Connect the external drive or the USB drive to the Mac. Disk utility - the MacOS utility application can help you with this. Set the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme to GUID Partition. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your Mac.
We give you the scoop on whats new, whats best and how to make the most out of the products you love. Select the drive description just above the drive name for the device you want to format. Format An External Hard Drive How To Make The When you click Erase, Disk Utility will erase the data, reformat the storage device, and mount the drive on your desktop. There are two other options you can ignore: Master Boot Record is for Windows, and Apple Partition Map is for PowerPC-based Macs (remember those). Since were formatting a Mac startup drive, you can ignore these two. So, for example, three files named FILE, File, and file can exist in the same folder. The Case-sensitive formats allow for file names with capital letters to be different from lowercase letters.
Select OS X Extended (Journaled), proceed to step 5, and then come back to step 4, repeating the step but with an Encrypted option selected.). If you dont see the Encrypted options, thats probably because the drive you are formatting is currently not using a GUID Partition Map. The default selection is OS X Extended (Journaled) if you want a layer of security, you can go with OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted), which will encrypt your storage device. If the Erase button is dimmed, it means the drive you want to format is in use and you need to boot off another drive or into Recovery mode, which was described in step 1.Ĭlick the pop-up menu for Format, and you can select one of the formats. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the. If you booted into Recovery mode, select Disk Utility at the bottom of the window (see below).ĭisk Utilitys left pane shows the storage devices connected to your Mac. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Note: if you format your Macs internal drive, this will erase all of the data on the drive, including your apps, file, and the operating system.). You can use a HFS+ formatted disk as a backup disk for Time Machine. But for external hard drives the best format for your Mac formatted drives is HFS+. And the default Mac format for external disks on Big Sur is APFS. You should see a window labeled OS X Utilities. Best Format For External Hard Drive Mac Big Sur. To boot into Recovery mode, start up your Mac and hold down Command-R.