How To Format an External Hard Drive for Mac – Everything You Need To Know g technology g drive setup

If this was helpful leave a comment! To Summarize how to format your external hard drives on Mac. Use Disk Utility. Use the Mac OS Extended Journaled format if you work on Mac computers only (choose APFS instead if you work with newer Macs and have a SSD or flash drive.) If you want the external drive to work on both Windows and Mac then choose ExFAT. Timecodes:
0:00 – Intro
0:26 – Eject all other drives connected to your mac
0:38 – What to expect when connecting a windows NTFS formatted drive or usb drive to a mac
1:21 – Using Disk Utility to format an external drive or usb thumb drive on a mac
1:57 – What to do if you don't see APFS and other options in format menu in Disk Utility
3:05 – Explaining AFPS (Apple File System) and when to use it for formatting a drive
3:57 – Running test to see if AFPS, Mac OS extended, or ExFAT is faster transfer speeds
4:37 – Why you shouldn't format an external drive to AFPS
5:16 – Explaining Mac OS Extended Journaled Format
5:52 – Explaining MS DOS (FAT) Format
6:14 – ExFAT format is compatible with both Mac and Windows
6:40 – Explaining Case Sensitive and Encryption formats on mac
7:22 – Finishing my example of formatting an external drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled

Great explanation!

How long should it take to erase a new disk? Mine is currently stuck on “creating partition map.”

Javier you don't need to press 'Erase' if your external HD is brand new right? You do great work but you talk a bit fast and I'm British(we're known for fast talking most of the time) ,just saying thanks lol!

Dude! This video was perfect. Articulate, understandable and very well organized. Thanks!

Amazing tutorial! Question Can I work with exfat and later on change to mac or opposite?

Thank for your video! This was so helpful and your video is well organized and easy to follow. Especially for someone like me who’s not very tech savvy.

You are as clear as day ! You make what seems daunting, a walk in the park . I'm the caveman in cyberspace, so i know what i'm talking about. Thank you

Javier, you're the most likeable tutorial creator bar none. Forever grateful for your help and the style which is extremely easy to follow.

There goes my hero, watch him as he goes…

Let’s say I have two Mac computers: A Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro. I just bought a 1TB WD external hard drive, and I want to use it to transfer my songs from my Apple Music library, as well as my photos and videos from Apple Photos and iMovie from my Mac Mini to the external hard drive, then transfer the files on my hard drive over to my MacBook Pro. My question is: Do I have to format the external hard drive to “EXFAT” or “Mac OS Extended Journaled” first in order to do all that?

Thanks for the great information!

Great tutorial…Maybe it's just me but you seem to flyyy through the steps a little too quickly. Just something to note maybe :). Again, thank you for your help.

I followed the steps to format a 2t Lacie but after hitting erase I got a message that says "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" So what should I do now?

For someone who Don't know what I am doing is too much information. Only thing I wanted was a step by step to connect my MacBook Air to my LACIE RUGGED MINI.

This video was really helpful. I have a stack of hard drives that I haven't been able to use because they were formatted to Windows, but now that I've switched over to Mac they've just been sitting in a cupboard. I've asked people about what I should do, and they just say "oh, just reformat it". Zero further explanation of how to do that… and because I'm an idiot when it comes to technology, I haven't been able to figure it out until coming across your video. So thank you. Super helpful, really detailed information, clear instructions. Loved it. Thanks again. 🙂