Oct 15,2019 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
How to Format a Hard Drive For Both Windows and Mac. But other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exFAT for use with Mac as well.
External hard drives are the storage devices used to store and retrieve digital information, personal and official data like files, documents and other stuff. These are attached to systems through FireWire or USB connection or wirelessly to transfer data from the internal drive to hard disk drives. If you are looking for new operating system or selling your old computers or laptops, then you need to set up an external hard drive for backups by erasing and formatting the existing data in the storage devices.
Part 1: How to Format an External Hard Drive on Windows
The Windows users who are going to format external hard drive for the first time, they will get complete information and stepwise procedure of formatting drives.
Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Windows:
Video Tutorial on How to Format External Hard DrivePart 2: How to Format an External Drive on Mac
Mac users can select any file system that supports their operating system. Cheese sauce for mac and cheese with flour. In order to format an external drive on Mac, you can follow stepwise procedure as discussed below:
Stepwise Procedure to Format Storage Device on Mac:
By following the stepwise procedure mentioned above, you can easily format the storage device on Mac.
What is External Hard Drive Formatting Process?
Formatting external hard drives is a process of deleting or erasing the memory chunks to avail the space for new data. Formatting can be performed at two stages: low level and high level process. Formatting may take few hours to wipe out the existing data, but the process can be hassle-free if you get to know about stepwise instructions of how to format an external hard drive.
Low level formatting is the first process of wiping out data and existing files in the hard disk devices and at the high level, a new file system is generated. Technically, it is the process of writing a new directory structure which allows the documents and files to be overwritten and create space for the new data.
Before formatting external hard drives, backup all important data that you are going to format. Most external hard devices come with backup software that will make process much easier to do. If you have documents, music, photos saved elsewhere on computer then make sure you have copied all stuff before formatting. Remember once all the data get formatted, it will not be recovered at any cost.
File System Explained:
Before proceeding to format external hard drive, you need to know about file systems which are particularly associated with the operating systems. File systems are the key parts of translation from the physical data recording on a hard drive to the files that are read by operating systems only.
Various operating systems like Mac, Windows, Linux and OS X have different file systems to organize and store digital information. The most popular file systems are as discussed below:
These are the popular file systems for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. For those who are running Windows computer, they can format hard drive as NTFS and for the Mac users; ExFAT will be the best and reliable option. Before formatting external hard drives, make sure you have created backup for the all important digital data. Nowadays, it is also possible to convert hard drive without losing any>Recover Your Drive
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