For the longest time, when buying an external (or internal) hard drive to use as a backup, or spare drive, you needed to verify on the box that the drive would be “MacOS Compatible.” Those days are LONG gone, yet people still fall into the trap.
Any drive you buy on the market can be made Mac compatible (there are a few notable exceptions), by simply reformatting it.
These days, drives are sold with all kinds of bells and whistles (backup programs, push button backups, etc), but they will rarely compliment or improve what your Mac already has built-in. In fact when buying your next hard drive, jump-drive or backup drive, I’d recommend worrying about only two things:
- How big of a drive can you afford (always get the biggest, within reason)?
- How do you plan to connect the drive to your Mac (USB, FireWire 800, Thunderbolt, SATA or internally)?
Beyond that, simply try to find a reputable manufacturer. Seagate, Kingston, WesternDigital, HP and Iomega are just a few good choices.
This tutorial will apply to any size drive, connected in anyway.
In the example, I’m reformatting (often called initializing) a small Kingston jump drive that I purchased from Amazon.com
Often, when you get a new drive, it contains some installer CD or DVD, which you can discard, or set aside. These normally contain apps for Windows users and their Mac versions are usually terrible.
The tools baked right into your Mac will provide you with all the functionality that you need.
Attach the drive to your computer following the manufacturer’s instructions. When the drive loads and mounts on your desktop, launch the Mac Disk Utility:
Click on the “Spotlight” (magnifying glass) symbol in the upper left corner of your screen. Then begin to type “Disk Utility.” When you see the applications icon at the top of the listing, selected, press return to launch it.
You will see your new hard drive listed on the left in the source list. Click on the drive, there. Now, in the center panel, just below the window’s toolbar, click the “Erase Tab.”
You’ll see that this drive has been preformatted for Windows (MS-DOS FAT). From the “Format” option, select “Mac OS Extended (Journalled)” and then rename the drive as you see fit. I recommend avoiding spaces or symbols.
Below that, click “Erase.”
You will be prompted to verify that the contents of this drive will be wiped, but that’s ok since it’s new. If this isn’t a new drive, ensure that you aren’t erasing anything important.
The process only takes a few minutes, and once complete will re-appear on your desktop ready to use.
You can now quit the Disk Utility app.
If you are setting up this drive as a TimeMachine Backup, check out this tutorial for more help.
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