So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Yasu for mac high sierra. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
Lot of Mac OS X users reported this issue in Apple support communities. External hard drive showing up in Disk utility not in Devices. This problem also happened after OS X Yosemite update. Solution 1:-Go to Settings - Finder Preferences. Under the General tab, select External drive in “Show these items on the desktop”. Best seagate external hard drives for mac What makes these the best picks? Customers said these are the best for mac. Top Three Picks Seagate Portable 1TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac (STGX1000400). Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Black) STDR1000100.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
Seagate External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
Seagate External Hard Drives Instructions
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
Seagate External Hard Drive For Mac Software
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. Whiteboard apps for mac. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Mame for mac os x. Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
Seagate External Hard Drives Troubleshooting
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.
A lot of people including you, storing important data on Seagate external hard drive instead of on your PC/Mac hard drive. The reason is perhaps that Seagate external hard drive has been well known for a long time as one of the most reliable drives for storing data. And it has super large storage up to 8TB.
If you’re using Seagate external hard drive and you want to reformat your Seagate external hard drive, then you came to the right place. Because on this article, I’ll show you the easiest, fastest, and the safest way to reformat a Seagate external hard drive. Whether you’re using Mac or Windows, this method will work perfectly.
Please note: Reformating means that all the data you stored inside your Seagate external hard drive will be deleted permanently. Geforce now for mac. And there’s absolutely no way to recover the data once it’s gone. Of course, it’s good if you’re planning to sell your Seagate external hard drive. But, if you have a plan to use it again someday, you may want to think again before reformating your Seagate external hard drive. It is strongly rcommended to back up your important data to another hard drive before your reformat the Seagate external hard drive.
Easy steps to reformat Seagate external hard drive
So are you ready to reformat Seagate external hard drive? If so, then keep reading and follow the method below carefully to make sure you’re doing this method properly.
How to Reformat Seagate External Hard Drive?
Step 1: First of all, as I said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your PC/Mac, or to cloud storage service. Remember, once the data is gone, there’s no way to recover it.
Step 2: Connect your Seagate external hard drive into your PC or Mac. Make sure it will be connected throughout the process or you may break the hard drive if it’s unconnected while the reformatting process is running.
Step 3: The next step is downloading the software AweEraser. This software is the powerful data erasure which is fully compatible both with Windows and Mac. You can easily formate your Seagate external hard drive using this software. Once you downloaded the software, now install the software. Installing this software is easy so I thought it doesn’t need to include installation guide in this article. Go install it now!
Step 4: When the installation process is done, now the software should run automatically. Now you’ll see there are three data erasure options on the left section. There are: Erase Files, Erase Hard Drive, and Erase Free Space. Choose Erase Hard Drive option, and you should see a list of the drives connected to your PC/Mac including the external hard drive you want to reformat. Choose the external hard drive and click “Erase” button at the bottom of the screen.
Seagate External Hard Drive Use For Mac And Pc
Step 5: Now you should wait until the process is done, while also making sure the process isn’t interrupted. And please don’t open any apps because it will slow down the reformatting process.
Reformat Seagate External Hard Drive For Mac
After the long reformatting process is done, good job! You just reformating Seagate external hard drive perfectly. Now you’ll see all the data is gone and it’s fresh like the first time you buy it. Don’t forget to share this article to help people who’re looking for this easy, fast, and safe way to reformating Seagate external hard drive.