There are times when we need to format a hard drive with Mac and we don't know how to do it correctly. Either because it is a new acquisition, or because we want to erase the contents of a somewhat old disk, erasing the hard drive is something that may be trivial but is important.
That is why today we have prepared this post in which we will show you different methods to format a hard drive with Mac without much effort or associated knowledge.
How to format a hard drive with Mac?
Formatting an external hard drive on a Mac is a fairly simple process and can be done using the utility "Disk Utility" which comes pre-installed in macOS and which fortunately is very easy to use as we have seen in an article about it. crashing a mac.
- Connect the hard drive external to your Mac using a USB or Thunderbolt cable.
- Go to the “Applications” folder on your Mac and then open the folder "Utilities".
- Inside the “Utilities” folder, find and open the application called «Disk Utility».
- In the left sidebar of Disk Utility, you'll see a list of all the drives connected to your Mac, and You will have to select which one you want to format..
- It is important to make sure you select the correct drive, as formatting will delete all data stored on it.
- Once the disk is selected, Click on the “Delete” tab»At the top of the window.
- Next, it will be your turn select file format for the external hard drive, where you can choose between "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" (to be used only between Macs) or "ExFAT" if you want to use it on computers with Windows or Linux.
- Finally, click the “Delete” button in the lower right corner of the window. Next it will ask you to confirm the deletion, say yes and congratulations, the disk utility will begin to do its job.
Use third-party apps to format a hard drive with Mac
Although macOS Disk Utility itself is not bad, sometimes we ask something more from the program we use to format a hard drive with Mac. Either because we want a very specific format, or because we want to do something not contemplated in the utility itself. designed Apple.
To do this, we will use these magnificent third-party applications:
iPartition
iPartition is a software tool designed for advanced partition management on macOS systems developed by Coriolis Systems, a company specializing in utilities for the Apple world.
Within what the app offers us, dfeature a range of functions to create, resize, move and manipulate partitions on hard drives and storage units connected to Mac that exceed those included in the operating system by default.
One of the standout features of iPartition is its ability to resize partitions without data loss, so you will be able to adjust the size of an existing partition without having to copy or move files, which can be useful when you need to adjust the space allocated to a partition without having to do a full backup and restore, or if you have a Mac with Intel processor to be able to install Windows or Linux on your computer without having to use a second hard drive or risk regretting losses.
In addition to the data loss-free resizing feature, iPartition also offers other partition management capabilities, such as the ability to create new partitions, delete existing partitions, move partitions to different locations on the disk, and change the file system type of a partition, all with a super intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager
Paragon Hard Disk Manager is a disk and partition management software suite that offers a wide range of tools for managing storage drives on Windows and macOS operating systems and comes backed by a company more than well known in the world of data manipulation. hard drives.
Some of the main features of Paragon Hard Disk Manager that make it a highly recommended app are the following:
- Allows create, delete, resize and move partitions on hard drives and solid state drives (SSD) easily and safely, with a work algorithm that is especially fast.
- In addition to this, the app has a series of Integrated tools to optimize performance of hard drives and SSDs, including disk defragmentation, partition alignment and free space optimization.
- Offer advanced backup options full, incremental and differential disk and partition recovery, as well as the ability to quickly and reliably restore data in the event of data loss.
- Facilitates the migration of operating systems to new hard drives or SSDs, including disk cloning and automatic adaptation of operating system settings for new hardware.
- Paragon Hard Disk Manager It also provides us with tools to recover lost data or accidentally deleted from hard drives and partitions, including advanced options to recover data from damaged or formatted partitions, something that will definitely be useful
Stellar Partition Manager
Stellar Partition Manager is a software tool designed to manage partitions on macOS systems and that has a certain similarity to those found in the other options mentioned above.
Application allows all types of partition management without losing data, from resizing them, making backup copies, restoring them, creating new ones or even deleting them if we wanted to, under a very easy-to-use interface.
Another strong point of Stellar Partition Manager is the compatibility between different file formats, including HFS+, exFAT and FAT32, according to the user's needs, allowing us to manage any type of storage units connected via USB, Thunderbolt or other interfaces at will. .
Before applying any changes to the partitions, Stellar Partition Manager offers a preview of proposed changes, which allows you to review and commit changes before they are applied, to visually make sure that you are doing the right thing with your disk, and it helps to know if we are really balancing the partitions on the disk correctly hard where we work.