People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. However, if you want to convert ntfs to exfat to make external hard drive compatible with mac and pc, 3 steps are required. Mar 31, 2020 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. Jan, 2020 if your formatted hard drive is an internal drive on windows or mac, you need to select deleted files recovery to recover all files. Formatting my hard drive on toshiba satellite and reinstalling windows 10. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by using the exfat filesystem. Now, i have a new macbook pro and all my data is still on that external hd. Fortunately, with help of data recovery software, we can unformat toshiba external hard drive and recover formatted data. Rightclick on windows icon, select disk management. But many users think it is an arduous task to partition hard drive, so in this tutorial, we will goes through the detailed steps of partitioning an empty external hard drive in mac and pc. How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with macs. How to partition an external hard drive on mac and windows. What we need to do is finding the right toshiba external. Select the formatted hard drive location for recovery after selecting the recovery scenario, you need to specify the location for scan.
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. Read about it and found that id have to reformat it in mac os extended journaled. Of course, if you have a backup already, ignore this step. Rightclick in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select new simple volume. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Thank you for choosing toshiba for all your storage device needs. In the value label field, type a descriptive name for the drive. If you are using a mac, you can run the builtin disk utility to quickly format a hard drive or external hard. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Because mac os x mountain lion does not natively support writing to an external ntfs drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it using a compatible file system. How to reformat your toshiba portable hard drive to mac os x. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac.
How to format an external hard drive for mac and windows. Is it possible to recover lost data after formatting toshiba external hard drive. Mar 15, 2018 to use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. Maybe, you could try aomei partition assistant, then the. How to format toshiba harddrive for mac apple community. 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. Both mac os x and windows allow users to format their hard drives using builtin utilities. How to use toshiba external hard drive on mac solved. Use the file system dropdown menu, and select ntfs recommended. Then, you can share external hard drive between mac and pc.
Sep 17, 2019 right click on your toshiba external hard drive icon and pick get info from the menu. It happens that a toshiba external hard drive is not working in windows, be it not showing up, not recognized, or not showing files. Unformat toshiba external hard drive to recover data. Use the wizard to create a partition with the ntfs or fat32 file system. Youll want to do it before you sell your machine, for sure, but its also one of the steps you take when you. How to format new hard drive on windows 10 windows central.
Plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system. 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. Windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other. Pick your toshiba drive in your disk utility window. How to fix toshiba external hard drive not showing upworking. Right click on your toshiba external hard drive icon and pick get info from the menu. The best partition scheme for a drive that will be used for both mac and windows is to format it exfat, and its actually easier to do it in windows than on the mac side. 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. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Dec 29, 2015 windows uses ntfs and mac os uses hfs and theyre incompatible with each other. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows.
Mac os x and windows can both read and write to disks in the fat or exfat format. Connect your external hard drive to the computer, select it while. Luckily, there are thirdparty tools to help you do so. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer. Steps on how to recover data from external hard drive.
The drive will now be formatted for use by windows systems. This works with any hard drive, flash drive, ssd, usb drive, or just about any other. Choose decide later regarding time machine you can decide this for yourself after all is done. But to get a hard drive to be compatible with both mac and pc, you. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. If you want to format your external hard drive to work with mac and windows computers, you should use exfat. If you see the drive is ntfs then youll either need to reformat the drive or use a ntfs driver. Recoverit data recovery is the best external hard drive recovery program, it can easily and effectively to help you recover lost or accidentally deleted files from hard disk drive, or other external storage device. Partitioning your hard drive can help organize your data and make your life more convenient. 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. Rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. I had forgotten, however, that these ship formatted for windows 7 with the detailed explanation reformating required for mac users.
Two solutions to format toshiba external hard drive to fat32. With my previous laptops pcs, ive always stored my data on an external hard drive. How to format a hard drive with windows 7 digital trends. Jan 24, 2017 two solutions to format toshiba external hard drive to fat32. Right click on the partition and select delete volume this will remove the partition. If you are good at working with commands, then you can try to format your hard drive to fat32 using the command prompt. Command prompt is windows command processor and it is used to perform commands in the windows system. Your first step to using your toshiba external drive on your mac is to plug your toshiba drive in. How to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. Dec 05, 2019 rightclick on windows icon, select disk management. You do not want to format the drive though for mac. Apr 16, 2020 command prompt is windows command processor and it is used to perform commands in the windows system. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. However, you can format the drive to work with both windows and mac by.
There will be no space wasted by protected mac partitions. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Because mac os x mountain lion does not natively support writing to an external ntfs drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it. Step 1 in the windows search, look for the command prompt. Aomei partition assistant is such a great simple tool for formatting external hard drive for mac and windows. Unformat toshiba external hard drive on windows and mac. Even though most people associate formatting with system installation, there are many other reasons why you might want to format your hard drive. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac.
Even though mac computers are capable of reading hard drives that are formatted for windows, if you intend on using your external hdd as a bootable disk or want to use it to backup files with your macs time machine, you must format it to be entirely mac compatible. Go to finder, click on the icon for the toshiba and click get info youll see that the format listed is windows thats the problem we need to reformat. 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. Well show you everything you need to know about the. A vast majority of video production will be done on a mac or windows operating system, so we arent going to cover linux. But compared with formatting, an ntfs for mac driver like iboysoft ntfs for mac is a better and feasible solution. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Apr 14, 2020 by this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data.
How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Jan 17, 2019 rightclick the new hard drive and select the format option. 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. Once it finishes creating them, you can move the drive between macs and windows pcs, and move files back and forth easily. I removed everything from the hard drive, put it on my pc. Aug 30, 2019 plug in the external hard drive into the system and open windows explorer by clicking on the computer section in the side bar, you will see your external hard drive get attached to your system. I tried to format my toshiba external hard drive to accept asus pc and macbook air files. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or msdos. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Click the file menu and select load file system from device. Feb 21, 2012 once it finishes creating them, you can move the drive between macs and windows pcs, and move files back and forth easily. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. That said, if you are using both a pc and mac in the workflow, youll need to use a different.
Will appreciate a step by step procedure bearing in mind i am not a geek. I used the format ms dos fat on the mac and erased the hard drive. Just transfer all useful files out from the external hard drive to other devices on mac. Steps on how to recover data from external hard drive download and install recoverit data recovery on your computer. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. I want to format my hard drive and reinstall windows 10. Both windows and mac os offer builtin disk formatting tool.
As the default file system in windows, it can only read by mac os, writing to it is not available. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. How to format a laptop hard drive with pictures wikihow. To sum up, it is easy to format an external hard drive for both mac and windows pc. Besides, you can use it to manage your hard drive partitions such as resize partition, delete partition, split partition, merge partitions, etc. But many users think it is an arduous task to partition hard drive, so in this tutorial, we will goes through the detailed steps of partitioning an empty external hard drive in mac. The best format for your external hard drive the hellotech blog. Sep 26, 2018 after that, you can use your external hard drive on both mac and windows machine. Transferring data from a mac to pc via an external hard drive. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a geeky project. And it also wipes out all the bugs and harmful files that might harm your mac. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility.
How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. In windows just right click on the drive and select format. Stepbystep instructions to format a hard drive in windows 7, including screenshots for each step to make the process easy to follow. However, this format doesnt support larger files, which can be problematic for transferring 4k videos and so on between macs and windows 10. If your formatted hard drive is an internal drive on windows or mac, you need to select deleted files recovery to recover all files. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows.
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