Seagate expansion formatting is a process to erase the device to free disk space, and formatted seagate expansion recovery is to restore formatted seagate disk ie unformat seagate hard disk. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save. Formatting the drive will permanently erase all the data and files stored on the hard drive forever. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data. Seagate external drive does not appear in apple finder. 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. Mac doesnt recognize external hard drive anymore and why your mac is not mounting or wont detect specific popular brand drives including seagate, wd, toshiba, iomega, lacie, and exfat. Instructions for how to format your external drive so that it will be fully usable in macos. But in order for the computer and drive to talk to one another, the drive has to be formatted. However, if you want to format a seagate external hard drive on mac, it is not as easy as formatting it on a pc. In the main interface, locate the seagate drive, right click it and choose format partition. After several minutes of waiting, the process will finish.
You can format a drive using the disk utility in mac. Click control panel on the righthand side of the menu that populates. Instead, well just be wiping the drive and starting over from scratch. Seagate expansion on mac, want it but can i use on my mac. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. 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. Dont click the format disk button or windows will erase the contents of the driveclick cancel. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently.
For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a mac, please reference the following links. When your seagate drive is formatted as exfat or fat32 successfully, you can type exit to close this window. After upgrading to windows 10 my pc is not detecting the drive, it shows at lower right corner that ive plugged it in, it shows in device manager. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and 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. The disk utility will automatically begin to format the external hard drive for mac and pc. Your macbook can not read or write to a ntfs drive. In a few moments youll see the drive icon on your desktop. However, if you want to convert ntfs to exfat to make external hard drive compatible with mac and pc, 3 steps are required.
Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. How to format a new or second hard drive in windows 10 formatting a drive may vary in terms of different operating systems, like windows and mac. Also, there are two versions of mac products freeagent go pro for mac has usb and firewire 800, and freeagent go for mac usb usb 2. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing data. Apr 14, 2020 by this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data. If you wants both pc and mac compatibility you must format it in exfat, but time machine doesnt support exfat. Oct 09, 2019 this wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer.
Select os x extended journaled as the drive format. Seagate external harddrive not being detected after windows. In the format partition section, select the file system. When you want to wipe the backup plus drive clear of everything on it. Select the seagate drive from the list of available devices instead of a mounted volume. While mac os x can read hard drives formatted as ntfs, write access is not available. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Select the external hard drive on the lefthand side. Based on your specific needs and select a proper way to achieve your goal. Aug, 2018 need to format portable hard drive for mac and pc if you have a portable hard drive with ntfs file system, you can use it in windows computer easily. Seagate backup plus comes in a couple varieties one preformatted for mac, the other preformatted for windows but also readable on mac.
Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra duration. How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive youtube. Select the nonindented entry for your seagate drive. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and. Sep 30, 2019 when do you format seagate backup plus for a mac.
How to fix seagate external hard drive not showing. Then, you can share external hard drive between mac and pc. Formatting is the best way to give an old seagate external hard drive its new life. Jul 22, 2010 i bought a seagate expansion drive 1 tb a while ago, and have been trying to format it for use with my mac mini. How to format a seagate freeagent for a macbook synonym. It is easy to format a seagate external hard drive on windows pc. When you want to change an ntfs file system to exfat so that you can share your backup plus between a mac and a pc. Formatting seagate 1tb external drive h apple community. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. Tips to fix mac doesnt recognize external hard drive on. Choose erase hard drive option, and you should see a list of the drives connected to your pc mac including the external hard drive you want to reformat. How to reformat a seagate portable drive once it has been. Back up using seagate with time machine, formatting seagate.
In the pane on the left, under storage, click disk management. How to reformat seagate portable external hard drive. From the volume format menu, choose mac os extended. Issue formatting seagate external in high sierra i have been using seagate external hard drives for years to store data on them, and as an external time machine. Formatting seagate hdd in mac pro with 2 os window7 and. The duration of the process is based on the external drives total storage and rpm. This volume format accommodates mac os x and mac files the best. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos sierra. How to fix seagate external hard drive readonly on mac.
So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pcmac, or to cloud storage service. Dec 12, 2016 seagate external drive does not appear in apple finder. For some reason i lost half of my space on this hard drive once i. Issue formatting seagate external in high apple community. 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. In the popup window, choose exfat or fat32 among the listed file systems here exfat is selected. Aug 02, 2018 mac doesnt recognize external hard drive anymore and why your mac is not mounting or wont detect specific popular brand drives including seagate, wd, toshiba, iomega, lacie, and exfat. Select the seagate drive on the left that shows the capacity 3. How to format seagate drive for mac and pc quickly and securely. Select the erase option note that the app will automatically assign a file format.
These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. You can get rid of all the malware and bad sectors by just formatting the device with macs disk utility. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos mac. How to set up seagate external hard drive on macbook pro, mac mini, mac. How to reformat mac external harddrive for pc march 2014. Seagate backup plus hub user manual optional formatting and. External seagate hard drive for mac compatibility ask different. Seagate external harddrive not being detected after windows 10 upgrade i just recently bought a saegate 1tb hard drive and backed up all my important stuff on it, was using windows 7 at the time. Formatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. I have tried disk utility several times once zeroing out the drive, once doding it but that would have taken more than two days, so i cancelled that op. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Open disk utility applicationsutilitiesdisk utilities 2. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac.
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. Erase files, erase hard drive, and erase free space. But sometimes a little help is needed, if you decide to start using your windows drive mainly on your new mac. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. In order to format a portable drive, i would suggest you to try following steps via windows. I bought a seagate expansion drive 1 tb a while ago, and have been trying to format it for use with my mac mini. If you have a mac lying around, you can plug the drive into a mac and back up the files. Click go on the top tool bar, and select utilities. Hey all i got a seagate external hard drive so i can back up my first laptop which runs on windows vista yes, i know its the worst operating system but its a long story as to why i am still using it. I am looking to purchase a seagate external hard drive for my macbook air. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. This process wont actually convert the file system. Before your format a seagate hard drive on your mac, you should check if there. The simple and easy steps to formatting your seagate drive on your mac 1.
It sounds like you arent just formatting, but also writing zeros or something. Jul 02, 2017 seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos mac os x seagate backup plus slim 1tb 2tb sierra,mojave please subscribe my channel. Seagate backup plus desktop user manual optional formatting. This wikihow teaches you how to format a seagate hard drive on a mac computer. If a mac runs under macos high sierra, the default format will be apfs. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos mac os. 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. Choose the external hard drive and click erase button at the bottom of the screen. Chris besides the formatting difference, there is software on the pc version and no software on the mac version. Click the done button to finish formatting the external hard drive for mac and pc to exfat. This will depend on what the vintage of the mac os was. Before formatting any hard drive, its a good idea to backup any data or files you want to save before formatting. Connect your portable hard drive into the usb port on your computer. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows.
Do this to connect up your seagate expansion drive. The products claims it works only with pc windows, however, i have read multiple places that i can just format the drive and it will work fine with a mac. Seagate external hard drive how to set up on mac macos mac os x seagate backup plus slim 1tb 2tb sierra,mojave please subscribe my channel. How to format a windows disk drive for a mac seagate blog. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in disk utility that states it is only being mounted in readonly mode.
Close out of any windows that are open and click the start button on your windows taskbar. If you are using zero out data, i just did that to several new 1tb internal and external drives, and i think it took about 2. First, back up the data on the macformatted drive if you have anything important on it. The best format to choose when you plan to use your seagate expansion only for your mac is mac os extended journaled file system.
Enter a name for the external hard drive in the name field. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive readonly on mac. Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. Just follow these steps to easily format a seagate hard drive on your mac.
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 a hard drive for both windows and mac. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. Give the drive one fat32 msdos partition, which both mac os x and windows can read and write. Although in principal, formatting means to erase existing data and free up space for utilization, the procedures are not exactly the same for mac and windows. Select the partition tab on the right hand side of the disk utility window 4. Fix readonly seagate external hard drive in disk utility. I know mac operating system doesnt fully support ntfs formatted drive. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility. A hard drive can be used on any type of computer pc or mac. How to format a seagate hard drive for mac steps backup your hard drive. Formatting a seagate 1tb expansion drive difficulties. If it was prior to tiger, it is likely formatted hfs.
Change the partition layout from current to 1 partition. There some easytouse utilities can help you format a seagate hard drive under mac os. 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. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next. But if you connect it to a macbook, you will find that the operating system cannot recognize it. Jan 02, 2014 in order to format a portable drive, i would suggest you to try following steps via windows. Please remember that all data will be deleted from the drive, so make sure you have made a backup. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Seagate backup plus hub is available in two models, windows and mac. Need to format portable hard drive for mac and pc if you have a portable hard drive with ntfs file system, you can use it in windows computer easily. How to reformat a seagate external hard drive for both mac and a pc.
I have always formatted them to mac os extended in disk utility. Seagate drive formatting error in high sierra macspro. Recover reformatted seagate external hard disk drive seagate. Yet when you connect a macformatted drive to windows, youll be informed that you need to format the disk in drive x. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Next to name you will see untitled 1 where you can name the drive. Dont worry, apply my task, im sure that you will get rid of on this issue. How to format seagate external hard drive under mac os. Formatting an external drive comes in handy when a virus infects your disk, your mac is unable to read the drive, or when it is shutting down consistently. While mac os x can read hard drives formatted as ntfs, write access is not. To format an external hard drive on your mac paraphrased from here connect the drive to your mac.
1258 1450 1279 962 1095 1476 726 503 24 1513 1427 817 722 362 1073 517 724 445 92 973 370 305 549 835 1230 558 689 1067 1060