If you’re installing a new hard drive, or need to wipe your drive clean for that “fresh” feeling, you’ll end up formatting your drive.
- External Drive Format For Mac
- Hard Drive Formatter For Mac
- Western Digital Hard Drive Format Tool
- Format New Hard Drive Mac
Formatting will check the drive for errors, and prepare it for use. If a drive has data on it, formatting the drive will remove all of the pointers to your files.
Paragon Disk Wiper for Mac allows to create a bootable USB-flash drive or external hard drive that will help you to completely erase a whole hard disk, a separate partition or just clean free space. After booting your Mac with the bootable media you will be able to use Wipe Wizard to irreversibly.
Note: Formatting doesn’t securely erase the contents of a hard drive. With freely available and easy-to-use tools, anyone can successfully recover data from a formatted drive. See How to securely erase your hard drive for information on wiping your hard drive clean.
Formatting can take hours to complete, but it is a good option when you have a new or inherited drive that is not properly formatted, a drive overrun by malware or other software problems, or a drive in need of a fresh start before a Windows installation.
Traditional, magnetic-platter hard drives as well as solid-state drives can be formatted. Before you begin, be sure to back up important files on the disk before you format.
Use Disk Management
To partition and format your drive, you can use Windows’ built-in tool called Disk Management.
In Windows 7, click Start. Next, right-click Computer, then click Manage. The “Computer Management” window will open.
In the left pane, click Disk Management (under Storage).
In Windows 8, right-click the Windows button, and select Disk Management.
If your disk is not initialized (as is sometimes the case with brand-new drives), you’ll be prompted to initialize it. If your disk is 2TB or more in size, select GPT; otherwise, stick with MBR.
A list of all connected disk drives is displayed in the center. Unpartitioned drives appear with solid black bars and the label “Unallocated.” Partitioned drives appear with solid blue bars and a drive letter.
Partitioning your drive
To format an internal or external hard drive to use for backup or additional storage, the drive needs to be partitioned. Partitioning divides your drive into sections, but you can choose to simply have one partition (a single section encompassing the entire drive).
If your drive isn’t partitioned, follow these instructions to partition it. Otherwise, skip down to the next section.
Right-click the black bar or the unallocated white space below it and select New Simple Volume… Don’t be dissuaded by the word, “Volume.” It’s just another term for “partition”. Click Next.
To create a single, whole-drive partition, make sure the “Simple volume size in MB” value is the same as the “Maximum disk space in MB” value. Click Next.
Assign a drive letter of your choice. Click Next.
Select Format this volume. For File System, choose NTFS if you’ll be using the drive only with Windows machines. If you will be sharing the information on the drive with Macs, choose exFAT. Keep Allocation unit size at Default. Choose a name for the partition under Volume label. Do not select Perform a quick format or Enable file and folder compression. Click Next.
Confirm your selections and click Finish.
Formatting your partitions
Once your drive is partitioned, each partition will have to be formatted with a filesystem. Luckily, the Disk Management utility makes this really easy.
External Drive Format For Mac
Right-click the blue bar or the white space below it and select Format.
Choose a name for the partition under “Volume label.” For File System, choose NTFS if you’ll be using this drive only with Windows machines. Linux machines can read unencrypted NTFS partitions as well.
If you will be sharing the information on this drive with Macs, choose exFAT. Keep “Allocation unit size” at Default. Do not select Perform a quick format or Enable file and folder compression. Click OK.
Confirm your choices.
Formatting for a Fresh Windows Installation
If you are formatting your primary hard drive with the intention of reinstalling Windows or restoring your PC to its factory-fresh state, you’ll need the restore disc(s) that came with your computer. If your computer manufacturer did not include restore media or you’ve misplaced it, contact the manufacturer directly for a replacement. You may also be able to create your own restore disc(s) or reinstall Windows from a factory-created partition on your hard drive; consult your computer’s documentation for details.
Insert your Windows installation disc or restore disc into your disc drive and restart your computer. Boot your PC from the Windows disc. For instructions on booting to your recovery partition, review your system documentation.
Hard Drive Formatter For Mac
If you are using a manufacturer’s factory restore disc or hard-drive recovery partition, follow the prompts to initiate the restoration process. Unless stated otherwise, your drive’s primary partition will be formatted and returned to its factory-fresh state.
If you are using a Windows 7 installation disc, select your language, accept the Windows license terms, and select Custom (advanced) when prompted.
Delete any partitions you want to remove by selecting them, clicking Drive options (advanced), and clicking Delete. Create new partitions by selecting unallocated space, clicking Drive options (advanced), and clicking New.
Select Format after creating your partition(s). After formatting is complete, click Next to start the Windows installation. Windows may prompt you to accept the creation of a small, system-reserved partition—accept it.
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Formatting hard drives and external hard drives is usually a fairly straightforward process. The two most popular operating systems, Windows and Mac OS both have formatting utilities built-in, which makes formatting external drives even more convenient. However, with all of the different drive manufacturers, interfaces and other compatibility and formatting issues that hard drives can have, sometimes the best choice is to use specialty formatting apps and utilities.
The Windows Disk Management function, pictured above, allows Windows users to simply format and partition external drives. However, there are times when it simply doesn’t work very well. For example, the drive that you are trying to select for formatting may not be recognized by the utility, or it may be greyed out and not clickable.
If you are unable to get a hard drive formatted or partitioned correctly using the built-in apps that are offered by Microsoft and Apple, then your next step may be to try and format the drive directly, using command line. If you’re comfortable using command line, then you may want to check out our guide on how to format external hard drives to FAT32.
Western Digital Hard Drive Format Tool
Additionally, your computer may not recognize the external hard drive whatsoever. If this is happening, this guide may be useful.
In those cases where a hard drive is simply not formatting, partitioning, etc., you may want to consider using a specialty hard drive formatting utility, which will often times make things simpler. In many cases, these utilities are often more effective than the built-in options that Windows and OS X offer as well.
EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition
If you need to manage partitions, copy partitions or even create boot disks, EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition is an excellent utility that can handle all of that and more.
Currently one of the highest ranked hard drive utilities on many websites, this lightweight Windows app is a bit more intuitive than the built-in Windows Disk Management function, offering several additional options and features.
You can resize or move partitions, merge partitions, check partitions, wipe partitions, format partitions and change the label. If you need to perform some more advanced tasks like convert the partition or clone it, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version.
MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is a freeware disk partitioning and formatting utility that is simple to use and effective. The interface is quite straightforward and the software is excellent at making complex formatting options simple.
![Hard Hard](/uploads/1/2/6/8/126879412/651128809.png)
It supports Windows 10, just about all file system formats, UEFI and EFI boot, MBR and GPT disks, RAID storage, and SSDs. You can use it to extend your system partition, migrate your OS from a standard HDD to a SSD, convert file system, and lots more.
Paragon Partition Manager Free
Paragon Partition Manager free is another great little utility that supports Windows 10 and has a lot of features. It’s four basic functions: backup and recovery, partition manager, disk wiper and drive copy.
What I like about Paragon is that the each function in the software has its own wizard. For those who are uncomfortable with making these kinds of changes, the software does a good job of easing you through the process. They also have a paid version that supports more features and works on bigger drives.
Format New Hard Drive Mac
AOMEI Partition Assistant
The last recommended partition manager is AOMEI Partition Assistant. It’s pretty much got all the same features as the other programs mentioned above and it also has a freeware version.
![Hard Hard](https://datarecovery.wondershare.com/images/article/2016/05/easeus-to-recover-formatted-files-from-usb.jpg)
It’s also regularly updated and supports Windows 10. Some options will be available in the free version while others will require the paid version. This is true for all of the programs mentioned above. If you only need to perform a one-time task and one program doesn’t work for you, I suggest trying another one before making any purchase.
HP Disk Storage Format Utility
While the other software on this list focus specifically on external hard drive formatting, the HP Disk Storage Formatter specializes in USB devices such as flash drives. This ultra simple formatting utility has just a few options, but it is effective and has received some great reviews.
Overall, the formatting utilities that are offered by Windows and OS X will format hard drives, but there may be cases when they will fail to format a hard drive correctly. The next option is to use command line, but that’s more complex and not for everyone. Using the variety of hard drive formatting and partitioning utilities featured in this post, you should have no problems getting hard drives or even USB flash drives formatted correctly. Enjoy!