For example, keep a backup on your local devices, and store backup copies with a cloud storage provider as well. The disk drive contained in your gdrive mobile usb device is a. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing. With my previous laptops pcs, ive always stored my data on an external hard drive. How to format a hard drive for mac that would be sold to another person. This will ensure that you do not lose the data during the fixing process. Is there a way to completely format or erase the data from hard drive so it cannot be recovered by another user. The most recommended tool to change the format of external hard drive without data loss is by using systools ntfs fromatted hard drive data recovery software. One day though, when i plugged in the hard drive to my computer and i tried to open the hard drive itself nothing happened. Bonus tip data recovery from formatted hard drive on mac.
Your external hard drive may not have been recognized or was not given access to the hard disk. How do i reformat a mac hd to ntfs for use with windows 8. The incompatibility of the file system is the main cause of the error external hard drive read only on mac. In some cases, its possible to convert your drive without losing fileslike converting a hard drive. Lacie rugged secure user manual optional formatting and. Step 1 connect the external hard drive you want to format to your mac, then start the disk utility app that you can find under applications utilities. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
Read about it and found that id have to reformat it in mac os extended journaled. I hope you enjoyed my article on how to make an external hard drive compatible with mac and pc without reformatting. Connect the hard drive to a windows pc and use a reliable antivirusmalware tool to scan the drive or the system. I know how to re format it by going through disc utility etc.
This file system usually is used in internal hard drive. Make sure to back up your files before getting started. I used it for 2 years and everything worked out perfectly. If you dont want to worry about losing all your data on the chance your external hard drive becomes corrupted, you should keep multiple backups of the data in different places. Provide a name and a format to format the drive, and then. After youve determined the level at which you want to erase your computer, click erase. How to format a macbook pro without losing your data.
Ntfs new technology file system was released in 1993 and it breaks the 4 gb file size limitation and 32 gb partition restriction of fat32. Whether you go the software or hardware route depends on your situation. Now, i have a new macbook pro and all my data is still on that external hd. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your pc mac, or to cloud storage service. Sometimes it happens that your hard drive gets corrupted or attacked by a virus and you dont have any backup or copy files dont lose hope you can reformat it without losing its files. Type the name of the volume you want to convert, and then press enter. Step 1 open finder, applications, then go to utilities and disk utility. Safe method to fix corrupted hard drive without formatting losing data. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Hard drive to go between mac and pc without deleting. However, the new machine cannot read the disk and keeps prompting me to reformat it. To format an external hard drive for mac with time machine, you must follow the steps below. Data recovery from an external disk with a damaged file system. Follow the steps given below to reformat the external hard drive on mac without losing data.
Can you reformat it without losing all of your data. If you do a full format of your drive, you will lose all your data. Click fix drive to fixformat raw drive to ntfs without losing data. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. Lacie is not responsible for any data lost due to formatting, partitioning or using a lacie.
But get no access to use the data on my external hard drive. It is possible to reformat the drive and keep your files by formatting your drive and then using a data recovery tool to restore your information. Save everything in an external hard drive or in the cloud if you have an online drive. In this article, i will show you how to reformat external hard drive without losing data. How to format a drive without deleting files using free space. If you buy an external drive such as one of our recommended desktop hard drives, portable hard drives, or usb 3. M3 data recovery uses rebuildrepair file system method. Any loss, corruption or destruction of data while using a gtechnology drive is the sole. How to repair corrupted hard disk without formatting.
The fat or file allocation table is quite possibly the most widelysupported disk format in existence today. Or if you wish to be able to transfer back and forth pc to mac or mac to pc, select the fat32 format. However, if you want to convert ntfs to exfat to make external hard drive compatible with mac and pc, 3 steps are required. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Besides, if you get your data lost during the problemsolving process, you can retrieve. There are times where your external hard drive become corrupted and you need to reformat it. Alternatively, you can choose to use thirdparty software and apps that not only allow you to read hfs and apfs file systems, but also allow you to understand how to convert your mac drive to windows without losing data. By this way, you can easily format an external hard drive for mac and pc without losing any data.
If you try them yourself, it might cause damage or irreparable loss. How to fix corrupted externalinternal hard drive without. Just please always remember that formatting your computer will erase mac hard drive to wipe out all of the data stored in it. I have a mac and an external hard drive that includes some important family files. Reformatting the external hard drive on mac is a bit distinct because it doesnt have the choice to format quickly, but with a different name, it still has the same choice. How to fix corrupted externalinternal hard drive without losing data.
Newer macbooks dont have a traditional hard disk drive. This can get tedious, depending on how much data you need to move. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. How to recover data and files from an external disk with a damaged file system. Methods to recover read only external hard drive on mac without. Click on the erase tab, choose your external hard drive and select mac os extended journaled and then click erase then simply drag and drop your data onto your newly formatted disk. Sometimes, viruses and malware can cause such errors. It is fairly simple to convert fat32 to exfat for external drive like usb flash drive and the following part will present three methods for you to format external drive to exfat on windows 1087 in length. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive.
How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Use this format if you intend to use the drive for. External hard drive compatible with mac and pc without. Reformatting external hard drive without apple community. Either way there is a solution to having an existing external hard drive for mac and pc. Its a direct continuation of the original dos format used on floppy diskettes and hard drives. If raw drive cannot be fixed, please go to solution 2 to recover lost data from raw drive and then reformat raw drive to ntfs.
Reformat the external hard drive if your external hard drive is readonly on your mac due to its ntfs file system, you can easily fix it by reformatting the device to a maccompatible format with the builtin disk utility on mac. R studio can identify and analyze the contents of the damaged disk without. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your. Connect the external hard drive with your mac via usb cable and wait for it to get recognized. Tutorial to repair external hard drive that is corrupted, formatted, unmountable, unreadable, inaccessible, not working, not shown up on mac. After you format it, you can use the professional mac hard drive recovery. Converting ntfs, fat32 or exfat usb flash drive, external drive without losing data. How to reformat my hard drive using my macbook air quora. How to convert fat32 to exfat without losing data on.
Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. Since the mac can read the old drive, an external drive formatted mac os extended could be attached as well. Losing out data is the saddest thing that can happen to anyone. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Steps to repair corrupted hard disk without formatting. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your data. The operating system will proceed with the erasing process. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Ntfs and exfat are two kinds of file system that regulates how data is stored in a storage device such as usb flash drive, external hdd and sd card. They are great for backing up data, creating extra storage space on your computer and transferring large amounts of data between two or more computers.
How to reformat an external hard drive without losing your data on mac. Ntfs is a file system that is optimal for windowsbased computer. If you find your external hard drive is ntfs format, thats what the cause is. Because you need to reformat the external hard drive to make it compatible with your mac computer, you might end up losing all the files saved inside this drive. Follow these steps to repair corrupt hard disk without formatting, and get back the data. How to format raw drive to ntfs without losing any data.
The package also includes support for ogg vorbis, speex, theora, and webm. If the data recovery program doesnt give you the option of saving your files, you might try booting to a live linux environment, such as mint, and recovering your data via flash drive or optical media, then formatting the drive through windows. Format a mac internal or external hard drive, even a mac ssd easily and without the feat of data loss. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. If the hard drive has important files, you will need to recover these files before proceeding to fix the external hard drive read only mac problem. Is it possible to format usb flash drive without losing data. First of all, as i said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. Before formatting, back up the mac startup drive to an external storage medium to ensure that no data is lost in case of unexpected events. How to remove read only on mac external hard drive without formatting. It includes files of different storage spaces like your computers hard drive, recycle bin, desktop, external drives or devices, and even the crashed computer. Then, you can share external hard drive between mac and pc.
Lets know how to reformat your external hard drive. Three ways to convert drive from fat32 to exfat without losing data. You would have to copy the data on your hard drive to your mac, then reformat it with the disk utility application. Format usb flash drive these steps dont need many explanations. Download and launch recoverit mac data recovery on your computer to recover files lost during raw disk formatting. The only free application that will let you do this we are aware of is hfsexplorer, which uses java and is really only suitable for the odd file transfer fat32 the most compatible option. This volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Recover lost data from external hard drive before repairing it to avoid data loss. The software is nondestructive and will neither modify the original data nor damage the drive. How to format external hard drive mac 2 simple methods. Id be leery of formatting without losing data sounds like an oxymoron. Reformatting is a destructive process, so if you want the drive in a different format such as mac os extended you will need to copy the files off to another location temporarily and then bring them back once the drive is reformatted. How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing data. It is a complete solution to change the file formats from one to another, hence a user does not require to.
When your external hard drive says read only, accessing data from it can be difficult. Step 2 on the left side of the utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. Hi, i am trying to salvage data from a dead laptop by taking the hd and, from an external enclusure, using it as an external hd. Get a solution to reformat an external hard drive without.
I have a seagate freeagent goflex external hard drive in the ntfs format with about 400gb data on it. Now, the process for wiping your solid state drive is the. Know how to change format of external hard drive without. How to format an external hard drive from a mac to windows.
So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both oss then you need to reformat it with fat32 or exfat. Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with apple macos, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want. How to fixformat raw drive to ntfs without losing data. Follow the steps above to learn how to how to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing data in minutes. Im usually change hard drives to a bigger capacity ones and sold the old ones to others. How to reformat to mac without losing files external. However, reformatting will erase all the files on this drive. How to repair external hard drive on mac without losing data. Formatting a hard drive is the best way to start from scratch on a. Follow the steps below without losing information to reformat the external hard drive on mac. They are very different than normal drives and can erase important data on a raw partition just by. Remember, once the data is gone, theres no way to recover it.
How to format a drive without deleting files using free. External usb hard drives are lightweight, portable and inexpensive. Recover lost data from external hard drive before repairing it to avoid data. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing data. Many people store their valuable data on the external hard drive to keep it safe. How to reformat an external hard drive without losing everything. Yes, it is possible to format the removable disk without losing data. Rightclick on the icon for your external drive on mac desktop, then select get info. Open disk utility in macos recovery mode to format a startup disk on mac, you need to open disk utility in macos recovery mode, as follows. Recover lost data from raw drive and then reformat raw drive to ntfs. Thankfully there is a workaround to recover your data.