Under volume scheme, choose 1 partition, then click options. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. If you are willing to reformat your seagate external hard drive then you should have decided to which file system you want to format your hard drive in. Seagate backup plus hub user manual optional formatting and. Using this hard drive is very simple on windows operating systems you merely plug in the power cord and usb 3. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without. 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. A fat32 partition can reach up to 32gb when formatted on a windows pc. Your macbook can not read or write to a ntfs drive. Apple computers are able to read any harddrive which has a exfat type format scheme. This will prompt a new window asking you to select a partition style for your disk. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting.
Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. Rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. It can recover multiples of file formats and file types including documents, videos, audios, archives, email, photos, etc. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
Mac free seagate external hard drive recovery allows you to free recover. Usually, you can use windows builtin tools like diskpart to format seagate drive. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. Seagate backup plus 5tb external hard drive portable hdd light blue usb 3. Others, which come formatted in ntfs, need to be reformatted in macos before you attempt to store data on the drive. How to format new or second hard drive on windows 10mac. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Two methods to change seagate external hard drives from readonly back to readwrite, so that you can edit, delete, and rename files on this seagate external hard drive. The windows system uses a hard drive with a different file system than the mac systems. 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. Windowsformatted hard drives have either ntfs file system of an fat32 file system.
But a problem arises when you have a portable seagate hard drive and would like to use it with both mac and windows computers. Formatieren ihrer festplatte seagate support deutschland. How to format seagate external hard drive for both mac. If youre going to be using the drive with a version of windows prior to windows vista, youre going to want to go with mbr. Just follow these steps to easily format a seagate hard drive on your mac.
Formatting the drive will permanently erase all the data and files stored on the hard drive forever. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. It is able to format seagate hard drive or usb flash drive as exfat file system easily and effectively in windows 108. On the left hand side of disk utility youll see a list of drives. And youll detailed tutorial on how to format seagate drive for mac and windows computer in the following text. Some seagate external drives, such as the freeagent go for mac and freeagent desk for mac, come formatted in macos extended format, which is supported by mac os 8. How to reformat my seagate external hard drive quora. This is the best solution seagate offers for transferring data between windows and mac computers.
How to use seagate hard drive for both mac and windows super. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. It is obvious that you can use seagate external hard drive or flash drive with mac and windows computer as long as you format seagate drive for. Install the paragon driver for mac for compatibility with macs. Format the other on your pc using ntfs if you wont need to write to it from the os x side or use exfat if you do. Before you jump in and format your seagate backup plus on your mac or macbook. Drives that will be bootable are formatted during the process of installing the operating system ie, windows or macos. Also, if a seagate external hard drive is readonly or files are locked on mac due to ntfs format, you can use iboysoft ntfs for mac to mount it in readwrite mode on mac. Connect the external hard drive to your mac and copy the important data to the mac pc. Thanks for watching and supporting brennans tech bite. 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. How to format a hard drive so it can be read on both a mac and pc. A user has to know how to convert mac formatted hard drive to windows formatted. Moving data between two systems using an external hard drive.
Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with. Mac free seagate external hard drive recovery for mac. Now connect the external hard drive to windows 8 computer and format it in fat32 file system.
However, fat32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. Luckily, there are thirdparty tools to help you do so. If you have documents on the drive either from a windows pc or from your mac, copy them off first. Therefore, it is necessary to present a tutorial guide here to format or partition a hard drive within mac os. Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on mac.
Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. You can format the drive from either the mac or the windows machine. But if you connect it to a macbook, you will find that the operating system cannot recognize it. Moving data between two systems using an external hard. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. If you are willing to reformat it for windows pc then fat32 or ntfs should be used where as fo. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and.
Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. Formatting seagate hdd in mac pro with 2 os window7 and. After du loads select your hard drive this is the entry with the mfgr. Use the file system dropdown menu, and select ntfs recommended. But sometimes a little help is needed, if you decide to start using your windows drive mainly on your new mac. However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. In the value label field, type a descriptive name for the drive.
Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. However, if you want to use part of the drive for os xs time machine backups, you should do this from the mac, since theres an extra step to make the drive compatible for time machine. How to format a new or second hard drive on mac mac is obviously a very much different operating system from windows, let alone their features and steps to format a hard drive. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. How to format a hard drive to work on mac and pc youtube. Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. And it can format seagate drive as fat32 without the limitation of 32gb in partition size as well. Confirm that you would like to format the portable hdd by clicking ok and begin the process of formatting by clicking the ok button on the next screen that appears. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. How to format a seagate freeagent for a macbook synonym.
Now that we know the good and bad about every file system, let see how to format a drive in windows, mac, and linux. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Seagate backup plus desktop user manual optional formatting. But using a third party all the time for accessing a hard drive on windows is not good. Seagate backup plus comes in a couple varieties one preformatted for mac, the other preformatted for windows but also readable on mac. Like the commercials of years gone by, some people are pcs and others are macs. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. Seagate internal drives must be formatted before use. This opens a new window for you to explore the files and folders on your mac. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central. Then, connect the seagate drive to your pc and make sure that it can be detected by windows. Your hard drive should work on either computer at that point, as well as others you may try to use it on. In general, macs will read windows formatted drives fat and, i believe ntfs, but windows doesnt recognize mac.
Hard drives in seagates freeagent line except for the go pro for mac and the go for mac ship with ntfs, a file system designed for windows. 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. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. As the default file system in windows, it can only read by mac os, writing to it is not available. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. How to fix seagate external hard drive readonly on mac. Now you would be able to use the external hard disk on both the computers. But to get a hard drive to be compatible with both mac and pc, you have to choose the exfat formatting options. To format your ps4s external hard disk to a different file system, all you need to do is plug your drive into your computer windows pc, mac and perform the formatting through the operating systems disk utility.
This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. Drives that will be used for storage can be formatted according to the instructions below. How to format a windows disk drive for a mac seagate blog. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here. Windows will format the portable hard disk drive and notify you once the process. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Before your format a seagate hard drive on your mac, you should check if there. Know that formatting deletes all the information on the drive. There some easytouse utilities can help you format a seagate hard drive under mac os.
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. Select the erase tab and choose mac os extended journaled for the format and give it a. How to format a seagate hard drive for a mac quora. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard dr ive on a mac computer. You may also format your external drive into fat32 for use. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. If this is the case for you, rightclick the drive you want to format and click initialize disk. Need to format portable hard drive for mac and pc if you have a portable hard drive with ntfs file system, you can use it in windows computer easily. Open disk utility, select the external hard drive and go to partition. Stellen sie sicher, dass quick format schnellformatierung ausgewahlt ist.