software. Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on mac. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side.
For mac, the mac os extension is the file system included in mac os 10. The formatted files erased by disk utility also can be recovered by free mac data recovery software. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. A new hard drive has to be formatted with some specific file systems before being used in windows 7 operating system os. Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. It has many powerful features, such as migrate os to ssd, clone disk and so on. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. How to format a mac external hard drive to be compatible. How to format the c drive with windows 7 with pictures. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Its possible to format your external hard drive with windows and without a mac but without erasing the disk isnt possible and you will have to keep back up if you want your data and you will need a thirdparty tool or software for that. Then your hard drivemac computerdevice is able to reuse, resold, recycled or can be safely donated or lent to other people.
People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. Has bootwell feature that makes recovery of macs main hard drive easy and fast. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. Save any files you need to another volume before formatting. With the drive selected in disk utility, click partition. It is recommended to choose the compatible format that the system lists. To format a hard drive, you can take advantage of a piece of thirdparty software. Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system. 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. The system tells you what key to press during the restart, so pay attention to your screen and be quick at pressing the right key. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems.
If you dont have access to windows installation media, but you do still have access to a working copy of windows 10, windows 8, or windows 7, you can create a system repair disc or recovery drive depending on your version of windows and then boot from that and format c from there. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac cnet. Format hard drive on windows 7 or earlier versions step 1 restart your computer and press f8 or del key to enter the bios settings. Different os has different default file system, and windows default file system is ntfs, os x nfs plus, and linux ext family. Easily format external hard drive on windows or mac. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. Formatting windows 7 hard drive will erase all the data on the drive and rebuild a file system. How to format a hard drive with windows 7 digital trends. How can i format a mac os external hard drive to windows using a windows pc. It just securely formats your mac hard drivedevice and permanently erases all the data. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. Add virtual cd and dvd drives to your pc with alcohol how to. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac.
Thus, the professional partition manager minitool partition wizard is recommended. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
Click your hard drives name in the window near the bottom of the screen. The two solutions above can help you format external hard drive on windows or mac. How to install the microsoft windows operating system. To use it, download hfs for windows here and install on your pc. In the sidebar, select the disk you want to format to use with. If you dont see this option, try typing create and format hard disk partitions into start. It is a quick way to format external hard drive on mac. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. Not just hard drives, but removable usb drives, too. If you dont want to use the ntfs file system, you can replace it with a different one, such as fat32. It is professional partition magic which is designed to optimize partition and disk use. Is a version of macdrive available which supports windows 7. In the disk utility app on your mac, choose view show all devices.
Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. 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 share an external hard drive between mac and windows. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Stepbystep instructions to format a hard drive in windows 7, including screenshots for each step to make the process easy to follow. Create a windows installation disk and boot your pc from it. Now that we know the good and bad about every file system, let see how to format a drive in windows, mac, and linux. Plug the disk into a windows vista sp1 or windows 7 computer.
The hard drive will be erased, and windows 8 will be reinstalled. Securely format external hard drive on windows and mac with super eraser. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. In the value label field, type a descriptive name for the drive. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. Data rescue is excellent hard drive recovery software for mac os. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Has the ability to retrieve lost data from a secondary hard. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive.
I will leave windows instructions below for the benefit of windows users. This will give you the screen with all the partitions on the drive. About how to format external hard drives for both macs and windows pcs, and what is the best format for using usb external drives on mac. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. Opening disk management can be done a number of ways depending on your version of windows, but the easiest method is to type diskmgmt. If given a choice, the two common modes are ntfs and fat32. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for time machine. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or usb flash key to a mac will generally read and work fine as is because the mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including windows msdos, fat, fat32, exfat, and ntfs formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a windows and mac machine, formatting it to be entirely mac compatible.