How to Reformat Portable Hard Drives for Macs

Formatting a portable hard drive for your Mac takes just a few minutes.

Apple makes products from the iPod to the iPhone, but their original product was the Macintosh computer, also known as the Mac. These computers run on a different operating system than a Windows or Linux PC, and if you want to use a portable hard drive on your Mac, you should format it to Mac OS Extended format. Doing so takes just a few minutes, and your hard drive will function properly on your Mac.

Things You'll Need

• USB portable hard drive

Instructions

1. Locate a USB port on the back or side of your Apple computer. Plug in the USB portable hard drive to the USB port.

2. Open a Finder window on your computer by clicking on the square face in the bottom corner of your dock. Double-click the Applications shortcut on the left side of the Finder window. Navigate to the Utilities folder, then double-click "Disk Utility" to open up the application.

3. Click the USB drive you want to format on the left side of the Disk Utility window.

4. Click the "Erase" button located to the right side of the window. Click the arrow next to the drop-down menu to the right of the word "Format:" and select "Mac OS Extended" from the menu. Type in a name for the portable hard drive next to the "Name:" box if you wish to name the drive.

5. Click on the "Erase" button on the bottom of the window, just to the right of the "Security Options" button. Click "Erase" on the pop-up window to confirm that you want to erase and format the drive. Allow the program to erase and format the disk, which may take a few minutes.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure to back up any data on the portable hard drive before erasing and reformatting the drive.

References

• Apple Support: Erasing a Disk
• Techie Corner: How to Format External Hard Disk for Mac and Windows