best way to format external hard drive for mac and windows

#Best way to format external hard drive for mac and windows how to
#Best way to format external hard drive for mac and windows mac os

Now when you plug in your drive or look for it in Finder it will appear with two icons representing both partitions. Ĭongratulations! Your drive is formatted and partitioned. To select and change the details of the partitions, click on the box under Partition Layout and it will highlight the partition with a blue outline.

#Best way to format external hard drive for mac and windows mac os

For this tutorial we will create partitions named CinemaStudiesStorage and CinemaStudiesStorage 2, both formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and 250GB each. Once you have created the partitions, you will want to name them, select the format type, and then designate the size. For this tutorial, we will create two partitions.ĥ. You can then manually type in a size in GBs or TBs to adjust the selection. Make sure to select the top level of your drive from the lefthand column, and then select the Partition tab.Ĥ.

Repeat steps 1-3 from the section above.ģ. Whenever using Disk Utility, back up all important data.Ģ. Note: While it is always best to partition a recently formatted drive that has no data on it, you can still partition only the free space on a drive that has other content on it.ġ. You may also divide your drive into a Mac OS partition and a Windows partition so you can use it on different platforms effectively. For instance, you may want to divide 250GB of your 500GB hard drive to video editing projects, and the other 250GB to storing video and audio files. Partitioning a drive is when you divide the total storage of a drive into different pieces. In some instances you may want to partition your hard drive. It will take a minute to format the drive, but once it’s done, the icon for it will appear with the name you gave it. Once you have done this, in the lower right corner click the Erase button.Ĭongratulations! Your drive is formatted. For this tutorial the name is Format Tutorial. You will want to enter a name, which will give your drive a name (you may want to use your last name, nickname, etc.).

For Format Type, please select Mac OS Extended (Journaled). In the left hand column, find the name of your drive and select it (it will usually be named as the brand name of the drive, so LaCie, Seagate, G-Raid, etc.).Ĥ. In the Spotlight Search or in the Finder type in Disk Utility (for directions on using Spotlight Search or Finder, please see this page) and double click on it to open the application. Plug your drive into the computer’s USB/Thunderbolt port.Ģ. IMPORTANT NOTE: FORMATTING DRIVES ERASES ALL DATA ON THEMġ.

#Best way to format external hard drive for mac and windows how to

Please note that some drives come pre-formatted for Mac or Windows, but you should know how to format drives as certain formats will work best in certain situations and workflows. The following instructions are for formatting new external hard drives or thumb drives.