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How To Reformat Western Digital External Hard Drive For Mac

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Disk Utility User Guide

WD Elements Drive 2 TB: WD Elements Drive 4 TB: GET 10% OFF COOL 'INTO THE AM' T-SHIRTS & APPAREL Click here. Format hard drive in Windows. The below steps for formatting external drive is for Windows 10 and also works the same with an old version of Windows. To format your external drive hard drive in Windows which works with both platforms, first plug-in your drive with Windows machine. 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. Two ways for reformatting WD hard drive for Mac and PC. After realizing that you can reformat WD hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT to make it compatible with Mac OS X and still can be used under Windows, it is time to check out how to reformat WD hard drive for Mac and PC in Windows successfully. Here are two ways offered and you can choose on. Mac mini 3 1 yosemite.

In Disk Utility on Mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your Mac. Erasing a storage device deletes everything on it.

Reformat External Hard Drive Windows

Step 1 Connect the external hard drive you want to format to your Mac, then start the Disk Utility app that you can find under Applications - Utilities. Step 2 On the left side of the Utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it.

How To Reformat Western Digital External Hard Drive For Macs

  1. Check data usage mac. If you have any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device.

  2. Open the Disk Utility app on your Mac using one of the following methods, depending on the type of disk or volume you want to erase:

    • If you want to erase your startup disk: Start up from macOS Recovery, then choose Disk Utility from the Recovery window.

    • If you want to erase any other type of storage device: Double-click Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

  3. Choose View > Show All Devices.

  4. In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to erase, then click the Erase button .

  5. Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map.

  6. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a file system format.

  7. Enter a name.

  8. (Optional) If available, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, then click OK.

    Secure erase options are available only for some types of storage devices. If the Security Options button is not available, Disk Utility cannot perform a secure erase on the storage device.

  9. Click Erase, then click Done.

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Reformat External Hd Mac

Note: With a solid-state drive (SSD), secure erase options are not available in Disk Utility. For more security, consider turning on FileVault encryption when you start using your SSD drive.

See alsoPartition a physical disk in Disk Utility on MacFile system formats available in Disk Utility on MacPartition schemes available in Disk Utility on MacFormat a disk for Windows computers in Disk Utility on MacApple Support article: How to erase a disk for Mac
I received a replacement 750GB external hard drive from Western Digital. The drive is currently formatted for FAT32. The previous (defunct) hd was also FAT32, which I did not realize upon receiving and using. When trying to save large files in Final Cut Pro, the hard drive would save numerous files with none over 2GB in size. I think that FAT32 was the reason. With the new hd, I want to get off on the right foot, to format for my Mac.
I contacted Western Digital technical support for advice on formatting the hd. They were no help. After almost an hour the tech said that I needed to contact Apple technical support because in Finder Window when I click on Macintosh HD, I did not have the utility 'First Aid Erase Partition Restore' to click on.
Does this make sense? I raised the possibility the First Aid utility might be a feature with Leopard. Since I have Tiger OS (10.4.11), I thought this might be the a contributing factor why it didn't show up.
Still, all I need to do is format this new HD, right? Can't be that complicated (I hope). Can anybody help?




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