Best format for an external hdd in 2019 to be used in macos. Maxtor, hitachi, seagate, samsung, toshiba, fujitsu, ibm, quantum, western digital, and almost any other not listed here. Select a name that will help you identify this particular drive. If you deal with macs at all, you might be curious as to whether linux is capable of dealing with disks and drives formatted for mac os x. Rakesh shewale writes with a common question about formatting compatibility. Make sure you pass in the partition and not the entire disk. But some mac users might need to erase them from the command line on mac os. Because the device names are different, use the size and format of the volume you created. With exfat, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years.
If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. We can add a partition label by passing the l flag. To do that, the only thing you need is a bit of precise syntax to make sure that you are erasing the proper disk. Disk utility only supports partition creation and formatting for. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it.
If you format your external hard drive to hfs, you can use it on mac and linux by removing journaling. In the main interface, right click the partition on that need. How to partition and format storage devices in linux. You need to delete all exisitng partitions on the disk currently there are 1 or more ext4 linux partitions and create a partition suitable for a windows pc ntfs partition. Msdos fat aka fat32 in fat32s favour, it can be read and written by mac, linux.
Disk utility on mac supports several file system formats. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. A there are total 4 steps involved for hard disk upgrade and installation procedure. Now that you know which format to use, check out our guide on how to format your hard drive on a mac. For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your mac. Choose either apfs or mac os extended journaled to format as a mac volume. Thereafter, select new to create a new partition to install windows in. Im having a hard time getting a 4tb external usb drive to work on both linux ubuntu 14. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux techwiser. Formatting a hard drive in linux using gparted is no more difficult than. A partition on a hard drive is a sort of boundary on the device telling each filesystem what space it can occupy. Partition the new disk using fdisk command following continue reading linux hard disk format command. For more information see linux partition naming convention and ide drive mappings.
How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. Mount, unmount, check, repair, and format any of your linuxformatted volumes. Rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. Heres how to format a drive if you are planning to use it with a mac. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. However, to use it on windows you can hfs explorer read only. Mac os and linux both have support for ntfs through ntfs3g. How to choose the best format for usb drive on windowsmac.
Here ill show you how you can erase and format a disk using the command line. How to erase disk in linux and mac using simple commands. Mostly, users prefer to do a linux format disk before reselling their systems. This is a default file system for linux os including raspberry pi. How to format an external hard drive the easy way in 2020. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems. How to access a mac drive from a windows or linux system. How to format a linux hard disk to windows wikihow. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. The command line approach to disk erasure in macos is a bit different and it requires precise syntax to insure that you are erasing the proper disk, making this.
If youre much more concerned about data integrity and dont mind waiting, do a full format. If you are a linux user or operating systems other than macos. The answer is yes, in most cases, and it is actually quite easy to get your macformatted stuff mounted on your linux system with readonly, and in most cases readandwrite, support. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. Nevertheless, there are many instances in which you might need to format a hard drive from the command line, particularly if you are running a server. Better still, it can be read from and written to on any mac running mac os x snow leopard or later and on windows. After you locate the correct volume, use the mouse or arrow keys to highlight the partition and then select change. Gparted is the most popular application of its kind in the open source world, so it may already be installed in your. File system formats available in disk utility on mac. To format external drive to file system compatible with mac and pc, connect the drive to your computer and follow the detailed steps given below take formatting hard drive to exfat in windows 7 for example. Under the hood, macs hardware is remarkably similar to most of the parts used in modern pcs. How to create mac os extended journaled partition and convert to.
In this tutorial, the name of the drive am going to format is seth and its path under the filesystem is devsdc1. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. Go to applicationsutilities and launch disk utility. The macbook pro is a popular platform for running linux. Filesystem compatible with gnulinux and mac super user. The extended file system ext was the first file system created specifically for linux. How to format a 4tb usb external drive to use on linux. How do i format a hard disk under linux operating system from a shell prompt. The installer presents a list of storage devices connected to your mac. Youll find the same processor families, graphics engines, networking chips, and a great deal more. You need to find the volume you created using the macs disk utility.
Fat32 works with all versions of windows, mac os, linux, game consoles, etc. There is the commercial product paragon extfs for mac with which you can format even ext4 i use it from time to time to access ext3 external hdd and it works quite well from their website. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Dealing with macformatted drives on linux fosswire. Click apply to accept the changes and proceed to install windows in the new partition that you have just created. For instance, if you have a 4gb thumb drive, you can have a partition on that device taking up the entire drive 4gb, two partitions that each take 2gb or 1 and 3, if you prefer, three of some variation of sizes, and so on. However, single files on a fat32 drive cant be larger than 4gb. If you want to format your external hard drive to work with mac and windows computers, you should use exfat.
Now that we have a partition available, we can format it as an ext4 filesystem. For those working from linux this task can easily be accomplished via the linux flash drive restoration tutorial that follows. Regardless of whether your block device is a hard drive or flash drive, and regardless of its logical block size, formatudf will produce a udf drive that can be recognized automatically on windows, os x, and linux. If your system has been corrupted by a malware, then you can wipe the hard disk of your linux to resolve this. How to use external hdd with windowsmaclinuxandroid. Windows users can follow the windows instructions below to restore a flash drive using the hp usb format tool. How to format a hard drive to ntfs in linux make tech easier. Once you have it installed, select the correct block devicepartition and format it using a filesystem like ext234, jfs, xfs, resiserfs, etc depending on your needs. Once disk utility is open youll see the list of available drives on the left. This makes ntfs the best option, and, thankfully, its easy to format your hard disk in ntfs format in linux.
How to format drive with compatible file system for mac. If your external drive saves files larger than 4gb or you plan to save larger files to. The first tool, and arguably one of the most important to erase disk in linux and mac, is dd, windows versions are available, but the use is slightly different. This video explains, why external hard drive does not work with every operating system and how to solve it. Sometimes, a system can become slow by having limited free space. The problems seem to be with inconsistent ability to readwrite the usb drive.
Hdd low level format tool is a utility for lowlevel hard disk drive formatting. You want to use your external hard drive in both mac, pc and linux use fat32. However, the above mentioned file systems are only for reference. Buying and using an external hd is one thing, getting the most out of it is quite another. For a desktop linux system, there are many graphical tools available for disk partitioning and formatting. Unlike fat32, exfat doesnt have a maximum file limit. There are many ways to do this, but one of the easiest is using gparted. External hard drive is popular storage device and it can be used to store all kinds of digital information such as images, documents, apps, emails, etc. You want to use your external hard drive in both mac, pc and linux use fat32 before you sell your sdcard or pendrive, you should format it to erase its data. 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. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility.
Choose the partition in which linux has been installed in and select delete. Some mac users may require the ability to erase a disk or erase a hard drive from the command line on mac os, a task which is typically performed through the disk utility application from the gui. Since my mac pro only has a 256 gb hdd, i would like to install ubuntu on an external disk, so i went ahead and bought a usb3. Enter a name for the disk or volume, such as macintosh hd. Sharing a hardflash drive across windows, os x, and linux. For example i want to copy a file to my external harddrive from gnulinux and then copy it from the external harddrive to mac os. On os x, linux, or any environment with bash, you can use the open source formatudf as a onestop udf formatting tool. How to format a drive as exfat on linux if the issue is with your computer or a laptop you should try using reimage plus which can scan the repositories and replace corrupt and missing files.
Select the partition you want to format to linux file system, and click format button from toolbar. Writeread access to linux files under macos high sierra extfs by. Udf is quite awesome as a on disk format for linuxosx data exchange, because it has a file size limit around 128tb, supports all the posix permissions, hard and soft links and whatnots. This works in most cases, where the issue is originated due to a system corruption. How to format an external drive in os x by shujaa imran jan 2, 2016 mac most external drives ship in formats that are universally recognised amongst nearly all operating systems fat, im looking at you, but there may be times where you might want to completely wipe a drive andor set it up to be compatible with apples mac lineup only. By formatting its linux drive, you can improve its performance as well. You are trying to take a linux formatted disk that was used in ex2 to a mac or pc. If the drive is not properly formatted, it wont work.
Format external hard drive to linux compatible file system. This is redfeather with grephaxs in this video we will be. How to erase a disk for mac use disk utility to erase format a hard disk, ssd, flash drive, or other storage device. The format window pops up and you can select linux filesystem from ext4, ext3 and ext3 from dropdown list. I originally thought of using fat 32 as its compatible with both and windows but it has a 4 gig file size limit. Most users use disk utility to erase a disk or hard drive. How to use my passport external hard drive in linux created by. How to format external hard drive for pc, mac and linux. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. This just allocates the disk space, but doesnt zero out the drive or check for bad sectors. This article shows you how to format an external hard drive via different methods, and you can follow these methods to format external hard drive for pc, mac or linux. How to use my passport external hard drive in linux. Ive installed a new 250gb sata hard disk on our office centos linux server.
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