How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Mac

Posted : admin On 10/18/2019
How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Mac Average ratng: 3,7/5 6719 votes

Use Disk Utility to for a Seagate hard drive for Mac. Just open Disk Utility on your Mac, you will see all the drives and devices on your Mac computer. Select the Seagate hard drive and click on “Erase” button. Then disk utility will format your Seagate hard drive and erase all the data. Please note that the erased data by disk utility can be recovered by Mac data recovery software. How to Format Seagate External Hard Drive under Mac OS? By Shirly Chen, 2016-11-10 'Hi, anyone can tell me how to format a Seagate external hard drive on Mac? I am going to sell my 2TB Seagate external hard drive. Before sending it away, I want to make sure all the data on it has been permanently erased. So I try to format it on my Mac. 3 The Best Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery Software. There are tens of thousands of products that can be used to get the work done easily when it comes to subjected question. It means that the user needs to ensure that the programs or the software mentioned in this part are the ones which will get the work done for the user easily.

Looking for simple straight forward helpon how to format your Seagate hard drive for your Mac?

Because you just want to get your Mac’sbackup done.

Or you need your drive to free up space onyour Mac.

Or download that mass of photos becauseyou don’t want to pay for any more cloud storage. Then you can have your photosat home. Without the worry of someone breaking into your cloud storage.

Read on for your simple, easy to followinstructions.

Want a high level view? Here is whatyou’re going to do when you format your Seagate External hard drive for yourMac.

1. Log in.Plug your Seagate drive into your Mac.

2. Spotlightsearch Disk Utility. Press return.

3. Pickyour Seagate drive under External on the left.

4. Click onErase at the top.

5. Giveyour Seagate drive a name. Pick your Format from the menu.

6. PickGUID Partition Map for Scheme.

7. ClickErase bottom Right to Format.

How to Format a Seagate Hard Drive for Mac

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Before you go ahead and format your Seagate externalhard drive on your MacBook or iMac. Ask yourself if there any files on thereyou want.

Because formatting means you won’t be able to get toany of those files on the drive once you have formatted it.

If you know there are files on your Seagate externaldrive then copy them somewhere safe first. Then you can go ahead and format.

An example of the kind of files you may have on your Seagate drive are the ones Seagate put on there when you buy.

They are the files that allow you to register your Seagate external hard drive for warranty. And download some of Seagate Technology’s own software tools.

The Simple and Easy Steps to Formatting your SeagateDrive on Your Mac

1. Log into your Mac. And Plug in your Seagate Drive.

Your Seagate external hard drive unless it’s one of Seagate‘s desktop drives. Takes it’s juice, its power from your Mac, along its USB cable.

And that means you’ll need enough battery power inyour MacBook Pro or Air to drive the Seagate drive.

Even if you think your Mac has enough battery power. Plug your Mac in. Because you won’t want your Mac’s battery running out of power. And doing that part way through formatting your Seagate drive.

Formatting a desktop Seagate external drive? Then plugin its power cable to power it up.

Depending on the Seagate drive you have you may needan adaptor cable to plug into your Mac’s USB port.

Not sure what you might need? Then go over to my document here that walks you through the different generations of Macs. Their USB ports and the type of USB adaptor you need to look for.

When you’re plugged in and powered up your Mac willshow the Seagate’s drive icon on your desktop.

If for some reason you can’t see it. Take a look atyour finder window preferences.

Open a finder window. And go to your preferences.

Make sure the boxes show ‘Hard Disks’ and ‘ExternalDisks’ on your desktop are checked.

2. Spotlight Search Disk Utility.

You’ve free software on your Mac. It’s part of your Mac’s operating system. And that software will format your Seagate drive for you. That software is called Disk Utility.

You find it by doing a Spotlight search.

Click on the Spotlight icon at the top of your Mac’sdesktop screen.

Then type in ‘Disk Utility’ and press the return key.

Double click on Disk Utility to start up the program.

3. Pick your Seagate Drive Under External.

Once Disk Utility has started up you’ll see its pop upwindow.

On the left hand side of the pop up window you’ll seea list.

Disk Utility shows you in this list your attachedinternal and external drives.

Your Seagate external drive will be listed under‘External’.

Click on your Seagate drive in the list. The yellow arrow on the photo below shows youwhere.

It’s important that you pick your Seagate drive at theright level. Or your formatting may not work.

You may need to expand the list to see the levels. Youdo that by clicking on the down arrow to the left of the drive icon on thelist.

No List? Nothing under external? You’ll need to changeyour view.

At the top left of your Disk Utility pop up window you’llsee View.

Open up the view menu. On the view menu pick to toshow all devices. That will show thedrive and the volume.

4. Click on Erase at the Top.

At the top of your Disk Utility pop up window you’llfind the Erase button. Click on that.

Only click on the Erase button after you’ve clicked onyour Seagate drive at the top level.

This will take you to the next pop up window. There you’ll set up how you want to format your Seagate hard drive for your Mac.

5. Give your Seagate hard drive a Name

Now you put in the details for your drive’s format.

Choose and put in a name on the menu where it saysName.

This is the name your Mac will show on your desktopunder the drive’s icon.

Next pick the format.

You have a few options here.

Then pick Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

This is the format you choose when you want to to copyand paste your files. Or drag and drop your files to your Seagate hard drive.

This is the format your Mac wants to use when you do a Time Machine Backup.

Then pick ExFAT. You can drag and drop your files. Copy and paste your files.

But you can’t use an ExFAT formatted external harddrive for a Time Machine backup.

Don’t choose FAT32 unless you have to. It’s an oldMSDOS file system.

FAT32 is less robust and has file size restrictions.You wouldn’t choose it unless you had to. Say if you were using your Seagate hard drive for a device that willonly talk to FAT32.

The new Apple file system is for Solid State Drives. It can’t be used for a Time Machine backup. But you could choose it if you were formatting a Seagate SSD drive.

Pick your Format option.

You choose from a list that you open up using theup/down arrows at the end of the Format field.

6. Pick GUID Partition Map for Scheme

The next option you choose when formatting your Seagate hard drive for Mac is Scheme.

Pick GUID Partition Map.

This is the scheme your Mac likes to use. It doesn’t matter if you’ve picked Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or an ExFAT format or APFS. You Pick GUID Partition Map.

7. Click Erase Bottom Right

Set your formatting options. And when you click on theErase button at the bottom right of the window you’ll kick off the formatting.

In a few moments the formatting of your SeagateExternal Hard drive on your Mac will be all done.

When Disk Utility is finished you can get rid of yourDisk Utility window.

And in a few moments your Mac will show your Seagate external hard drive on your Mac’s desktop.

How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Both Mac And Pc

Eject your Seagate Hard Drive When You’re Finished

After you have copied what you want to your Seagatedrive. Or used it for a Time Machine backup. Be sure to Eject your Seagatedrive before you pull your USB cable.

Your Mac keeps stuff in its memory while you’re usingyour Seagate drive. Ejecting tells yourMac to copy everything in memory down to your Seagate.

And then it’s safe to plug out your USB cable.

You Eject the drive my hovering your cursor over thedrive icon on your Mac’s desktop. Right click. And choose Eject from the menuthat comes up.

In a couple of moments your Seagate’s drive Icon goesfrom your desktop and you take out the drive’s USB Cable.

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And that’s it you’ve learnt how to format a Seagatehard drive for Mac.

YouTube Video Showing Formatting a SeagateHard Drive for Mac

Would you like to see a video showing youhow to format your Seagate drive? Take a look at this video. In total it’snearly 13 minutes.

But if you’re only formatting your Seagatedrive for Mac, you’ll see all you need to know in the first 3 minutes.

Seagate External hard Drive How to Setup on Mac

Video Credit: Tech & Design

How To Format My Seagate Hard Drive For Mac And Windows

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If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. Learn a few ways to make your drive Mac and PC friendly.

Need to access or transfer files between Mac and PC? As simple as this task sounds, it’s not very straightforward for inexperienced users. Since Mac OS X and Windows use totally different file systems, the way a drive is formatted can determine what type of computer it will work with. In fact, there are four ways you can format an external or USB flash drive to achieve varying degrees of compatibility between Macs and PCs. Let’s take a look at them:

How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

HFS+

Mac OS X’s native file system is HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended), and it’s the only one that works with Time Machine. But while HFS+ is the best way to format drives for use on Macs, Windows does not support it. If you’re only going to be using your external or USB flash drive with certain PCs – such as at home or the office – you might be interested in a program called MacDrive. When you install MacDrive on a Windows PC, it will be able to seamlessly read & write to HFS+ drives. This isn’t a good solution if you need your drive to work on any PC without installing software, though.

NTFS

The native Windows file system is NTFS, which is only partially compatible with Mac OS X. Macs can read files on NTFS drives, but it cannot write to them. So if you need to get files from a PC to your Mac, NTFS is a decent option. However, you won’t be able to move files in the other direction, from Mac to PC.

FAT32

The most universally supported way to format your drive is with the FAT32 file system. It works with all versions of Mac OS X and Windows. Case closed, right? Well, not so fast. Unfortunately, FAT32 is a very old file system and has some technical limitations. For example, you cannot save files that are larger than 4GB on a FAT32-formatted drive. This is a deal-breaker if you work with huge files. The other limitation is the total size of the partition. If you format your FAT32 drive in Windows, the drive partition cannot be larger than 32GB. If you format it from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, the drive partition can be up to 2TB. Much better, except for that pesky 4GB limit.

Mac Hard Drive Format Type

exFAT

How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Mac

The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by today’s standards. Awesome, it’s perfect! Almost… since exFAT is fairly new, it isn’t compatible with older Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible. If you know you’ll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems, exFAT is the clear best choice.

Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac

How To Format Seagate Drive

  1. Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
  2. Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.
  3. Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive.
  4. Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.

Format a drive using Windows

How To Format Seagate Hard Disk For Mac

  1. Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP).
  2. Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu.
  3. A window will pop up where you can choose the format – NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.
  4. Click Start to format the drive.