Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Disk Utility

Summary :

• Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Disk Utility Windows 7
• Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Disk Utility Recovery

If you connect a drive formatted in Mac to a Windows PC, you'll be prompted to format it before use. That is to say, you are not allowed to view anything saved on it before formatting. But the question is: if you click Format disk, your data will be ruined. This post from MiniTool will introduce several useful ways to help you with that; please read carefully.

First, partition the drive using Disk Utility with macOS, and (using our walkthrough below) format one part as HFS+ and the other as FAT32; then, plug the drive into Windows and reformat the FAT32. Oct 30, 2020 AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a great free partition format tool that allows you to format external hard drive to Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, etc. It supports Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP, both 32 and 64 bit. It is very easy to use that every one can use it to format partition alone.

Can You Read Mac Drive on Windows

Many people doubt that whether they can read Mac drive on Windows. Some took action: they removed the drive from Mac and connected it to a Windows PC properly. But after connecting the Mac-formatted drive to Windows, a prompt window will pop up automatically on the screen, saying that they need to format the disk before use.

Don't Format the Drive

You should click Cancel instead of Format disk when seeing this prompt. Why? That is simply because the formatting action will damage your data saved on that drive. Is there any other way to read a Mac-formatted drive on Windows? Sure, it is; some effective ways used by other users will be shown to you later on this page.

What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do

Some users said they clicked on the Format disk button by mistake when seeing the prompt window mentioned above; they were wondering if there's any way to help them recover a formatted hard drive. Luckily, the answer is yes.

What does disk formatting mean?

Formatting a hard disk/drive refers to delete all the file & folders save on a drive and set a certain file system for it. The formatting action is performed to prepare a data storage device (including hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, and SD card) for initial use. Two of the most obvious results of formatting a hard disk are: deleting data and changing file system.

Besides, there are also other benefits of disk formatting:

• Get more space on disk.
• Solve disk problems caused by soft failure.
• Improve disk/system performance greatly.
• And so on.

Do you know how to improve Windows 10 performance effectively?

It's necessary to improve Windows 10 performance effectively since various problems will occur inevitably on a system that has been used for a long time.

Recover Formatted Hard Drive

The first and the most important thing to do after formatting a hard drive is to recover precious data from hard drive. MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be a good data recovery assistant: it's clean, safe, and professional. Please free download the trial edition to experience this data recovery tool first before you decide to buy it; after that, double click on the setup program to finish installing the software on your Windows computer, on which the Mac hard drives are formatted.

Follow this guide to recover data from Mac formatted external hard drives:

1. Click Start now at the end of installation to launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. You can also open it by double clicking on the software icon.
2. Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
3. Select Hard Disk Drive from the pane on your left hand side.
4. Choose the formatted Mac drive from the pane on your right hand side.
5. Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button at the bottom right corner.
6. The full scan will be started at once; more and more files and folders will be found during the scan. Please make sure the Mac hard drive is always connected to your computer.
7. Browse the found items carefully to decide which files are needed and which are not; add a checkmark into the square box in from of all the files you want to recover. If you can't confirm, go to view the content before recovery by clicking Preview.
8. Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
9. Select a storage path in the pop-up window to store the files waiting to be recovered; please make sure it has enough free space left. (You shouldn't select the original Mac-formatted drive as the storage location in order to avoid secondary damage.)
10. Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
11. Then, wait until all the files saved on Mac hard drive have been recovered successfully to appointed place. A prompt window will show up to inform you of the recovery result.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a great tool for recovering formatted SD card or broken/corrupted USB stick. The recovery steps are basically the same expect that you should select Removable Disk Drive from the left sidebar as mentioned in step 3.

After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you've got back all the files you need.

Windows 10 Read Mac Drive

Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?

A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I'll introduce some of the useful software to you one by one in this part; please choose a proper hard drive reader yourself.

Choice 1: HFSExplorer

HFSExplorer is completely free; it's a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.

What does HFSExplorer allow you to do?

• Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
• Check the volume related information.
• Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
• Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
• Create disk images from the volume on Mac.

The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.

Attention!

You need to install Java first if you don't have it on your PC since it's required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).

HFSExplorer: Launch error

After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you've got back all the files you need.

Windows 10 Read Mac Drive

Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?

A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I'll introduce some of the useful software to you one by one in this part; please choose a proper hard drive reader yourself.

Choice 1: HFSExplorer

HFSExplorer is completely free; it's a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.

What does HFSExplorer allow you to do?

• Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
• Check the volume related information.
• Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
• Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
• Create disk images from the volume on Mac.

The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.

Attention!

You need to install Java first if you don't have it on your PC since it's required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).

HFSExplorer: Launch error

No Java runtime environment found. HFSExplorer cannot function without Java.

Press 'OK' to open up http://www.java.com where you can download a Java runtime environment for your system.

Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Disk Utility Windows 7

You should just click OK as prompted to download & install proper runtime environment when seeing the window above.

How to use HFSExplorer to read Mac hard drive on Windows:

1. Connect the Mac-formatted external hard drive to the Windows computer properly.
2. Launch HFSExplorer as administrator on your computer.
3. Select File from the menu bar at the top of the opening window.
4. Choose Load file system from device from the submenu (you can also press Ctrl + L directly).
5. Click on the Autodetect button to automatically detects HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions on your system (you can also Select a device or Specify device name manually).
6. Pick out the files and folders you want to view and click Extract.
7. Choose a folder as the destination place to store the items selected in the previous step (they'll be copied immediately).
8. Expand the target folder to read files on your Windows PC.

If the connected external hard drive is not showing up on PC, you can't detect it in step 5. You must make it appear in Windows first.

Is there any other hard drive reader for Windows? Of course, yes; please move on.

Choice 2: Apple HFS+ Drivers

Another way to access HFS + files in Windows 10 for free is installing Apple HFS + drivers.

Steps to read Mac drives on PC with Apple HFS + drivers:

First, you should make sure you don't have Paragon or MacDrive (the hard drive readers I will talk about later) on your Windows computer. If you do, please remove them now.

Second, you should download the correct Windows driver package to your local drive.

Third, you should configure your Windows as follow.

1. Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
2. Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
3. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
4. Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
5. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
6. Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
7. Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
8. Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
9. Restart your computer to make changes take effect.

Fourth, you should connect the Mac-formatted drive to your PC -> open File Explorer (also called Windows Explorer) -> locate that drive under This PC -> access files you want.

Choice 3: HFS+ for Windows

Though the Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a paid hard driver reader, you'll love it after using.

What can Paragon HFS+ for Windows do for you?

• The speed is fast and the performance is stable.
• The Mac file systems are integrated into Windows File Explorer.
• It provides full read and write access to Mac drives formatted with HFS, HFS +, and HFSX (just like other drives in Windows).
• It allows Windows programs to read from or write to the Mac-formatted drive on Windows.
• There are additional features that worth the cost.

How much does it cost?

The Paragon HFS+ for Windows is sold on the official website for $19.95 with a single seat license; $49.95 with one license worked on 3 PCs.

If you don't want to spend money in reading Mac drive on Windows, you should download the trial edition; it is free for use for 10 days. You can access, copy files from or to the Mac drive during this period; it's enough.

Choice 4: MacDrive

If your Mac drive is formatted with APFS (Apple File System), you won't be able to read Mac hard drive on Windows because there are no free apps designed for it. But you have many choices of paid applications to access & edit Mac drive files on Windows; MacDrive is a popular one designed by Mediafour.

Merits of MacDrive:

• It is used to help users read data from and write data to Mac disks from Windows directly.
• You can read both APFS and HFS+ drives in File Explorer.
• It allows you to create and partition Mac disks on your Windows.
• A graphical interface is offered for Mac-formatted drives verification, format, and repair.
• It's a trusted solution which can date back to 1996.

The only drawback of MacDrive seems to be the selling price is higher than some similar tools. You need to pay $49.99 for the Standard version or $69.99 for the Pro version.

Is it worth the price? Yes, if you have such needs; it also includes unique features like support for Mac-formatted RAID disks.

Choice 5: Paragon APFS for Windows

Paragon also designed an APFS for Windows app for reading APFS Mac drive on Windows; it is considered as one of the main competitors of MacDrive.

Features of Paragon APFS for Windows:

• It provides read and write access to Mac drives formatted with APFS.
• It also allows you to access and edit compressed and cloned files (you can only access the encrypted volumes without making any changes).
• It gives support to auto-mounting at start-up; the partition tools of MacDrive are not included in this app.

The biggest disadvantage of Paragon APFS for Windows when compared to MacDrive is the HFS+ support. The biggest advantage of Paragon APFS for Windows over MacDrive is the price – it costs only $49.95 for one license worked on 3 PCs.

Of course, there are many other tools available for you to read Mac drives on Windows (10/8/7, etc.).

Bonus Tip

You can format your Mac hard drive to exFAT, which supports both Windows and Mac OS X. In this way, you can get full read and write access to exFAT drives on Windows without any additional third-party software.

The only thing you need to worry is that the data on Mac drives will be removed. So you need to turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery as mentioned in part 1 to recover the files you need after formatting.

How to format a hard drive? Basically, there are three ways.

• Right click on the drive in File Explorer -> choose Format.
• OpenDisk Management -> right click on the target drive -> choose Format.
• Format Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard – a professional disk manager.

Final Thoughts

Though you can't access a Mac-formatted drive on a Windows computer directly, there are useful ways and tools to help you read Mac drive on Windows easily. Please just follow the steps mentioned above and choose the tool depending on your needs.

Summary : The blog post shares a few safe methods to format your Mac hard drive in the desired file system format, without the risk of any data loss. Download the free-to-try Mac data recovery software to recover your erased hard drive data.

Table of Content

Format External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc Disk Utility Recovery

An internal or external Mac storage drive requires compatible files system format to be accessible in macOS. Different file system formats exist for different operating systems. For instance, you need:

• APFSformat for macOS Big Sur 11, Catalina 10.15, or Mojave 10.14
• Mac OS Extended format for macOS Sierra 10.12 or earlier
• MS-DOS (FAT) or exFAT format to make your external storage drive cross-compatible with both macOS and Windows

A new Mac with its built-in solid-state drive or hard drive comes pre-formatted with a file system that contains the macOS. You may even need to manually format your internal or external Mac storage drive or volume in the compatible file system.Formatting is helpful for:

• Preparing the startup disk to reinstall macOS
• Resolving corruption or unreadable error of the storage drive
• Changing the file system format for cross-compatibility
• Perfecting the storage drive in case Disk Utility fails to repair it

But storage drive formatting involves certain risks. When your Mac storage drive has stored data on it, and you accidentally erase the drive in a new file system format, macOS removes all references to the data. So, you end up losing your data.

Also, when you connect a corrupt or unreadable external storage drive to your Mac, macOS will prompt you to initialize the disk. DO NOT click the Initialize button unless it's a new drive or you have recovered data from it. The next section discusses the correct way to format your Mac storage drive without data loss.

1. Back Up Your Mac Hard Drive before Formatting

Before erasing your Mac hard drive be it internal or external, you must back up the drive to ensure zero data loss. For an external or non-boot volume, copy all your valuable files and folders, and paste them to another external storage device. And, for Macintosh HD, the startup disk, you can use Time Machine to back up your macOS as well as its stored data. If you haven't set up your Time Machine backup drive, you can set up the drive now.

Read More: How to Set Up Time Machine on Mac

2. Format the Startup Disk in macOS Recovery Mode

If you want to reinstall macOS or upgrade your macOS, you need to format your Macintosh HD startup disk. But you can't format the startup disk while your macOS is running. So, you need to boot your Mac in macOS Recovery mode to access the startup disk and erase it using Disk Utility. Once you've backed up your Macintosh HD by using Time Machine, perform the following steps to format your startup disk and reinstall macOS:

1- Restart your Mac and immediately press and hold Command + R keys. Release the keys once you see the Apple logo or spinning globe.

2- In the macOS Utilities window, click Disk Utility, and then click Continue. In the Disk Utility window, choose View > Show All Devices.

3- From the left panel, select Macintosh HD and click the Erase tab. Provide the Name, Format, and Scheme in the respective field, then click Erase.

4- Once Disk Utility formats the drive with a compatible file system, quit the app.

5- Connect your Time Machine backup drive to your Mac. From macOS Utilities, select Restore from Time Machine Backup, and click Continue. Perform onscreen instructions to reinstall macOS and stored data.

6– Alternatively, from macOS Utilities, select Reinstall macOS to install a fresh copy of macOS from recovery drive or cloud. Perform the steps and restore data from backup.

3. Format a Mac External Hard Drive Using Terminal

Automatic screenshot mac. To format Mac external storage drive or non-boot volume, you can open Disk Utility directly from Desktop and perform the erase operation. But sometimes Disk Utility throws an error while erasing an external storage drive. In that case, you can format the external drive on Mac by using Terminal, as described below:

1. Press Command + Space Bar to open Spotlight. Type ‘terminal' and hit Return to launch the Terminal application on your macOS.
2. In the Terminal window, type diskutil list. Note the name and identifier of the external storage drive. Ensure you have backed up all the data from the external drive.
3. Type diskutil eraseDisk FS DN D#. Here, replace the FS with the required file system format, DN with the name of the drive, and D# with the drive's identifier.

When the process completes, Disk Utility erases the storage drive to the correct file system format. Now, you can restore the backed up data to the storage medium.

4. Recover Data Lost due to Accidental Formatting

Did you accidentally format a wrong hard drive on your macOS? Or erased the Mac external storage drive without backing it up in the first place?

Data loss can happen due to accidental formatting. And, Disk Utility doesn't provide any option to undo the format. But you can get back your formatted data from the Mac hard drive by using a Mac hard drive recovery software. Perform the following steps:

Download and install the *trial version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac on your Mac mini, MacBook, or iMac.

On the 'Select What To Recover' screen, let the default selection of Everything remain toggled on, and click Next.

On the 'Select Location' screen, select the formatted Mac hard drive, turn on Deep Scan, and click Scan.

Once the scan is over, preview all the recoverable files. Click Recover, specify the save location, and click Save. Navigate to the save location to check your recovered data.

*The trial version ofStellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac software can scan the media and show preview of recoverable files. To save the files, you need to activate the software. And why wait if the software has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Read More: How to Activate Stellar Data Recovery Professional on your Mac?

Conclusion

To format your Mac startup disk or external storage drive safely, you must back up the drive before erasing it with Disk Utility in a compatible file system format. In case Disk Utility fails to format the drive, use Terminal to perform the same task. But be careful while executing the Terminal commands, as any wrong operation can result in permanent data loss.

Also, when you've formatted your Mac hard drive or SSD accidentally without having any back-up, use Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac, a specialized data recovery software to salvage your lost data. The tool supports a variety of hard drive brands, USB types (Thunderbolt, 3.0, 2.0), and Fusion Drives.