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- Mac os how to format usb drive mac os#
- Mac os how to format usb drive install#
- Mac os how to format usb drive password#
- Mac os how to format usb drive windows#
Mac os how to format usb drive mac os#
This may be APFS, or it may be Mac OS Extended (Journaled) depending on how the drive is currently formatted and whether you using macOS High Sierra or an older version of the OS. Disk Utility will automatically choose the format for you.Click on the Erase option from the four options available in the main window.NOTE that formatting your drive will erase the contents, so make sure you back it up first! Once Disk Utility is open you’ll see the list of available drives on the left.Either head to Applications > Utilities, or tap Command + Space and start typing Disk Utility.
Mac os how to format usb drive windows#
Windows can read HFS+ drives but can’t write to them. There’s also an option of MacOS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted) if you are likely to have file names that require capital letters.
Mac os how to format usb drive password#
You can encrypt your drive and require a password to access it. There’s also the option of MacOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) which is a good choice if you are likely to be carrying your laptop or external drive around and don’t want anyone to access the contents of the drive should you accidentally lose it. If your Mac isn’t updated to High Sierra it will offer MacOS Extended as the default. MacOS Extended (Journaled) (also known as HFS+) – APFS replaced MacOS Extended as the default file system on the Mac when Apple launched High Sierra in 2017. For now we’d advise against formatting in APFS because it won’t be readable by Macs that aren’t running High Sierra, but this may not matter to you. And it currently only works on SSDs or Flash storage. But it won’t be readable or usable by a Mac that isn’t running High Sierra, and Windows or Linux machines won’t be able to read or write either.
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You can choose an encrypted version and a case-sensitive version. There are a number of things that are good about it – such as it being more efficient and more reliable. We’ll describe them below, and you’ll be able to choose the one that suits you.ĪPFS (Apple File System) – This is the new file system that Apple bought to Macs with High Sierra and it will be the default if you are using that version of macOS. There are a few file formats that you can use but the one that’s right for your circumstances depends very much on what you are going to be using the drive for.
Mac os how to format usb drive install#
Making a bootable macOS install drive (covered here) and if you areĭoing a clean install of macOS. Other reasons you might want to use Disk Utility include I have dd read from the drive and written it to another drive and the other drive works fine - the data appears to be OK (it was lossy compressed data and the resulting file seems fine but I'll never know if it's 100% because it is lossy and I don't have or don't care to look for the exact settings I used and the files seem fine compared to the files they were compressed from).Using Disk Utility on a Mac here. I keep the drive because it's good example of this situation. So the system can see the drive, but doesn't mount and doesn't deliver any error messages.
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So it appears that macOS needs to write or requires that a volume be writeable before mounting a encrypted HFS+ (Core Storage) volume. I have a flash drive that was encrypted - I'm asked for the password, I enter it, nothing happens. The flash drive needs to be un-mounted to do this but it sounds like it doesn't mount anyway. If can do a read but not a write, then it maybe in read-only mode. Building on what the previous poster said, try writing to the flash drive with dd.