Here are the best Mac hard drives and external storage options in 2019. Find out which hard drive can help increase your storage or safely back up your Mac.
While Mac OS X can read NTFS drives and write on HFS+ ones, Windows' behaviour is quite the opposite, as it is able to read HTF+ drives, but writes on NTFS ones. However, if you want to use an external hard drive or any other type of external storage device on both systems, you can do that by formatting it using the FAT32 file system.
Have you ever wondered how to reformat an external hard drive for MAC, partition it and make it ready to use? How about recovering a drive you've lost? All your work, files and photos gone poof! Well, after some research, it seems that AnyRecover for Mac is your best bet! No need to worry. We've got the steps right here.
Shop for external hard drive mac at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. External Hard Drives for Macs. Mac users need to sync an external hard drive with their computer to use Time Machine, Apple's built-in file backup system. Shoppers can find and choose the right Mac hard drive by thinking about storage and portability needs. Jul 18, 2019 External hard drives can come with features designed to keep files more secure, which might be important if you plan on using yours to store sensitive information. For example, some hard drives offer password-protection by default, meaning you can easily set a.
How to Reformat an External Hard Drive for MAC?
Bonus: Recovering Data from a Reformatted External Hard Drive
Reformatting an external hard drive for use with MAC OSX is not as difficult as it might seem. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your back-up files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. Keep in mind that a MAC can generally read other file formats, but for the best performance and to create a bootable disk, formatting exclusively for MAC is required.
Reformatting an External Hard Drive for MAC
Follow these steps to ensure you have a proper space to enjoy your files for a long time to come.
Step 1. Connect the external drive or the USB drive to the MAC.
Step 2. Start the Disk Utility, located under Applications > Utilities.
Step 3. Find the name of the drive in the left side of the Utilities window and select it. And click Erase button.
Step 4. Follow on-screen prompts to choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system and allow the disk to format.
Formatting a drive erases all information and all partitions on the disk, leaving it ready for you to save and store information on.
Creating Partitions on a MAC Drive
Partitioning your disk is a good idea when you have a need to run two operating systems at once on the same MAC. While not common for everyday users, it is more common for business users that have multiple programs across multiple platforms. This makes the switch between each easier.
Creating partitions on your MAC compatible drive is just as easy. Return to Disk Utility to begin the process: Finder>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>Select your Drive on the Left>Partition Tab
1. Once at the proper window, select the Partition Tab then click + to adjust the size of the partition.
2. Name the partition.
3. Click Apply.
Bonus: How to Recover Data from a Reformatted External Hard Drive?
Let's just say you've dotted all your work and been as careful as a church mouse on Sunday, but there was some sort of cosmic problem that created disk failure. Now what? In fact, it's very simple. AnyRecover can get your files back fast. When it comes to deleted files; that's exactly what you want.
Follow these simple steps using AnyRecover to get your files back!
Get Ready!
First, download and install AnyRecover, following on screen prompts to accomplish the task.
Load AnyRecover and choose one of the six available options for data recovery, in this case we are choosing to recover data from an External, formatted and partitioned hard drive (External Device Recovery).
Get Set!
1. Plug your external hard drive into your computer directly or via USB.
2. Next select the file type which you want to recover. Your choices are: photo, audio, video, document, archive or others. Select one and continue.
Go!
1. AnyRecover takes a moment to scan your disk and search for the specified file type to recover.
2. Press the Recover tab to see a list of file name by type of the recoverable files.
3. Select the files to recover and press Recover.
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What If?
What if my files were not found? Fear not. We can take this a step further. Instead of External Device Recovery, this time let's go back to Get Ready! And select All Around Recovery. All Around Recovery has a deeper scanning mode than External Recovery. Follow the steps above just as before to locate and recover your files.
It is plain to see that AnyRecover for Mac is a tool worthy of top shelf treatment in your arsenal of items that are used to defend, recover and keep your system up and running. Don't get caught without the file you need for that meeting or stumbling looking for baby photos that were stored on disk and suddenly 'hid' from your view. Allow AnyRecover to find and recover your lost files. AnyRecover is easy to use but provides sophisticated results that mean you know what you're doing!
Mac or Windows computer not recognizing your external hard drive or flash drive? This is a common problem, especially when connecting hard drives between Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can also happen on a single system where it was working just fine for a long time and then suddenly stops being recognized by the operating system.
Sometimes the fix is easy and sometimes it is a bit more complicated. In this article, I’ll try to go through the different solutions on Mac and Windows for fixing this issue. How the drive is formatted and what file system is being used is the most common reason why drive is not recognized.
Assign Drive Letter
The other main reason is that the drive simply is not being recognized by Windows or Mac and therefore won’t even show up on your system at all. This is usually a problem with drivers or hardware. In order to figure out whether your problem is related to formatting or to not being recognized, go to Disk Management in Windows or Disk Utility on OS X and see if the drive shows up there.
If the drive shows up here, but not in Windows Explorer, you might have to assign a drive letter to the disk. Normally, Windows does this automatically, but sometimes because of other connected devices, your external hard drive will be recognized, but not have any drive letter assigned to it. In Disk Management, just right-click on the disk and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Pick a letter for your drive and you should be good to go. If the drive is showing, but you’re getting messages about the drive needing to be formatted, etc., then read the next section below.
On Macs, the drive should automatically appear on the desktop. If not, go to Disk Utility and check to see if it appears under the heading External.
If the drive is showing here, but not on the OS X desktop, then click First Aid to try and repair the drive. If the drive has a file system not recognized by OS X, you’ll need to erase it and the format it using FAT or HFS+.
External Hard Drives For Mac And Pc
If the drive is not showing up in Disk Management or Disk Utility at all, you have some other type of problem. Scroll down to the Not Showing Up section below.
Format Drive
When it comes to file formats, there are a couple of major formats that are used about 99% of the time: FAT32 and NTFS for Windows and HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) for Macs. Now OS X can read and write to FAT32 formatted drives, but can only read NTFS volumes.
Windows is worse in the sense that it cannot even read or write to HFS+ formatted volumes by default. You can get Windows to do it, but you have to purchase third-party software. The only other option is to format the hard drive and use the FAT32 format for the best compatibility.
When you connect a HFS+ formatted drive to Windows, you’ll get a message stating that the drive needs to be formatted in order to be used.
If you see this message, it just means that Windows does not recognize the file system on the drive. Make sure you connect the drive to the appropriate operating system and backup any data that you might need before performing a format.
So what’s the best format to use so that you can see your hard drive on multiple operating systems? The legacy format that is most compatible is FAT32, but it limits you to only 4 GB for max file size. You can read my previous post on how to format an external hard drive using FAT32.
If you need support for bigger files, then you should use the exFAT format. It’s newer and supports much larger files, but only works with newer versions of OS X and Windows. You’ll have to be running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or higher or Windows XP or higher.
In Windows, you can choose exFAT as the file system format in addition to NTFS and FAT32. When you format a drive in OS X using Disk Utility, you can also choose the exFAT format if you like.
Drive Not Showing Up
If you connect the drive to the computer and nothing happens, one of several things could be going on: your hard drive might have a problem, the correct software or drivers are not installed on your system, or there is something not working properly with the operating system. Let’s start with some common problems and their solutions.
Windows – Device Manager
Sometimes old drivers can cause a device to malfunction when connected to Windows. You can try fixing this by first going to the command prompt (Start and type in CMD) and running the following command:
Once you do that, open Device Manager (Start and type in device manager) and then click on View – Show Hidden Devices.
Expand out Portable Devices, right-click on any items that are grayed out and choose Uninstall. Restart your computer and try to connect the hard drive again.
In addition to Portable Devices, you can expand out Disk Drives and try to uninstall the device from there if it is not showing up properly in Windows Explorer.
Windows – USB Device
If you connect your USB drive to Windows and get a USB Device Not Recognized error, make sure to check out the link on how to fix that particular problem. Windows tries to blame the device for malfunctioning, but it’s normally a problem with Windows.
USB Ports/Secondary PC
You can also try plugging the drive into another USB port on the computer to make sure it’s not a problem with that particular port. If you are connecting to a USB hub, disconnect that and try to connect the drive directly to the computer.
The only way you can really tell if the problem is with the computer or the hard drive at this point is to connect the drive to another computer. If the drive doesn’t work on another computer, it’s highly likely something is wrong with the drive itself.
Drive Tools
If it appears that there is a problem with the drive itself, you can try to download the diagnostic tools from the drive manufacturer. Just about all the major brands like Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, etc., have these diagnostic tools.
You can also read my previous post on checking your hard drive for errors for more information and more tools to test hard drives. If the drive has become corrupt or has bad sectors, these tools can fix it.
USB 3.0 Drives
If you have a USB 3.0 external hard drive, there are a couple of extra considerations you have to take into account. Firstly, make sure you are using an appropriate cable. I’ve run into several clients that had this problem and fixed it by simply using a different USB cable. So try out several cables before you give up.
Secondly, you might need to update the driver in Windows. Again, go to Device Manager, expand Universal Serial Bus controllers, right click on the one that has USB 3.0 in the text and choose Update Driver.
Power Issues
The only other possibilities with this type of problem are lack of power or complete hard drive failure. Make sure the hard drive has the correct external power adapter and that the light on the front of the drive is turning on and is not orange or red. Also, try using different cables as some are able to carry more power than others.
Hopefully, this article will help you get your external hard drive recognized by Windows or Mac. If not, post a comment and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!