How To Format New Hard Drive For Mac

1. How To Format New Seagate Hard Drive For Mac
2. How To Format New Hard Drive For Macbook

If you want to transfer files from a Mac to Windows PC and vice versa using an external portable hard drive then you have to have the external drive formatted in a file system both OS's can read and write too. Your choice is ms-dos (aka fat32) or exfat and I go over the difference in the video.

Note: most external drives you buy will automatically be formatted in NTFS which is a Windows file system. Macs can only read but not write to a ntfs file system. So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both OS's then you need to reformat it with fat32 or exfat. Please like, sub, share if you find this video helpful! FACEBOOK: INSTAGRAM: TWITTER: MY WEBSITE.

Step 1, Plug your hard drive into your computer. Insert the drive's USB cable into one of the thin, rectangular slots in your computer's casing. If you're using a desktop computer, USB ports are typically in either the front or the back of the computer's CPU box.Step 2, Open Start. Click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen, or press ⊞ Win on your keyboard.Step 3, Open File Explorer. Click the file-shaped icon in the lower-left side of the Start window. Installing a SATA Drive as a Storage Unit - 10.11. Physically install the drive into the Mac. ​Turn the Mac on. Select Applications. Select Utilities. Select Disk Utility. Select the Erase tab. Verify that the correct hard drive is selected in the left column. Enter Volume information (Name, Format, and Scheme). Before you can access a new or formatted drive in your operating system, you need to initialize it first and then create a partition on the drive. A partition defines.

Nigel, My objective is to set up OSX using the three OS Install CD's. So I got the Firewire cable, connected to the iBook on which I want to setup OSX holding down the 'T' key as I turn the computer on and all is well as the Firewire logo appears. I then insert the first Install CD in the target machine, a window appears on my host machine with the Install logo to click on but i stop. At this point I'm unsure what machine will get the installation, the host or the target? Too scared to ruin my host drive, I give up. Nigel, My objective is to set up OSX using the three OS Install CD's.

How To Format New Seagate Hard Drive For Mac

So I got the Firewire cable, connected to the iBook on which I want to setup OSX holding down the 'T' key as I turn the computer on and all is well as the Firewire logo appears. I then insert the first Install CD in the target machine, a window appears on my host machine with the Install logo to click on but i stop. At this point I'm unsure what machine will get the installation, the host or the target? Too scared to ruin my host drive, I give up.

Nigel, Thanks again for your help but it didn't work. The Install Disks I have are copies of the original CD's and may not be from the computer on which I want to reinstall the OS (I've had several g4's). I've tried the other set of original disks, probably from one of my other G4's and that didn't work either. What actually stopped the install process - it may not be the only reason although most certainly it was the first one - was the requirement to restart the computer; i could find no way to bypass this. Could there be a scheme Apple developed to prevent piracy that would work against me as a rightful owner? Nigel, Thanks again for your help but it didn't work. The Install Disks I have are copies of the original CD's and may not be from the computer on which I want to reinstall the OS (I've had several g4's).

I've tried the other set of original disks, probably from one of my other G4's and that didn't work either. What actually stopped the install process - it may not be the only reason although most certainly it was the first one - was the requirement to restart the computer; i could find no way to bypass this. Could there be a scheme Apple developed to prevent piracy that would work against me as a rightful owner? Click to expand.The CD really should boot. To do the installation using another Mac, put your iBook into target disk mode (command-T when booting), connect the two machines using a firewire cable, and put the OS X install disk into the other machine and boot it up.

Your iBook will look like a drive on the other machine. Keep in mind that you may need a generic OS X install disc to do this or a sufficiently similar Mac, because your iBook media may not boot all other Macs. But the CD really should boot. Is it a 10.4 cd? You mentioned that you were using 10.4. If your original media was 10.3, don't use it and install from the 10.4 cd instead.

It is more likely to be compatible with your hardware. Make sure you hold the C key to boot from cd. If none of the CDs boot, then you have a hardware problem. There are three possible problems: 1) The computer doesn't recognize the drive for some voodoo reason, like old settings stored in the PRAM.

How To Format New Hard Drive For Macbook

Flash the PRAM (command-option-p-r on boot - wait for two chimes), etc, etc. See for a list of voodoo incantations. 2) The computer doesn't recognize the drive for a good reason, like a loose cable. This is a pain to check. Keep in mind, anything could be loose.

If you've added ram, try reseating the ram chip first before you rip the computer apart. Also look for metal touching the motherboard shorting something out. There are a lot of things to double check. Dominicks blog. 3) The computer doesn't recognize the drive because it is broken. Download a Linux CD and boot it up to check. For example, the Universal PPC 32-bit install cd here: That's about all I can suggest. Roman, Because I'm no longer able to see the target drive when using the Disk Utility software, I reopened the target computer, put back the old 30Gig HD and discovered that it works fine, although on its last leg.

I flashed the pram, tried a different cable, neither helped. Holding the Command key and pressing down the 'T' key doesn't bring up the Firewire logo, only the 'T' key by itself. Since the 30Gig HD works when inserted, then it's conceivable, although improbable, that the new 40Gig HD just went bad. Click to expand.Very strange. If you can, take the drive back and exchange it for another one. I can recommend the Hitachi Travelstar, which has worked very well for me.

Another tip: if you have a large number of files over 20MB, you should invest in a disk defragmenting program, such as iDefrag. OS X won't defrag files over 20MB, and it doesn't defragment free space at all. If you have a lot of large files (music, videos, podcasts, very large images) they are all likely to be fragmented, and the fragmenting of free space will make this problem much worse over time. I'm just starting to notice this with my iBook now which is 60% full (I frequently re-encode 200MB mp3s). Roman and everyone, I'd like to share the resolution for my Firewire problems for everyone's benefit.

Objective: Install new hard drive and operating system on my target G4 using another G4 as the host Tools: Use Firewire cable, host machine is G4 with OS Version 10.4.7, will install OS 10.3.9 on target machine using copies of three original install CD's supplied by Apple. Disk Warrior bootable CD Problems: Firewire doesn't see the drive on target machine, zapped pram, reset firmware, changed cable (made sure cable was not coiled too neatly to avoid induction that could interfere, a guess on my part), nothing worked. Checked the new drive with DiskWarrior to make sure it was functional, and it was. After DiskWarrior actually corrected some broken nodes and permissions, I knew the drive was fine and tried again to connect with Firewire. Nothing worked. Solution: I used an older machine an iMac with OS 10.2.8, attached the Firewire cable, immediately saw the drive on the target machine (after depressing the 'T' key on the target machine before restarting it), the host machine displayed all the right information windows, proceeded with the installation which was complete in 30 minutes or so, at the end of which my target machine was in good order.

One should remember that the host machine impersonates the target machine and all actions take place on the host machine - inherently the concept of a target machine is just to be that - the host machine will go through restarts after each install disk which is normal. Thank you everyone for help.