how to format wd elements 2t hard drive for mac

The other one, for Time Machine backups, will be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.įrom the drop-down below Partition Layout, select the number of partitions you want. How to Create Partitions Im planning on using my hard drive for both Time Machine backups and to carry media files around. In a couple of seconds, youll have an OS X ready hard drive to go. How to Re-Format the External Hard Drive First, connect the external hard drive, bring up Spotlight Search by using the keyboard shortcut Cmd Space and type in Disk Utility. Plus you cant make partitions bigger than 2 TB or move files larger than 4 GB around. If youre like me who also needs to use at least a part of the hard drive from Windows PCs, youll need to choose MS-DOS (FAT) format. If youre only going to use the external hard drive with Macs or you want to use it for Time Machine backups, format it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you experience the same issue, your only recourse is to reformat it in one of two formats. Why You Need to Re-Format the External Hard Drive When I first got the hard drive, I wasnt able to copy anything over to it (but I was able to copy from it).ĭisk Utility showed that it was formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) but Im pretty sure it would have been NTFS instead. If youre only going to be using the hard drive on a Mac, I recommend you stick with Journaled. These hard drives are customized to run well on Windows (as youd expect), and they dont run well with OS X.

How to format wd elements 2t hard drive for mac