OUT OF THE BOX HARD DRIVE FOR WINDOWS AND MAC AND WINDOWS

Out Of The Box Hard Drive For Windows And Mac And Windows

Click System and Security or search BitLocker in the Control Panel window. Open the search box, type Control Panel. If you need to free more space (the drive is still marked red), go to the next tip.If you buy an external driveвЂ”such as one of our recommended desktop hard drives, portable hard drives, or USB 3.0 flash drivesвЂ”you may need to reformat it to work with your operating system of choice, since different operating systems use different file systems to process data.Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC This post will show specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.Click the Windows Start Menu button. Go back to Computer in File Explorer, select the drive you cleaned up, and then select Refresh. In the message that appears, select Delete files. To remove data from a previous installation of Windows, select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box.

Seagate One Touch 1TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (STKB1000404) - Grey. LaCie Rugged 2TB USB-C Portable External Hard Drive for PC/Mac (STFR2000800) - Orange. Select the C: Available to ship. Alternatively, click the File Explorer icon and select your computer. Open Computer or My Computer.

But fear not: The process is simple. If you use a Mac, the likelihood that youвЂ™ll have to reformat the drive is higher. If you use Windows, chances are good that you wonвЂ™t need to reformat your external hard driveвЂ”unless you buy it secondhand, or you plan on switching between operating systems, your drive should come ready to use.

NTFS has huge file and partition size limits that you wonвЂ™t hit that makes it a better choice than FAT32, which has a 4В GB size limit per file. MacOS and Linux, however, can only read files stored on such a drive they cannot write to an NTFS-formatted drive. NTFS is native to Windows, and most hard drives are preformatted for this file system. If you plan to use your drive for File History backups on a Windows computer, and you use only Windows, stick to NTFS (New Technology File System). So what do those four file systems mean, and which one is right for you?

Now your computer will see your single drive as multiple, smaller drives. First, partition the drive using Disk Utility with macOS, and (using our walkthrough below) format one part as HFS+ and the other as FAT32 then, plug the drive into Windows and reformat the FAT32 portion as NTFS. If you want to use a single external hard drive to back up both File History and Time Machine, you can partition it so that some of the drive is NTFS and some is HFS+. ExFAT works on both macOS and Windows, and it doesnвЂ™t have the file size limit that FAT32 does, so youвЂ™ll be able to back up movies and other large files.

If you already have data stored on the drive, back that data up elsewhere, reformat the drive, and then put your data back on the drive. Reformatting will delete all the data stored on the drive, so if you need to reformat, do so as soon as you buy the drive. ItвЂ™s possible, but tricky, to change the size of a partition later on in Windows and macOS we recommend backing up the data on your drive before attempting the task, since itвЂ™s possible to wipe your drive doing this.Now that youвЂ™ve figured out those differences, itвЂ™s time to reformat your hard drive.