The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full mac os x compatibility, this uses the. Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process. External hard drive in exfat not working macrumors forums. Be absolutely sure you have your files off the drive and that youve selected the correct drive you want to format. Recover your files with data recovery software if you still cant access your external hard drive without formatting, you should use a data recovery software solution like disk drill to recover all important files from it. Free download aomei partition assistant, install and launch it. Try connecting the external drive to another usb port. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or usb flash key to a mac will generally read and work fine as is because the mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including windows msdos, fat, fat32, exfat, and ntfs formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a windows and mac machine, formatting it to be entirely mac compatible filesystem is highly recommended, and necessary for time machine and to make disks bootable. One way to do this is to convert the raw hard drive to ntfs using the cmd command method. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. Connect the raw external hard drive to your pc step 2. Solved how to recover external hard drive without formatting. Also, a lot of other factors can degrade your mac performance, like hard drive becoming full, macos being outdated, several login items enabled, many apps running in the background, hardware issues, etc.
Solving readonly conditions for external hard drives cnet. Under file system, choose the file system you want to use. Before using an external hard drive on a mac, you should format it using disk utility. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. If you are only working with macs, you can format your drive to either hfs with the mac os extended option or with the newer apfs file system. Formatting a hard drive can change the file system to make it compatible with your computers operating system, as well as fix any nonphysical errors on the drive itself. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide.
Check the format this volume with the following settings box, then click the file system box and select one of the following. How to format drive with compatible file system for mac. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive macs can only read ntfsformatted hard drives by default. Do not format your external hard drive before you take out the data in it. Be sure to back up any data you want to save before you begin. Formatting is a bad idea if the drive is failing, and that procedure means you will lost the file structure folders, organization, file names. To fix a corrupted external hard drive on mac, the solutions are categorized into without formatting and by formatting. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format.
Or perhaps you are setting up an external drive for backups. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. Solving readonly conditions for external hard drives. If youre erasing an external drive, make sure that its connected. The former is older and only supports capacities up to 2tb, but is. Connect the external hard drive to your mac and copy the important data to the mac pc. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and. It happens that a toshiba external hard drive is not working in windows, be it not showing up, not recognized, or not showing files.
Trouble formatting external hard drive macrumors forums. The hard drive is already formatted in mac os extended. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. But if you want the external hard drive to also work on a mac, you should choose exfat. In this video i help you guys convert your mac only external hdd into a windows compatible one. The fat or file allocation table is quite possibly the most widelysupported disk format in existence today. All was fine until i upgraded to mountain lion and then rebooted my machine. She has a mac mini and a wd passport external hard drive. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as. If that is the purpose for the new drive then click on the yes options button. Most of the time, when you connect an external hard drive to your macs usb port, you soon see it mount on the desktop. Fix external hard drive not working issue in windows 1087 3 methods.
Replug your external hard drive to another port or try another usb cable. How to fix external hard drive not mounting on mac computer. This is extremely common with sd cards formatted with linux distributions for the. In some more specific cases, the drive will appear in disk management, but merely formatting the drive wont work. Connection or damage issue about external hard drive. Any hard drive can be formatted for mac and here is how you do it. Click start button and search commond, then rightclick one it and afterward press run as administrator. I would like to remind you that mac uses a different format. Well show you everything you need to know about the. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for time machine. Seagate external hard drive not showing up in my computer my 320 gb seagate external hard drive is detected but not showing up in my computer. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer.
My passport 4tb hard drive not working on my samsung and. How to format an external hard drive for mac youtube. Heres how to format a drive using a mac including how to format a drive for windows and mac so the. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive. How to format an external drive to work with mac from ntfs to mac os extended. Once formatted, the existing data on the disk are probably unrecoverable for most people. So you need to check if the external hard drive in a readonly state or not. Therefore, for those who have no backups, keep this point in mind.
If you want to write to ntfs formatted hard drives in mac os x, youre going to need the help of a thirdparty driver. Use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other. You can only read your elements external hard drive. Tips to fix mac doesnt recognize external hard drive on. In the case of getting an external hard drive that is either unformatted, or preformatted for windows as ntfs, the formatting procedure is still very simple.
How to force a hard drive to unmount for formatting in mac. Guides to fix mac files wont copy to external hard drive. Disk drill supports all major file systems ntfs, fat, fat32, exfat, ext3ext4, hfs, apfs and lets you recover up to 500 mb for free. Finally, if your drive is online and formatted, but doesnt show a drive letter next to its name, rightclick the volume and choose change drive letter and paths to add a drive letter. 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. A misaligned or malfunctioning cable may be the cause of the problem, especially if you also have errors when trying to read from the external disk. However, ntfs is not fully compatible with mac computers. Now all the hard drives are there, but i cant write in them. Now you would be able to use the external hard disk on both the computers. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Has a storage limit of 32 gigabytes with an individual file size of 4 gigabytes. If your external hard drive is physically damaged or broken, take it to a nearby maintenance center for a manual repair. To format external drive to file system compatible with mac and pc, connect the drive to your computer and follow the detailed steps given below take formatting hard drive to exfat in windows 7 for example.
Get a free addition to setapp the ultimate mac user book. Remember, this will erase all the files on the drive. Your backup plus desktop is formatted as ntfs for compatibility with windows out of the box. And it currently only works on ssds or flash storage.
How to fix your external hard drive being read only on mac. The instructions below are for windows 10, but other versions of windows from windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exfat for use with mac as well. If it cant, it chooses mac os extended, which works with all versions of macos. Lacie setup assistant helps you to quickly format the storage device according to your needs. If it just doesnt work or respond, just follow the three methods below to fix a not working external hard drive or disk on windows 1087 pcs. How to get an external drive formally used with a mac to. While scanning forums, we find so many users are bothered with the external hard drive not showing up issue.
Now connect the external hard drive to windows 8 computer and format it in fat32 file system. After you format it, you can use the professional mac hard drive. Its a good idea to backup your data for your mac using time machine. Connect your external hard drive to the computer, select it while. Connect the empty external hd to your mac and launch disk utility. I have 5 external hard drives that i formatted ages ago as exfat. Before digging in, select a primary format youll use the most.
Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. How to format an external hard drive for windows 10. Formatting a volume will destroy any data on the partition. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers. This formatting is also known as mac os extended journaled file system. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Steps on how to recover data from external hard drive download and install recoverit data recovery on your computer. If youre not sure, eject and disconnect each drive, then only reconnect the drive you want to erase. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. How to fix toshiba external hard drive not showing up. Whooping 94% data recovered from unmounted external drive on macbook pro. In case you miss anything necessary, you can also have some basic checks as following when you are unable to mount an external hard drive on your mac computer. As a matter of fact, the data in the external hard drive.
Using your toshiba external hard drive to backup to. Fix you need to format the disk before you can use it. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Basic suggestions on external hard drive not mounting problem. How to fix raw external hard drive without formatting. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. In the main interface, right click the partition on that need. Be warned that formatting it will erase any data on the drive, so only continue if youre sure you dont need anything. After recovering data from the toshiba external hard drive, you can reset the toshiba external hard drive by reformatting it in disk utility now.
How to format hard drive and fix disk format errors on mac. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. 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. What to do when your external hard drive wont show up. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. When the disk utility recognizes it the drive is read only. So you may well need to reformat it to fat32 to have any chance of working, but that too has limitations on the size of files that it can support 2gb which. If it can t, it chooses mac os extended, which works with all versions of macos. Its possible the port in question is failing, or just being finicky with your specific drive. Most external hard drives are designed to work for windows computers. Launch recoverit data recovery and follow the next steps to perform external hard drive data recovery on windows computer, if you are a mac user, you can download recoverit data recovery for mac to go on step 1.
How to fix a corrupted external hard drive on macmacbook. Apple likes to ensure these are easy to find, so they also appear in the finder in the lefthand column under devices, since macs treat them the same way as. If youre formatting a drive that youve been using and that has data on it, doublecheck in explorer that the drive letter youre choosing here in disk management is the same as the one you see in explorer that has the information on it that you want to erase. Open the start menu and search for disk management. This insures that you will have a compatible hard drive with. Its a direct continuation of the original dos format used on floppy diskettes and hard drives. How to recover from external hard drive readonly error on mac. You can use lacie setup assistant to format your lacie hard drive when it is first connected to a computer windows or mac. Aborted lacie setup assistant while it was formatting. Select the toshiba external hard drive in disk utility sidebar.
Before continuing, make sure that you have a backup of any files that you want. This post will teach you how to format your macs hard disk and fix common. You may be presented with an alert asking if you want to use the new drive as the time machine backup drive. Fix a corrupted external hard drive without formatting. Mac users can confront a read only error, but in worst case scenarios, mac external hard drive read only is not going to allow for creating a backup. The quickest way to do this is a simple spotlight search. Also many smart tvs require certain formatting on the drive usually fat32, and your mp will almost certainly be formatted as ntfs thats how the nonmac ones are supplied. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. 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. Apfs apple file system is only for newer macs running macos.
Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. Follow to get repair inaccessible and readonly external hard drive and. Hi simonboothstudios, i would suggest you to take the backup of all the files present in the external hard drive in the mac computer and then connect it to windows 7 and format the drive and choose ntfs format and check if the issue is fixed note. So if you are trying to connect the same windows formatted drive, then mac wont show external hard drive on macos mojave. The drives formatting can be seen in the information window as well as in disk utility, and clicking the check box at the bottom of the. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. Yes, connecting an external hard drive or usb flash key to a mac will generally read and work fine as is because the mac can easily read other. Here are the detailed steps of how to format external hard drive to exfat with aomei partition assistant.
If the drive still isnt working, unplug it and try a different usb port. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Therfore, you can connect backup plus desktop to a windows pc without formatting the hard drive. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. I have been trying to walk her through reformatting it but nothing is working. Force an external mac drive to mount via command line terminal commands in mac os x. It will display you the basic situations of your hard drives. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. When the drive is connected to the mac, it may or may not show an icon on the desktop. Mac files wont copy to external hard drive how to fix. The only free application that will let you do this we are aware of is hfsexplorer, which uses java and is really only suitable for the odd file transfer fat32 the most compatible option. Click on the apply button and click on the done button when it is activated.
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