By| Mar 07,2018 17:02 pm External hard drives are handy tools in storing files, data and documents. There are various reasons why you might need to format external hard drives. If you purchase an external hard drive as an addition to expand the storage space of your computer, most likely you would need to format it. More often than not, a lot of external hard drives are impacted by incurable virus infection. A lot of people would format their hard drives as soon as it is infected to avoid more damage. If there are errors or system failure where the external hard drives are not accessible, this would prompt for the action of formatting as well. This article will teach you how to format external hard drive for Mac and PC. • • • Part 1. How to Format External Hard Drive on Mac If you need to format your external hard drive, do not worry as you can do it as easy as the following steps: Step 1. Launch Disk Utility After you have connected your external hard drive on you Mac, launch the 'Disk Utility' application which can be found under 'Applications'. Once the application is open, you would be able to see a list of available drives on the left side of the window. Format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or ex-FAT format so to transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system conveniently. There are specific third-party systems, like Digital Camcorders, and Sony PlayStation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in. Identify and click the drive that you would like to format. Next, click the 'Erase' button on the top of the window. It is located next to 'First Aid' button. Restore the Formatted Data After scanning process is completed, a list of files that can be retrieved will be available for your preview. Highlight the file name and you should be able to see the content in the preview window. Once you are satisfied on which files you want, choose the files that you would like to recover by clicking on the boxes on the left side of the file names. How to zip confidential information for email on a mac. ![]() Click 'Recover' in order to retrieve them back and save it to your desired folder. Remember to save it locally in your Mac or in another removable drive, not in the newly formatted external hard drive. If needed, you can do this later. As of 2018, Western Digital offers no shortage of external drives for Mac computers – from the My Book Essential to the My Book Pro and the My Book Studio, nearly 30 WD drives play nicely with Apple’s macOS operating system, as does the My Passport Studio model. But with more than 262.5 million PCs shipped in 2017, according to data from Statista, there’s a good chance your Passport Studio will need to play nicely with a Windows computer, too. When it comes to cross-platform flexibility, you’ve got a few options for crossing the Mac and PC streams. About eFAT and FAT32 Here’s something your My Passport for Mac Quick Install Guide might not tell you: Hard drives usually come formatted in two different ways, one catering to Windows and one catering to Mac. NTFS-formatted drives work with Windows computers, and HFS+ drives work with Mac. However, by formatting your My Passport differently, you can ensure compatibility in a variety of different ways. Hard drives formatted to exFAT or FAT32 can read and write data on both Mac and PC operating systems, though FAT32 is limited to a 4-gigabyte-per-file size limit. Formatting your drive will erase all its data, so be sure to back it up before making the change. External Drive for Mac to Windows 10 If you’ve got a WD external drive for Mac platforms and you want it to work on a Windows 10 PC, exFAT format is your best bet. To start formatting, connect your WD Passport to your Mac; then open “Mac HD” and click “Applications,” “Utilities” and “Disk Utility.” From the Disk Utility window, select the Passport hard drive. Here, you’ll usually see two listings of partitions available on the drive – select the listing that is furthest left. Click the Disk Utility’s “Erase” button; assign the drive a name in the “Name” field; then hit “Erase,” and click “Done” when the erasing process is complete. Now, click the “Partition” button at the top of the Disk Utility and click “Format.” Choose “exFAT” from the drop-down menu that appears and click “Apply” to format the drive, which will take a few minutes. Once the formatting is complete and you get a message that says “Operation successful,” click “Done.” To Windows 8 and Earlier The external drive for Mac to Windows 8 transition makes use of Window’s built-in Disk Management software rather than the macOS Disk Utility, but you’ll still want to format your WD Passport as an exFAT drive.
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