Click on the show all disks button and youll see an icon for the different disks and partitions on the mac. Not enough space to partition when formatting in mac osx. For instructions on how to format a drive in mac os 10. The answer is yes, you can install yosemite onto an.
In this video i cover how to format internal and external hard drives, solid state drives, thumb drives, and sd cards with disk utility in mac os x. Two such programs are paragon ntfs for mac and tuxera ntfs for mac. According to testing, the ssd upgrade makes mac faster, in the 20 seconds versus 38 seconds boot up times. What disk utility looks like in lion through yosemite. You need an empty external hard drive thats going to be used for your macbook only. For a hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a pc and mac. The computer with the ssd upgrade is 20% faster and takes less than half the time to copy a file. Some of them find difficult to perform regular disk management activities on apple hard disk drives including partitioning the. Formatting an external drive on your mac is quite easy, though it isnt as evident and obvious as it is on a pc. I am using a my passport ultra with a macbook running mac os x 10. Smaller external hard drives, ssds, and usb flash keys format quickly. The simplest way to install macos or os x on a new hard drive is by using internet recovery mode.
I have decided to go with a fresh and clean install of os x 10. Looking for a way to install and run os x on an external hard drive. Aweeraser for mac will quickly format the hard drive and permanently erase all data information on the hard drive, beyond the scope of. Its my understanding that i have to have os x before i can install windows 7. If youre preparing a mac for resale or troubleshooting a misbehaving machine, you might opt to format your mac s hard drive. As you proceed with the installation, you will be prompted to take backup of your data. Especially, if you want to get a very first view on a mac os x 10. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. Unlike prior versions of disk utility, if your physical disk has not already been formatted for os x, you cannot add a new partition until you use the erase function to format the drive for the first time. If you have a catastrophic harddrive crash that requires you to initialize format or replace your boot drive. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the wi. However, hard drive partitioning can often become a problematic task marred by errors and unexpected hurdles. Before upgrading to the latest mac os x, it is often useful to install mac os x on an external hard drive for testing.
The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Weve covered how to install os x yosemite onto a separate partition of an internal hard disk and dual boot with os x mavericks, but many mac users have wondered if its possible to install os x 10. Then proceed to highlight your computers hard drive. Mac disk utility can help you format hard drive or external hard drive in os x 10. Disk utility is a free application that comes with mac computers. But this makeover didnt go well for a handful of mac users. Any new external hard drive needs to be formatted for mac. If your mac is from before 2009 or never had os x lion, click here to jump to the next section. Its a multipurpose tool that handles formatting, erasing, repairing, and partitioning hard drives, among other things. How to format an external disk or a flash drive for mac. Mac os x can only be installed on a hard drive formatted in mac os extended journaled, filesystem.
Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Disk utility and terminal well be detailing both of these methods below. If you buy an external hard drive and want it to be capable of being your macs startup disk that is. This is useful if a drive is being used under both operating system osto move files between the two environments. Install, boot, and run mac os x from an external hard drive. How to format a wd hard drive to exfat or fat32 file system. The file format has to be mac os x journaled and you have to use the guid. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. Then select the hard drive and click on erase button. Formatting toshiba external hard drive fa apple community. Another workaround is to move that drive to an external enclosure and erase it there provided your enclosure is modern enough to deal with drives over 2. I eventually managed to eraseformat the new drive using disk utility on an old ibook g4 running os x 10.
When trying to save large files in final cut pro, the hard drive would save numerous files with none over 2gb in size. Just select the one you want to format and click on the erase tab. The previous defunct hd was also fat32, which i did not realize upon receiving and using. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. In the window that appears, doubleclick the disk utility app select the external hard drive left. Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. I named my external hard drive os x and that shows up in the middle. Now in this interface, you will see a format option. To find your mac model, memory, storage space, and macos version, choose about this mac from the apple menu. If as you say your external hard drive worked on both mac and windows, it may have been using one of these 2 programs.
These steps can be used for both internal and external drives. New versions such as mac os sierra dont include the x. To format an external storage device, connect it to one of the ports on. Mac free external hard drive recovery is the leading mac data recovery software specially designed for external hard drive to recover files lost due to. Learn how to use macos recovery to reinstall the mac operating system on your builtin drive or an external drive. How to reinstall macos from macos recovery apple support. If youre preparing a mac for resale or troubleshooting a misbehaving machine, you might opt to format your macs hard drive. How to reformat mac os x without a recovery disc or drive. How to install os x yosemite on any external drive thumb.
Since we are installing it on external drive, you can continue with the installation. You can format a drive in os x using two applications. A western digital external hard drive can be used on both windows and mac osx. It is the 12th release of mac os x os x and only version to be named after os x. Select the partition tab on the right hand side of the disk utility window. Here, run it from launchpad, it will list all hard. I received a replacement 750gb external hard drive from western digital. So much so, that along with partitioning internal mac hard drives, users are partitioning external drives and flash drives too in order to make them boot multiple operating systems on the run when required. If youre accustomed to using the disk utility in earlier versions of os x, it will be worth reading through this guide to get familiar with. This formatting guide focuses specifically on the new disk utility application found in os x 10. Once you open the disk utility app, you can see all the drives on your mac are listed on the lefthand sidebar. Just bought a new elements 4tb and when i try to eraseformat the drive using disk utility the erase fails with mediakit reports not enough space on device for requested operation i have an older wd 4tb drive which works fine on my imac. This mode is only available on apple computers made after 2009 that were running os x lion or later.
Connect the hard drive to your computer, power it on and launch finder. Apfs also doesnt work with time machine, so you should format any drive you want to use for backing up your mac using mac os extended. How to format external hard drives on a mac sweetwater. This allowed me to do exactly what the partition command does, erasing anything on the drive there was previously nothing on the drive and was brand new, formatting in msdosfat, and. Format an external hard drive or usb flash drive for mac os x. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac.