With your external hard drive plugged into your Mac, access “Disk Utility.”.

This is ideal if you use a Mac and PC and want to transfer files between both operating systems via your external hard drive. Once your drive has been formatted (see the steps above), you can partition it into two formats. It will also help protect your drive if it’s infected with malware since it would be contained in one partition section. A partition offers dedicated space for a bootable backup of your OS or your Time Machine backup files. How to Partition an External Hard Drive on a Macīy partitioning your external hard drive, you can have separate drives for Mac, PC, and other operating systems.

Now select the “Erase” button and wait a few minutes as your hard drive formats.

At the “Scheme” option, choose “GUID Partition Map.”.

To use the drive with both Mac and Windows, select “ExFAT.”.

For compatibility between newer and older Macs, choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled).”.

For a Solid-State Drive, choose “APFS (Apple File System).” This option might not be available if you haven’t formatted the drive before, so choose another one, then reformat it into APFS if needed.

Add a name for your hard drive, then set its format:.

At the top of the pop-up window, select “Erase.” Then proceed to fill in your external hard drive details.

To be sure you’ve set the top level, click the right-pointing arrow on the left of the drive icon. Be sure not to select your external drive’s lower level, as this will cause formatting problems.

Click on the first level of your external drive.

In the pop-up on the left, your external hard drive should appear in the list under your Mac’s internal drive, under the “External” heading.

Choose “Utilities” then “Disk Utility.”.

From the “Finder” window, select the “Applications” folder from the left pane.

Select the “General” tab, then check that the “External Drive” checkbox is checked.

If it doesn’t, try opening “Finder.” Then choose “Preferences.”

Once connected, a drive icon should appear on your desktop.

Plug your external hard drive into your Mac. If you’re using a MacBook to format the drive, ensure it’s either fully charged or connected to a power supply to ensure it doesn’t turn off in the middle of the process.

Mac os format hard drive