#HOW TO USE A MAC HARD DISK ON WINDOWS HOW TO#
#HOW TO USE A MAC HARD DISK ON WINDOWS FREE#

Step 1 Open Disk Utility by opening Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Click to jump back to the backup section. There’s no way around it, so make sure that you have already backed up your data to a different drive and not the one you’re trying to format. Please remember that formatting your drive will delete your data.

#HOW TO USE A MAC HARD DISK ON WINDOWS FREE#

Fortunately, macOS has a free native tool called “Disk Utility” that can take care of the entire process. To do this, you’ll first need to erase it. Once you’ve safely backed up your data, you can proceed with formatting your drive. Step 9 Wait for the backup process to complete. Next, choose how many bytes of the drive you want to back up using the numbered range dropdowns menus. Step 8 On the window that appears, select where you want to save backup and whether you want to format your backup by bytes or sectors (bytes is fine for most cases). Step 7 Select the drive you want to backup, then click Create backup. Step 5 On the left sidebar under Extra Tools, click Byte-to-Byte Backup.

Step 4 Next, navigate to the Applications folder, then double-click Disk Drill.

Step 3 To open Disk Drill, first open the Finder app from your Dock. Step 1 If you don’t want to use your OS drive for your backup files, plug in another storage media (not the one you’re formatting). So the first thing you have to do is back up your data.įor this guide, we’ll be using Disk Drill – it’s a data recovery tool that offers a free backup feature (as well as a data recovery tool, which we’ll be covering later in the guide). I can’t stress enough that it means that you’ll be wiping all the files and folders from that hard drive – there’s no other way to do it. In order to format a Mac drive for Windows, you’ll first need to erase it. The data recovery tool we’ll be using, called Disk Drill, can recover data even from formatted drives.

#HOW TO USE A MAC HARD DISK ON WINDOWS HOW TO#

How to Convert Mac Hard Drive to Windowsįor this process, you’ll need 3 tools: a backup utility, a tool to recover data (just in case), and Disk Utility for the actual formatting process – fortunately, macOS already comes with Disk Utility installed. Remember: reformatting a Mac hard drive for Windows completely wipes all the files and folders on it – so you’ll need to do some preparation.

To convert a Mac drive to exFAT, you’ll be using the process of formatting. They’re unfortunately incompatible with each other, with the exception of exFAT, which is readable both by Windows and Mac – so for this guide, we’ll be converting a drive from APFS to exFAT. Typical Mac hard drives use the APFS (Apple File System) or the HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus), while Windows drives use NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. Why You Need to Format Mac Hard Drive for Windows

What to Do If You’ve Lost Files After Formatting.

How to Convert Mac Hard Drive to Windows.

Why You Need to Format Mac Hard Drive for Windows.

How to use a mac hard disk on windows