Outside of formatting for initial use, you may need to reformat your hard drive if you encounter errors. In fact, that’s one of our recommended troubleshooting steps in our how to solve an external hard drive not showing up guide. Most external drives come ready to use on your computer, but in rare cases, you’ll need to format your drive. The data isn’t erased completely, but we’ll touch more on that later.

Instead, formatting is used to get the hard drive to a state in which it can be used by the computer, which requires all written data to be erased from the drive. Though that’s true to a degree, it’s not the sole purpose of the process. Most people associate hard drive formatting with erasing a hard drive. Let’s first talk about hard drive formatting, file systems and how formatting doesn’t necessarily erase all data from your drive. We’ll show you how to format your hard drive on Mac and Windows computer operating systems, and explain key settings on both operating systems.īefore getting to that, though, it’s important to understand what hard drive formatting is. In this guide on how to format external hard drives, we’re going to help you make sure your portable disk works with everything. It can also be used to prep a hard drive for use with another operating system. Formatting allows you to overwrite all the information on the hard drive, resetting the file structure and how the drive interacts with the operating system. If you’ve run into issues with your hard drive, formatting is one of the first steps you should take to troubleshoot it. MP4 Repair: How to Fix Corrupted Video Files in 2019.Best Choice Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery.How to Create a Strong Password in 2023: Secure Password Generator & 6 Tips for Strong Passwords.How to Securely Store Passwords in 2023: Best Secure Password Storage.Best Password Manager for Small Business.How to Access the Deep Web and the Dark Net.Online Storage or Online Backup: What's The Difference?.Time Machine vs Arq vs Duplicati vs Cloudberry Backup.

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