Use Usb Drive To Format Hard Drive For Mac10/16/2021
When the Terminal window opens up, type diskutil list and you'll find out which is your USB drive.Microsoft exFAT/NTFS for USB by Paragon Software provides an access to USB storage devices formatted in popular Microsoft Windows/macOS/Linux file systems (HFS+. Type Terminal in the search bar and hit Enter. Using Mac Command Line: Connect the USB drive to Mac and press CMD + Space key to run Spotlight. Finally click on the Erase button and the USB drive format will complete.MacOS Big Sur 11 is the biggest update for Apple Mac operating system. Format hard drive with AweCleaner for macOS Big Sur. Format and wipe hard drive with AweEraser. Format hard drive or external device with Disk Utility.
To do this on Windows 8 or Windows 7, press the Windows key once, type cmd , and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Next, open a Command Prompt window as administrator. The ExFAT File System (for compatibility with high-capacity USB flash drives).Before we get to Thunderbolt 3, we need to address a basic building block of hard drives that has always affected compatibility, and probably always will: the file system.For example, in the screenshot below, the Mac-formatted drive is Disk 2. All other volumes on the physical disk untouched. How to Format a Drive on a Mac. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system. It's simply called the Apple File System (APFS), and it's the first format to be used across both Macs and iOS devices.You’ll see the drive’s file system displayed to the right of Format under the General heading. With the release of the macOS High Sierra operating system, Cupertino ditched its venerable Mac OS Extended file system, commonly abbreviated as HFS+, and switched to an entirely new file system. Advertisement.An external drive's file system is the most important factor that determines whether or not it's readable by Macs, PCs, or both. Some highly specialized external drives might not work with Macs even if they're formatted correctly, but consumers looking for extra space simply to store backups or large video collections aren't likely to encounter them. If you really fancy a consumer-oriented drive formatted for Windows (which will usually pre-formatted in the NTFS format), you can use the Disk Utility in macOS to reformat it after you bring it home from the store. You won't get the security and efficiency of APFS, but you will get the convenience of being able to transfer files back and forth between Windows and macOS simply by plugging in and unplugging your drive.Of course, you can easily reformat most external drives, so you're not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs. If you plan to use your external drive with computers that run both operating systems, you should consider formatting your drive with the exFAT file system. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a Mac that's running macOS High Sierra or later.Neither Apple File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however. Use Usb Drive To Format Hard Drive Portable External DriveTheir small size means they can often fit into a jacket or pants pocket, which makes them a better choice if you're looking for a portable external drive that you'll be carrying with you frequently. SSDs are often smaller and lighter than spinning external drives, as well, which is also thanks to the lack of moving parts. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and—unlike the file system—the type you buy is the type you're stuck with for the life of the drive.A solid-state drive (SSD) offers quick access to your data because it stores your bits in a type of flash memory rather than on spinning platters. An array contains two or more drives that all work together to increase throughput, or guard your precious files against corruption via drive redundancy if one of the drives fail. Compare that with external spinning drives, which are easy to find even in capacities in excess of 8TB for desktop-style drives, or up to 5TB for portable ones.For professional videographers who edit lots of 4K footage and gamers or movie buffs who have large libraries of multi-gigabyte titles, an external RAID array made up of multiple platter-based drives is worth considering, since it combines the near-speed of an SSD with the gargantuan possible capacities of spinning drives. External SSDs also have lower capacity limits, with most drives topping out at 2TB. You could pay more than 25 cents per gigabyte for an SSD, while spinning drives can be had for less than 10 cents per gigabyte—and often much less. Adobe acrobat reader for mac canadaDoes Thunderbolt 3 Matter, or Will USB-C Do?So, to recap: Faster, smaller (both physically and in terms of gigabytes) solid-state drives come at a premium, while spinning drives offer a much better value while sacrificing speed. Portable drives don't have a power plug they get the juice they need to run through their data interface. Desktop-style external hard drives are larger, are based on the beefier and more capacious 3.5-inch drives used in full-size desktop PCs, and require their own AC power source. These come in both portable and "desktop" versions.The portables are obviously smaller, and are based on the kinds of 2.5-inch platter drives used in laptops. You'll pay handsomely, of course—some Mac-specific arrays cost thousands of dollars.On the other hand, if you're looking to buy an external drive mainly to back up your files ( which you should definitely do) and it will rarely leave your home office, an inexpensive spinning drive will work just fine. Moreover, the Thunderbolt 3 drives you can buy are constrained by the maximum throughput of the drive itself, rather than the Thunderbolt 3 interface. Even some Mac-specific drives are still sold with USB 3.0 connectors. (See our deep dive on the differences between Thunderbolt 3 versus USB-C.)Unfortunately, you won't find all that many Thunderbolt 3-compatible drives on the market. The silver lining is that Thunderbolt 3 via USB Type-C supports a blazing maximum potential throughput of 40Gbps, double the speed of the old Thunderbolt 2 standard and many times the 5GBps that USB 3.0 offers. These kinds of components in newer drives help Thunderbolt 3 reach more of its speed potential. While older external SSDs have been limited by the internal electronics (generally a drive and controller using the older Serial ATA bus inside the drive), late-model drives use different internal components, based on PCI Express drives using the NVMe protocol. That's more than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files, but many times lower than Thunderbolt 3's maximum throughput.However, that speed ceiling is rising. ![]() The next time you plug in your drive, Time Machine will automatically set to work creating a backup.Unless your drive is never going to leave your home or office, you should also consider its physical durability. While you can customize backup options in System Preferences, such as asking Time Machine to exclude certain folders, there's no action required on your part if you're happy with the default settings. ( See our guide to using Time Machine for backups.)The first time you plug in an external drive, Time Machine will ask if you want to use it as a backup drive. Some drives come in a variety of colors. (Check out our favorite rugged drives.)Finally, you might want to consider how the drive will look when it's plugged into your Mac.
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