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Format External Hard Drive Using Windows Portable Disk WorksWhat Is Hard Drive Formatting?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.Before getting to that, though, it’s important to understand what hard drive formatting is. It can also be used to prep a hard drive for use with another operating system.In this guide on how to format external hard drives, we’re going to help you make sure your portable disk works with everything. 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. MP4 Repair: How to Fix Corrupted Video Files in 2019— Last Updated: 12 Aug'19 T18:55:35+00:00If you’ve run into issues with your hard drive, formatting is one of the first steps you should take to troubleshoot it.Beforehand, just be sure your files are backed up with an online backup service, such as Backblaze(read our Backblaze review).Before getting into the formatting process, though, it’s important to go over what you’ll be formatting the drive with: a file system.File systems are what operating systems use to store information on a storage device. In the same way a fresh install of your OS can solve most issues, reformatting your hard drive is a critical step in troubleshooting problems. In fact, that’s one of our recommended troubleshooting steps in our how to solve an external hard drive not showing up guide.Outside of formatting for initial use, you may need to reformat your hard drive if you encounter errors. Most external drives come ready to use on your computer, but in rare cases, you’ll need to format your drive. 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.The data isn’t erased completely, but we’ll touch more on that later.![]() Like most file systems, NTFS is restricted once you move outside of Windows. NTFS: This is what Windows uses by default. Because of that, we’re going to go over the most commonly used file system options so you’ll know what’s what. The one yours uses largely depends on the drive and the computer OS you’re using. ![]() ![]() How to Format External Hard DrivesNow that we have formatting and file system basics out of the way, it’s time to show you how to format your external drive. Alternatively, you could dump the files from your drive to a cloud storage service, such as Sync.com, format the drive and put your files back on it (read our Sync.com review, and check out our cloud storage providers comparison). That’s because those file systems work across platforms while NTFS and HFS Plus don’t.Whichever file system your hard drive is shipped with, that’s what you have to use if you don’t want to remove all information from the drive. Download yosemite install for older unsupported macThat said, if you want to change settings, you’ll need to know the details of each. How to Format Your External Drive on WindowsFormatting a hard drive on Windows is a simple affair, especially if you leave everything as default.
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