The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. Erase and reformat a storage device in disk utility on mac. Thank you for choosing toshiba for all your storage device needs. How to format hard drive from bios to format hard drive from bios, you have to change the settings to boot automatically from disk. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. To make it compatible with both macos and windows, you need to reformat the external hard drive. Macos external drive not showing not reformatting fix. It says to use disk utility to reformat the hard drive, but it sounds like this. How to reformat your toshiba portable hard drive to mac os x bought this great toshiba portable hard drive for my macbook to use to store files, essentially as another drive. How to format a laptop hard drive with pictures wikihow.
You cannot reformat the startup drive from which you booted and from which the system is currently running. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been formatted for a mac when i plug it into my pc i cant access it. Using disk management to format toshiba external hard drive to fat32 is way, but the hard drive shouldnt be bigger than 32gb and you shouldnt forget to backup data before processing or your lose everything on it. Dec 29, 2015 your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. Bought this great toshiba portable hard drive for my macbook to use to store files, essentially as another drive. All was well till i plugged it into the asus and now i can not open the hard drive. It happens that a toshiba external hard drive is not working in windows, be it not showing up, not recognized, or not showing files. Great fix for sd cards, flash drives and all other external hard drives that are not working with your mac system. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. How to format toshiba harddrive for mac apple community. You can use your toshiba canvio drive as a destination for your time machine backups but you can only use drives formatted as mac os extended journaled file system for a time machine backup.
How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Using your toshiba external hard drive to backup to. 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. And it also wipes out all the bugs and harmful files that might harm your mac. You can say no and just copy files off the drive onto your mac. Do you save backups of your hard drive onto an external hard drive. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. How you format a mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. Read about it and found that id have to reformat it in mac os extended journaled. When youve plugged in your toshiba drive for the first time your mac may well ask you to format the drive.
How to format an external hard drive for mac youtube. I hope that by following the steps in this article format toshiba hard drive for mac, 5 minute guide youve got your toshiba drive all formatted. Discover one of the easiest ways to add storage to your computer with toshiba s canvio basics portable hard drive, offering simple plugandplay operation. It is the reliable disk formatting tool for windows mac. These devices are usbpowered and can be used with a single usb cable connected to a pc. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex. When the formatting window shows up under file system click on the pulldown menu and select exfat, and then put a check next to quick format, label the drive, and then click on start. You just need to know how to format external hard drive for ps4. If disk utility is not working to reformat the drive, this command will work for you. You can mitigate that by formatting the drive for mac.
For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. Ive used it with my mac for years, but tonight it disconnected during a data transfer for some reason. Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the chances of file corruption, so make. How to format an external drive for mac from ntfs to mac os extended. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. I have an external hard drive which is formatted for mac and has been loaded with movies stored on a mac computer. I removed everything from the hard drive, put it on my pc. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows.
How to properly format a new hard drive on windows 10. Intuitively drag and drop files to and from your pc or laptop. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or msdoc is the. Under the volume scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. All was well till i plugged it into the asus and now i can not open the hard drive to put the files back on it.
Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your. Maybe, you could try aomei partition assistant, then the. Available in several capacity sizes up to 4 tb, canvio basics hard drives are perfect for storing data, music, movies and pictures. Hey, apologies if this isnt the right place for this but i have an issue with my toshiba hard drive. In disk utility on mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your mac.
The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as fat32. It also offers macfriendly functionality, with apple time machine compatibility out of the box, and its own password tool. Is there any way i can reformat the hd to work on my pc without losing the movie. The canvio premium for mac has a high quality diamondcut aluminium design that will complement your highend mac devices. How to format an external hard drive on mac recoverit. A user has to know how to convert mac formatted hard drive to windows formatted. The windows system uses a hard drive with a different file system than the mac systems. Toshiba canvio external hard drive manual for mac users, here you can see how it works on mac, setup time machine to backup your. I used the format ms dos fat on the mac and erased the hard drive. You have to set it up correctly before getting starting. Formatting it for mac lets you use it, as i said, on both the parallels vm and the mac side. Mar 12, 2018 want to format a hard drive for mac and pc compatibility. How to fix toshiba external hard drive not showing upworking. Another common cause for the external hard drive read only problem on mac is the formatting errors of the storage device itself.
In windows just right click on the drive and select format. There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Youll want to do it before you sell your machine, for sure, but its also one of the steps you take when you. Now, i have a new macbook pro and all my data is still on that external hd. I tried to format my toshiba external hard drive to accept asus pc and macbook air files. On the other hand there are numerous issues that are associated with the. Looking to share an external hard drive between a mac and pc. You can select the exfat format when using the disk. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Dec, 2007 how to reformat mac external harddrive for pc. Jan 11, 2012 how to reformat your toshiba portable hard drive to mac os x bought this great toshiba portable hard drive for my macbook to use to store files, essentially as another drive. To format external hard drive on mac, all you have to do is plugin your hard drive and launch disk utility. Can you reformat it without losing all of your data.
Toshiba portable hard drives canvio premium for mac. Toshiba external hard drive set up guide for mac 2019 youtube. You would need to boot from a different volume, whether a different partition, or from a dvd. How to share an external drive between a mac and a pc. Select the drive you want to reformat in the lefthand sidebar and go to the erase tab. After du loads select your hard drive this is the entry with the mfgr. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems. Is there a way to reformat this external harddrive on pc. Or reformatting your toshiba hard drive for your mac this is an outline of what youre going to do.
Format toshiba hard drive for mac frequently asked. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. If you have any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device.
But what happens if that drive becomes corrupted, and you have to reformat it to make it accessible again. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. In this way, when the disk is loaded upon restart, the pc will prompt a message asking you whether you want to reformat the drive. How to reformat your toshiba portable hard drive to mac os x. Go through this article and find out the easiest way to format your toshiba drive for mac.
Two solutions to format toshiba external hard drive to fat32. Format toshiba hard drive for mac frequently asked questions why is my toshiba external drive read only on my mac. Convert formatted drive from mac to windows info remo. How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. If you see a warning says the device is only being mounted in readonly mode while connecting, your hard disk is diagnosed to have formatting errors that prevent you from writing files to it. If you format is as fat then youll have lots of issues with the size of files you can write to it and other filesystem limitations. Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the. High capacity storage in a conveniently compact, matt black casing. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. Follow the steps to format your toshiba hard drive for mac step 1 connect your toshiba hard drive to your mac using a compatible medium and make sure the connection remains uninterrupted. Extra security protect your private data from unauthorised users using the supplied canvio password tool for mac. Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
Dec 05, 2019 but using a third party all the time for accessing a hard drive on windows is not good. If you were using boot camp, i would advise leaving it formatted as ntfs and purchasing ntfs for mac to access the drive on both oss. How to format a hard drive on mac to work on mac and pc. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Jan 24, 2017 using disk management to format toshiba external hard drive to fat32 is way, but the hard drive shouldnt be bigger than 32gb and you shouldnt forget to backup data before processing or your lose everything on it. I wasnt interested in using it for backups but that is certainly an option. Given the varying situation, we will show you how to fix toshiba external hard drive not working according to your exact scenario and present you the toshiba hard drive recovery tool to rescue your data on the storage medium. I have never formatted a hard drive before, and i would like to use a completely safe software, or no software at all, if it is possible. Step 2 now, go to the applications folder on your mac, and launch the disk utility from the utilities folder. With my previous laptops pcs, ive always stored my data on an external hard drive. Connect the external drive or the usb drive to the mac. Rightclick in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select new simple volume.
To save important data on the hard drive, please backup disk beforehand. Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. No matter what motivation you have, the question, how to reformat a hard dr ive, is much more important now. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. So whether you have a macbook pro, air or imac youll learn how. Any hard drive can be formatted for mac and here is how you do it. Go to finder, click on the icon for the toshiba and click get info youll see. Toshiba sells their external hard drives with an ntfs file system on them. But your mac can only read the files on an ntfs formatted toshiba drive. How to reformat your toshiba portable hard drive to mac os x 1. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. External storage devices make it possible for the users to store large amounts of data.
How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. Formatting your toshiba hard drive for mac is important, as it makes the hard drive best suitable for the mac by formatting it with the osspecific file system and drivers. You can reformat your toshiba drive for your mac using the steps in this article. If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. Its a good idea to backup your data for your mac using time machine. Aug 30, 2019 today this video will show you how to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. Sometimes, users need to use the same external hard drive interchangeably on mac and pc.
However, the files etc on the external unit cannot be accessed. Windowsformatted hard drives have either ntfs file system of an fat32 file system. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system. You can format an external hard drive or thumb drive to work seamlessly with both mac and windows by using the exfat file system.
Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. In this post, youll learn how to format an external drive to a mac compatible file system and recover files from a reformatted hard drive. Go to disk utility if you dont know where that is type it into the magnifying glass spot. I then rightclicked the external drive icon on mac desktop get info. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your backup files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10.
So if you are formatting a drive that has already been used, be sure to copy any files you will ever want to see again onto a computer or backup drive. Or you can use driver software to read and write to the drive. Toshiba external hard drive how to set up on mac youtube. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities. Well show you everything you need to know about the. No matter what motivation you have, the question, how to reformat a hard drive, is much more important now. Keep in mind that a mac can generally read other file formats, but for the best performance. Want to format a hard drive for mac and pc compatibility. I do not wish to use a partition as i want to access the hard drive through mac and windows at the same time on my laptop and i also want to be able to access the mac things on a windows computer and vice versa. Sep 12, 2019 what you need to do first is wiping hard drive. Have you now formatted your toshiba hard drive for your mac. However, you need to reformat external hard drive or internal ssdhdd if it was partitioned before. For instance, is the hard drive internal or external.