After years of use, thousands of files and GBs of file fragments have been stored on your Mac hard drive. You may want to get rid of all this junk data and reuse your hard drive. Formatting is the easy solution to help you remove all data/traces on your Mac hard drive. Normally, once your hard drive is formatted, you will get a brand new hard disk drive. But, how to format a local/external hard drive under Mac OS? How to format a hard drive on Mac and permanently erase the data information on the hard drive? Don’t worry. Here are two hard drive format software tools for Mac to help you securely format, reformat and erase hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, and memory card under Mac OS.
Connect the hard drive or USB key to the Mac. Launch Disk Utility, located in Applications Utilities. Locate the drive name from the left hand side of Disk Utility and click on it. Click on the “Erase” tab across the top. Next to “Format:” click the contextual menu and select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
Unlike Windows OS, Mac OS doesn’t provide quick format tool. Fortunately, there are some Mac hard drive format software or smart disk formatting applications can help you securely and easily format, reformat, or erase hard drive under Mac OS. Here are two outstanding Mac hard drive format software tools you can rely on.
As a comprehensive data erasure tool, AweEraser for Mac can help you securely and permanently format a hard drive or device under Mac OS. It is pretty simple to use. So, it can help you quickly format, reformat and erase hard drive under Mac. First of all, free download AweEraser for Mac and install it on your Mac.
Outstanding Mac disk formatting features:
How to use AweEraser for Mac to format a hard drive or device on Mac? Actually, it is very simple. Just run AweEraser for Mac on your Mac. Select the mode “Erase hard drive”. AweEraser for Mac will show all the hard drives and external devices on your Mac. Just select the targeted hard drive or device, then click on “Erase” button. AweEraser for Mac will help you format the selected hard drive/device and erase all data, data traces, and fragments on the selected hard drive/device.
Mac hard drive formatting steps: Run AweEraser for Mac > Choose “Erase Hard Drive” > Select hard drive > Click on “Erase” button > Format the selected hard drive.
Please note that once the hard drive is formatted by AweEraser for Mac, all the data on the hard drive will be permanently erased, can’t be recovered by data recovery software or manual data recovery service. So, please back up your important data to another hard drive before you use AweEraser for Mac to format your Mac hard drive.
The formatting process will not cause any damage to your hard drive or device. AweEraser for Mac will not shorten the service life of your hard drive/device. It just securely formats your Mac hard drive/device and permanently erases all the data. Then your hard drive/Mac computer/device is able to reuse, resold, recycled or can be safely donated or lent to other people.
Access for mac free. However, there are, at the time of writing, five apps, all available from the Mac App Store, which allow you to open and view data in Access database tables. Below is a summary of the apps.MDB Tool. Opens MDB and ACCDB files (2007 only, not 2010/2013).
Disk Utility is a smart hard drive format tool built in Mac system. Just run it on your Mac, it will show all the hard drives and external devices on your Mac. Select the hard drive and click “Erase”, then Disk Utility will help you format and erase the hard drive or device. But, the formatted data by Disk Utility can be recovered by data recovery software.
The two hard drive formatting software for Mac can help you securely format hard drive or device under Mac OS. But both of them can’t format the hard drive which the Mac OS is installed on because the Mac system doesn’t allow other software to destroy the system. However, AweEraser for Mac can help you erase unused disk space of the system hard drive to help you permanently erase all already deleted data and history traces.
Published on October 20th, 2013
A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for PC (Windows) or for Mac. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the Operating System that you are using. In this guide I will show you how you can properly format/reformat a hard drive for Mac OS. Formatting a hard drive for Windows will be discussed in another article.
Formatting and Reformatting a hard drive or hard disk is an easy task (if you know how). But it is also dangerous as it can result in loosing data or corrupting the drive when it is not done properly.
Before I proceed, I will be explaining some few things regarding formatting a hard drive. But if you want to know the instructions in formatting and reformatting a hard drive, just scroll down to the instructions below.
First, why do we need to format and/or reformat a hard drive. I will name some reasons, common reasons why we need to do this.
1. Some hard drives are already pre-formatted for a certain platform or system, like when you buy it out of the box it’s already formatted for Mac or Windows. But when it is not, we need to format the drive.
2. Hard drives are formatted so that a particular platform or operating system will be able to read and recognize the drive, whether it is an internal drive or external drive.
3. Hard drives are reformatted because sometimes we need to do clean up and we just want to wipe everything out that is written in the drive.
4. Formatting/Reformatting a drive can also remove soft bad sectors. But not necessarily always. Sometimes when a drive has a physical bad sector, reformatting it could spread the damage.
5. We reformat a hard drive if we are switching from one platform to another (Windows to Mac and vice verse)
Back to the main topic, below is a step by step instruction on how to Format/Reformat a hard drive for Mac OS.
Warning: FORMATTING and REFORMATTING A DRIVE ERASES EVERYTHING. Proceed with caution. Do backup your files first.
1. Open Disk Utility by clicking Finder -> Applications -> Utilities and finally click Disk Utility.
2. Choose the hard drive that you want to format or reformat. Make sure that it is the correct hard drive!
3. Go to the Partition Tab
4. Click the Current Volume Scheme drop down menu and choose One (1) partition.
5. Click Options, and from the Partition Scheme provided choose “GUID Partition Table” radio button or “Apple Partition Map” radio button.
6. Then click OK. Then key-in in the other options like Volume Name, Format and Size.
In this juncture, in the Format option, choose Mac OS for Mac OS X. Or MS-DOS File System otherwise.
TeraCopy is a nifty piece of freeware that improves the Windows copy/move function and adds useful extras like checksum calculation and permanent delete. Jun 20, 2019 Download TeraCopy for macOS 10.12 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. TeraCopy is a utility designed to copy files faster and more reliably, providing the user with many features. Be in control In case of a copy error, TeraCopy will try to recover. TeraCopy by Code Sector Inc is one of the most simple and user-friendly file transfer utilities. Unfortunately, there is no version of TeraCopy for Mac. Nevertheless, on this list of alternatives you can find a replacement. Official site of TeraCopy for Mac, a free utility designed to copy files faster and more secure. It can verify copied files to ensure they are identical. It skips bad files during copy, not terminating the entire transfer. Alternatives to TeraCopy for Mac with any license Ultracopier SuperCopier replaces Windows explorer file copy and adds many features: Transfer resuming, transfer speed control, transfer speed computation, better transfer progress. Teracopy for mac free.
7. Click Apply and the Partition Disk screen will open.
8. Click Partition. During this time the drive or volume will dismount and it will be partitioned and formatted. DO NOT TURN OFF OR RESTART your computer during this time!
Time Machine may pop up asking you to use the newly formatted drive for backups. Just cancel it to proceed.
9. After that, just exit Disk Utility and your done!
Hope this “format/reformat a hard drive for Mac” guide helped!
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