So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. My seagate 1tb external hard drive was used with my dish dvr. 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. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra duration. How to properly formatreformat a hard drive for mac os. So now im ready to restart with the 100gb, all fresh and new. Reason 2, when you accidentally delete a file you want, then you can bring that file back as well. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. Formatting the drive will permanently erase all the data and files stored on the hard drive forever.
If it is, that could be one of the reasons for this issue. How to fix seagate external hard drive not showing. Next to name you will see untitled 1 where you can name the drive. Buy seagate backup plus 500gb portable external hard drive for mac usb 3. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it.
How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive youtube. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Seagate stgx400 portable 1tb external hard drive hdd. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. You will see a list of all volumes that are part of the hard drive. I hope you enjoyed my article on how to make an external hard drive compatible with mac and pc without reformatting. Providing that data is valuable, we suggest you try fixes first to make the disk show up in disk management, and next take one more step to recover data on the unrecognized seagate external hard drive with the help of easeus data recovery wizard. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the operating system that you are using. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting. Jan 23, 2020 return the loaned hard drive to the person you borrowed it from. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. How to move files from mac to seagate hard drive without. External seagate hard drive for mac compatibility ask different. Your macbook can not read or write to a ntfs drive.
Select the seagate drive on the left that shows the capacity 3. If it does not you will need to rightclick and delete the volume first. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. If they are important make sure you have them backed up safely and that they can be accessd on another drive s, cds, dvds or memory sticks if they are very small. 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. Before that, remember to back up your external hard drive quickly with a highlyefficient data backup software since the formatting will erase all. My computer will not recognize it to allow me to reformat it.
Select your macs hard drive in the lefthand column, to reveal more options, then select the partition button. Reformatting may be required for mac to get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required this usb drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch usb 3. Right click on the volume, which you want formatted, select the file system and execute the format command to wipe out all data and get a fresh volume, with all free storage space. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Hard drive reformatting procedure for mac and windows. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. The seagate slim for mac portable drive is the thinnest external hard drive for consumers who want to back up their digital lives and take it onthego. Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it. In diskpart window, input the following commands and hit enter after each command. 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. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. How to open an external drive thats not showing on mac.
If you are willing to reformat your seagate external hard drive then you should have decided to which file system you want to format your hard drive in. Need to reformat wd hard drive for mac if you connect your wd hard drive without reformatting, youll be unable to copy files to the disk as mac read only supports ntfs file system. Fix the not mounting or working seagate backup plus drive by reformatting. Feb 21, 2012 looking to share an external hard drive between a mac and pc. Data storage free delivery possible on eligible purchases. At about the thickness of a pencil, the ultrathin metal design allows you to slide the drive in your pocket, purse or backpack and carry it with you. If first aid failed on the external hard drive, it might have some serious errors that are beyond its reparation capability. Permanently wipe seagate hard drive data with 1 click. Other than that, use the disk utility in mac to make the changes you need. In the partition information box, enter an appropriate name for. Using this hard drive is very simple on windows operating systems you merely plug in the power cord and usb 3. The seagate portable external hard drive is a great external hard drive for mac that is also very affordable, making this a primary choice for those who need a lower cost drive.
A fat32 partition can reach up to 32gb when formatted on a windows pc. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. How can i regain read and write permissions on my seagate. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. After switching to the factory seagate one for a while, i was able to use some recovery software to get all of the data i needed, which was surprisingly most of it. Please remember that all data will be deleted from the drive, so make sure you have made a backup. I can find it under device manager and disk management but thats it. Apr 21, 2020 when your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. Seagate backup plus hub 8tb desktop hard drive with rescue. How to reformat my seagate external hard drive quora. Select the partition tab on the right hand side of the disk utility window 4. After asking many experts about my difficulties i could not seem to get any further on. Also, if your current hard drive is more than 5 years old, it probably is nearing the end of its service life and needs to be replaced.
How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. The seagate external hard drive is full of useless files or virus, malware, etc. It brought me to a webpage on seagates site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a windows pc. How to use seagate external hard drive on mac, 16 ways. Samsung t5 the samsung t5 is everything we want out of an external hard drive. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. As long as the drive connects to your macbook air via a connection protocol that the air supports like thunderbolt or usb 2 or usb 3 you can format the drive and use it with your mac just fine. Make sure the storage device is connected to and mounted on the computer. In the format partition section, select the file system. The next step is downloading the software aweeraser. How to reformat an external hard drive for a mac techwalla. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here. Reformatting a mac drive let us now take a look at the procedure for reformatting hard drive on.
If the external hard drive is pre formatted for mac, disk management will list 3 partitions and you will not be able to delete the health efi system partition because its a protected partition. Hard drives in seagates freeagent line except for the go pro for mac and the go for mac ship with ntfs, a file system designed for windows. So if anything happens to your mac you can restore your entire mac from a time machine backup. Reformatting seagate xbox one game drive ive been having issues with my xbox one not recognizing my seagate external drive since last week when all the games from the drive got put into the ready to install section and my xbox acted like the drive wasnt even connected. Not only is this hard drive affordable, but it is also very simple to use. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. Your seagate external hard drive unless its one of seagates desktop drives. How to set up seagate external hard drive on macbook pro, mac mini, mac. Reformatting an external hard drive dell community. Seagate branded external drives come preformatted, some for pcs, some for macs, and some of them have special utilities allowing them to work between both without formatting. 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. Just so i am 100% clear on this if i move all my current files ms word, excel, etc. Dec 29, 2015 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. Back up using seagate with time machine, formatting seagate.
I didnt think it should be a problem reformatting, so i restart from the cd and run the installer. External hard drive compatible with mac and pc without. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. If you dont see two entries listed then change the view in disk utility to show the drive and.
The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as fat32. The simple and easy steps to formatting your seagate drive on your mac 1. How to fix seagate external hard drive not showing up. If your external hard drive is readonly on your mac due to its ntfs file system, you can easily fix it by reformatting the device to a maccompatible format with the builtin disk utility on mac. It is obvious that you can use seagate external hard drive or flash drive with mac and windows computer as long as you format seagate drive for mac and pc. Takes its juice, its power from your mac, along its usb cable and that means youll need enough battery power in your macbook pro or air to drive the seagate drive.
Seagate external drive does not appear in apple finder. 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. You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. If you are willing to reformat it for windows pc then fat32 or ntfs should be used where as fo. However, fat32 is a legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives and it is not recommended for modern hard drives or operating systems. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here connect the drive to your mac. Well show you everything you need to know about the. If you use your external in mac and windows, the better option would be to format your external with fat, as this formatting is compatible with both mac and windows. Then proceed to highlight your computers hard drive. Though this format has some limitations, it enjoys nearly universal support. Whether you go the software or hardware route depends on your situation. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. How to format a windows disk drive for a mac seagate blog.
Two methods to change seagate external hard drives from readonly back to readwrite, so that you can edit, delete, and rename files on this seagate external hard drive. This hard drive is relatively silent and it has a lightning fast transfer speed of about half a gig per second. Within 20 seconds, your new device is registered for your computer. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra. Is it necessary to reformat a new, seagate backup plus in. Like other models, this external hard drive requires reformatting for mac, with a few simple steps as listed. How to fix seagate external hard drive readonly on mac. These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. You want to regain the full storage of the seagate external hard drive. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in disk utility that states it is only being mounted in readonly mode. Seagate backup plus 500gb portable external hard drive for.
Also, if a seagate external hard drive is readonly or files are locked on mac due to ntfs format, you can use iboysoft ntfs for mac to mount it in readwrite mode on mac. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in macos. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive readonly on mac. In that case, you need to recover lost data from the seagate backup. Normally when you plug in an external hard drive to your macs usb port you will see it appear on the desktop aka mount on the desktop. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data. Its fast, taking advantage of full solidstate storage and usb 3. I would like to reformat it to use it on my computer now that i no longer have dish network. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. This wikihow teaches you how to change an external usb hard drives format on windows and mac computers.
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Easily store and access 1tb to content on the go with the seagate portable drive, a usb external hard drive designed to work with windows or mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop. On the back of the seagate expansion you will find a power input and a usb 3. How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. Seagate backup plus slim 500gb portable hard drive for mac usb 3. How to share an external drive between a mac and a pc. When you are going to clean up the disk space of your seagate external hard drive, you may just delete the files or format the seagate. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. What disk utility looks like in lion through yosemite. 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. Wipe seagate external hard drive with super eraser. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. Dec 24, 2010 you will see a list of all volumes that are part of the hard drive. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve.
Seagate backup plus desktop user manual optional formatting. You can also see it in the finder in the left column under. How to format a seagate freeagent for a macbook synonym. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want. How to format an external hard drive with pictures wikihow. Oct 09, 2019 this wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. How to fix seagate backup plus not mountingworking on mac. When your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. Open disk utility applicationsutilitiesdisk utilities 2. Oct 14, 2007 after switching to the factory seagate one for a while, i was able to use some recovery software to get all of the data i needed, which was surprisingly most of it. Fix readonly seagate external hard drive in disk utility. Need to reformat my seagate 1tb external hard drive.
Reformatting an external hard drive no, not unless you back them up to another location first. Here is a stepbystep guide for you to fix seagate external hard drive not showing up in my computer in windows 10. In the partition layout dropdown menu, select 1 partition. How to format an external hard drive on windows and mac. 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. How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. Connect your seagate external hard drive into your pc or mac. A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for pc windows or for mac.
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