Format External Hard Drive Mac Os

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To use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac, you need any of these types of storage devices:

  1. Format External Hard Drive For Macos Catalina
  • External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule

After setting up the storage device, you can use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac. And after making your backup, you can use Time Machine to restore files from your backup.

External drive connected to your Mac

Time Machine can back up to an external drive connected to a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire port on your Mac.

External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule

Feb 08, 2020  How to Format an External Drive for Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended) Step 1: Open Disk Utility. The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper. Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”. Make sure your drive is connected. Feb 08, 2020 Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format. A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below. Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Oct 16, 2019  The oldest Windows OS that exFAT can work with is Windows XP SP3, while the oldest Mac OS is Mac 10.6.5 Snow Leopard. But hey, if you got your Mac and PC within the past two decades, then it’s safe to say that FAT32 vs exFAT has a clear winner. The Best Format for External Hard Drives.

Time Machine can back up to an external USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac model) or AirPort Time Capsule.

  1. Make sure that the USB drive is formatted for Time Machine.
  2. Connect the drive to a USB port on your AirPort base station, then turn it on.
  3. Open AirPort Utility, then select your base station and click Edit to view its settings.
  4. Click the Disks tab in the settings window.
  5. Select your backup disk from the list of partitions, then select ”Enable file sharing”:
  6. If more than one user on your network will back up to this disk with Time Machine, you can use the Secure Shared Disks pop-up menu to make sure that they can view only their own backups, not yours. Choose ”With accounts” from the menu, then click the Add (+) button to add users.
  7. Click Update to restart your base station and apply the settings.
  • Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your Mac.
  • Oct 17, 2019  Select the external hard drive (left; sorted Internal, External, and Disk Images) and click the Erase button. (optional) Select a single volume to keep the drive format and only erase that volume’s data. Enter a Name, select the Format and Scheme, and click Erase.
  • 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. 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.

AirPort Time Capsule

Time Machine can back up to the built-in hard disk of an AirPort Time Capsule on your network.

Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination

To use another Mac on your network as a Time Machine backup destination, complete these steps on the other Mac:

  1. Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Sharing.
  2. From the list of services on the left, select File Sharing.
  3. From the list of Shared Folders on the right, Control-click the folder that you want to use for Time Machine backups.
  4. From the shortcut menu that opens, choose Advanced Options.
  5. From the Advanced Options dialog, select ”Share as a Time Machine backup destination.”
MacFormat

When setting up Time Machine on your other Mac computers, you should now be able to select the shared folder as a backup disk.

Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB

Many third-party NAS devices support Time Machine over SMB. For details, check the documentation for your NAS device.

How to format a disk for Time Machine

Time Machine supports all Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formats and Xsan formats. If the disk isn't using the correct format, Time Machine automatically prompts you to erase it when you connect it to your Mac:

If you need to erase the disk manually, use the Disk Utility app to erase using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

Why format external hard drive

Format External Hard Drive For Macos Catalina

Time Machine can't back up to an iOS device or disk formatted for Windows. And if your disk uses the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme, some of its partitions might not be available for use with Time Machine.