How to Format a WD hard drive to exFAT or FAT32 File System. Begin by connecting the WD drive to the Mac computer. Once the drive appears on the desktop. The drive is now formatting and a status bar will be seen at the bottom that says formatting the disk and gives the name of the drive, the format it is applying, and the name that was. How you format a Mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. Geek 101: How to format a Mac hard drive. As you’ll be booting your computer from this.
What’s the disk format, FAT32 or non-Microsoft format? Can you access this HDD on another computers? If there is no important data on this HD need to backup, you can try to reformat it in Disk Management as a test. 1. Connect the HDD 2. Start - diskmgmt.msc, it will open Disk Management, can you find the external HDD listed as Disk x? 3. If it shows partition space and status as “Healthy”, you can right click the partition and try to assign a drive letter. If we cannot assign drive letter for it, pls right click the partition and select “Format”. All data will be clean but you should be able to assign drive letter.
Can you access the HDD now? What’s the disk format, FAT32 or non-Microsoft format? Can you access this HDD on another computers?
If there is no important data on this HD need to backup, you can try to reformat it in Disk Management as a test. 1. Connect the HDD 2. Start - diskmgmt.msc, it will open Disk Management, can you find the external HDD listed as Disk x? 3. If it shows partition space and status as “Healthy”, you can right click the partition and try to assign a drive letter. If we cannot assign drive letter for it, pls right click the partition and select “Format”. All data will be clean but you should be able to assign drive letter.
Can you access the HDD now? I have the same issue, but when I right click on the partion, the option to assign a drive letter is grey'd out. I do not see a disk format either, it is blank in that section (FileSystem).
What can I do? I have Windows XP Hey I had the exact same problem. I was using my external hard drive on a MacBook and wanted to format it so that it would work on XP but when I opened Disk Management all the options were greyed out. Here's how I solved the problem: 1.
Connect your external hard drive to your mac 2. Open Disk Utility (command+F and type 'disk utility') 3. Click the drive you want to format in the left hand pannel 4. Click the 'partition' tab 5. Select under Volume Scheme '1 partition' 6. Under Volume Information, under format select 'MS- DOS (FAT)' 7.
Click 'Apply' The disk should now be formatted in FAT32 which is compatible with Windows XP. After completing those steps I connect the hard drive to my PC and I was able to read and write in the volume. Hope this helps! Ok well now that ive backedup all my files. Can i delete them off my computer?
Or do i have to leave them on their? Cuz i bought the external hard drive so i can clear my bigger files off my computer and just use them through my external hardrive. When its hooked up to my computer.
So i have the files when i need them. EX: iTunes is a really big file and i kinda wanted to put that on my external hard drive so that i can take it off my computer along with all my music and just use it on my harddrive when i need to sync my iPod and whatnot.
It's no surprise that PCs and Macs do not work well with each other, due to differences between the two operating systems (Windows vs macOS). One main difference is file system. By default, Macs are with HFS+ (since 2017 there's new Apple File System, optimized for flash storage), while PCs are with NTFS. If you have a USB drive, and you plan to use it on both a Mac and PC, things can get a bit tricky here. What do I mean? If your disk was initially formatted to NTFS on a PC (or HFS+ on a Mac), most likely you'll suffer limitations, for example, the data on your drive can't be read or written on one of your computers. Fortunately, there is a file system (actually two, I'll explain) that you can format your flash drive in order to be fully compatible with Mac and PC.
In other words, you can access the drive and transfer data without any hassles. That file system is — exFAT. Note that there is another file system called FAT32 that pretty much does the same thing but with one major flaw.
![Reformat Mac Drive For Pc Reformat Mac Drive For Pc](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125420168/219783349.jpg)
See the table below for more info. Compatible with macOS? Compatible with Windows? File size Max.
Partition size HFS+ Yes No No limit No limit NTFS Partially Yes No limit No limit FAT32 Yes Yes 4GB 8GB exFAT Yes Yes No limit No limit As you can see, exFAT is the only file system that works with all versions of Windows and macOS and does not have any max file-size or partition-size limits. Therefore, it's perfect for a USB flash drive or external disk especially you need to save files more than 4GB in size. You should go ahead and format your storage drive with exFAT instead of FAT32, assuming that all devices you want to use the drive support exFAT. You may notice that in NTFS is marked 'Partially' under the Compatible with macOS column. This is because an NTFS-based drive can be read by Macs but you can't write data to the drive. Now that you've learned exFAT is the ideal file system to go. How to know what current file system your flash drive is with, and how to format it to exFAT?
Read on for step by step instructions. How to Check a USB Drive's File System?
![Reformat external drive mac Reformat external drive mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125420168/200634345.gif)
First of all, plug your flash drive into the USB port on your computer. Make sure your device can be detected and recognized.
I'm here to use a 32GB Lexar USB key as an example. If you are on a Mac. Once the Lexar disk shows up on the desktop, right click on the drive icon and select 'Get Info'. How to Format Your USB Flash Drive to exFAT? Important: make sure you have at least one backup of all the data stored on the device before you proceed. Because the process of reformatting a disk drive will very likely erase all content and make recovery impossible. See for more information.
Also, since I don't know whether you are on a PC or Mac to perform this operation. I'm here to break down this guide into two parts. The first part is for Mac users, the second part is for PC users (Windows 10 based). In no particular order.
Part 1: Formatting USB Drive on Mac Please note: since OS X 10.11 El Capitan (the latest is 10.13 High Sierra), Apple made a few changes to Disk Utility (see details from ). The app now has a new user interface that looks slightly different on Yosemite or earlier OS X versions.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility. The quickest way is search on Spotlight and click the result under 'TOP HIT'. Alternatively, you can access it via Finder Applications Utilities Disk Utility. Pro tip: Chances are that you may encounter some issues formatting a flash drive on a PC or the disk is malfunctioning.
If so, the following articles may be of help to you:. Conclusion Most of the external hard disks and flash drives are formatted for Microsoft Windows operating systems. That makes using the drive a bit troublesome on Mac machines. FAT32 is popular but the 4GB file-size limit makes it inconvenient, for instance when you want to make a bootable macOS Sierra USB drive which the system file takes about 8GB of storage space. Thankfully, exFAT — a strict upgrade over FAT32, is a file system optimized for USB flash drives. Like I said, if you want to use the device for both a PC and Mac, you should consider reformatting it to exFAT once you figure out the drive isn't with another file system. Hope the above guide is helpful to you.
Once again, as a kind warning: formatting a flash drive will likely erase all files and data stored in the device, it's important to ensure you have made at least one copy of the data before you get started.