How to Format/Partition External Harddrive Mac

[Blumenon]

Hi,

Need clarification. So, if I get a wdmy for mac, I can use the same in a Windows laptop or pc by setting the partition right.?

[abrahamocampo1]

Thank you so much



[harborskoolmaniac]

Tried formatting internall hdd and says can't unmount disk, plz help...

[iMactheIphone]

@harborskoolmaniac Try restarting your computer, sometimes that helps. If not try repairing the disk and trying it again that should fix the problem. Hope this helped. :-)

[tylerspapi]

Please help! It says disk erase failed could not unmount disk! Whats wrong?

[alevange]

Thanks for the video. Very helpful

[katieannamccraw]

Brilliant - thanks so much!

[tommw95]

Thank you  for the video was very helpful.

[InvaderAlex08]

Please answer, when partitioning, what setting do i pick under options? GUID, Apple partition map, or master boot record?

[tamaras82]

I partitioned my new Toshiba Portable Canvio 1T hard drive into 4 partitions: 1 for my iMac Time Machine, 1 for my MacBook Time Machine, 1 for my PC back up, and 1 for my Media. The first 2 in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, and the second 2 in MS-DOS(FAT) format.

My problem is that my PC doesn't see my Media MS-DOS(FAT) partition (maybe because I already put some media from my Mac?). Is there a way to format again only this partition without loosing the data on the others?

[KimCheeHuu]

If I have an external

[MrSeavOne]

Once i try formatting and everything i get this error message "Framework unable to communicate with DiskManagementTool" :/

[kpxflameboy]

hehe...entourage...cant wait for the last season this year!

[MOOEMAN]

Please answer me if you can: sooo I got a 1TB seagate free agent and I already have my mac running both osx and windows 7. I want to cut my external in half(maybe even three) so i can use time machine, and write files to my external from mac and windows. I use this for school so i was wondering what would be the best way to go about doing so. My main concern is there are already preset drives on it, but your video states that i have to reformat. Can you please help me out?!?! thanks in advance!

[iMactheIphone]

@MOOEMAN yeah you need to reformat so that you can partition the drive into 3 seperate parts like I have one for windows 7, one for Time Machine and one for Mac. Just follow the video step by step and you should be good. Good Luck.

[standubz]

Bought a WD 500 GB external hard drive today, came home, watched your tutorial, 5 minutes later, hard drive partitioned and back up currently doing so, thanks!

[mineerjd]

Your video helped me out greatly. Now I want to access that 'Windows' partition from my laptop while the external hard drive is still plugged into the iMac. Is this possible? I've managed to get some networking between the two but not sure how to get into the hard drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

@Rockabella, I have the same HDD, it took mine 19 hours...I just waited. I think it's cos I've used it before and did have a lot of data on it.

[iMactheIphone]

@mineerjd It may be possible. I'm not quite sure though as I have never done that. I use my Mac partition on the mac and the windows when I'm using windows, so I'm not sure how you would do that. Sorry I'm not much help.

[GeekTechMac]

faggot wallpaper

[rockabella]

wow it takes me 12 hours to zero out date my 2TB western digital harddrive... should i just wait that long or am i doing something wrong?

[iMactheIphone]

@rockabella thats only if you want to fully erase everything to the point where there is no possible way anyone can restore any information off it. You should be able to hit the skip button by the progress bar and skip over that since a top layer delete will work just fine since your going to be saving new information onto the External. Hope this helped :-).

[InvaderAlex08]

@rockabella When you erased it, did you use the "mac os extended journaled" setting?

[koolguy1098]

hey i have a question what happens if u discconect ur hard drive while im using? will it turn off?

[iMactheIphone]

@koolguy1098 actually nothing really, you get an error message saying you removed it and you possibly may have corrupted some files, but its just a message and usually nothing ever happens. Unless your in the middle of saving something it probably won't have saved it and you'll have to do it again. Hope this helped.

[Milkychocolate721]

Thanks so much! You made backing up my cpu a breeze. I just bought my second WD today I have the my Passport and then the 1 TB now. The 1 TB is not for Mac and I was a little confused as to how to format it! Thanks again!

[iMactheIphone]

@Milkychocolate721 No problem bro anytime, if you liked feel free to subscribe. Thanks for your comment and support.

[Milkychocolate721]

@iMactheIphone well I'm a girl...lol so maybe sis would be the appropriate vernacular. I will subscribe tho!

[jennnnnsy]

@iMacthelphone Thank you, I went ahead and just transfered everything over to another hard drive and partitioned what I needed. Thanks for the reply!

@BuzzKeyur Thanks for the reply!

[jennnnnsy]

How can I partition my external hard drive without erasing the data already saved on here?

[iMactheIphone]

@jennnnnsy unfortunately no, Partition is reformatting the drive and splits it up so there is no way to partition it without erasing all the data that is already on it. You have to take that in mind when you go to partition it and make sure thats what you want because once you start saving stuff on it and you wanna add partitions you'll have to erase everything thats on it or back it up to another HD before you add more partitions.

[BuzzKeyur]

@jennnnnsy YEs, you can. If you're using a Mac you can accomplish this in the Disk Utility Application. When doing so, don't reformat it, simply change the number of partition sector from "1" to the the number of partitions you want. If you are familiar with BootCamp it basically partitions it for you, but with Disk Utility you can do it yourself.

[osmosisjones01]

Hi. I want to keep as much GB free on my internal computer as possible to maintain high speeds. Is it possible to access documents and music only from the external hard drive or do i have to have itunes music and photos on the internal hard drive to be able to use them? I was able to have all music on PC on my external hard drive and when i wanted to listen to it, all i had to do was to connect the hard drive. I would like to do the same but with my new mac.

Cheers

[iMactheIphone]

@osmosisjones01 yes it is possible you have to navigate to the correct folders and make a mirror image of your itunes library and iPhoto library to transfer to your external and then you can delete the main ones in your computer. Search it on youtube cause I don't remember the exact procedure. I have seen it done.

[gaffer493]

ah shit im having trouble reformating my 1 tb WD external hard drive. i do the erase step then just before it finishes it says: "file system formatter failed." is there something i have done wrong? or is my OS incompatable or sumthing?

[elicebox101]

excellent video

[mybigleftnut90]

hey what happends if i press skip while it's erasing everything?

[iMactheIphone]

@mybigleftnut90 actually thats exactly what you have to do is press skip. If you don't it will erase every single detail of the hard drive, if your going to install stuff right onto it then there is no need to let it do that just hit skip and it will do a superficial delete and format of the hard drive.

[photogirl311]

Thank you! You covered everything I needed to know!

[seywhat82]

noooooooooo!! quick (and frantic!) question, i just spent 9 hrs doing this and just then (9 hours later) it finished however it said 'disk error' and to do it again......what did i do wrong??? :( i only got as far as the erase 'zero out data' step when it said error... however for the partitions, i'm only interested in 2 partitions for time machine and normal HD use...

i think i got the same hard drive as yours (1 tb WD) PLEASE HELP!!!

[iMactheIphone]

@seywhat82 yeah that does happen keep trying it again until eventually it works. You don't need to wait two hours you can press on the skip button thats highlighted while its going through the whole process. All thats doing is erasing every single thing on the hard drive piece by piece and there is no reason to do that since your gonna be putting stuff onto it, thats only when you want to sell it to someone that you don't know. Hope this helped and get back to me if you need any further help.

[feraold]

Thank you very much it is a very good informational video.

[spillamen1]

western digital suck ass

[iMactheIphone]

@spillamen1 I'd really appreciate it if you kept your hatred to yourself. This isn't a review of the hard drive its how to format it. Oh and yeah.......if your gonna comment at least learn how to spell.......ZING!!!!!!

[chiggz77]

what application do you use to record the video from the mac display?

[saltyballsthe3rd]

great video, i was just wonder if doing this will delete the data off my hard drive

[iMactheIphone]

@saltyballsthe3rd unfortunately to set it up and partition it, yes it will delete the hard drive, since you have to reformat it. Sorry to break the bad news.

[vsighi]

Thanx man.

[onibon]

video is really good,great job man,i went to d apple store for them to try n help me but they all were kinna busy but really nice n polite.This is relatively easy. Thx 4 uploading...

[iMactheIphone]

@onibon No problem bro anytime, email me with any help you need.

[jrdallastx]

Informative, thanks.

[amazingashiq]

good video mate... jus wondering the data which is already in there , will they get erased for good , if i partitiion ? thank yu

[markanderson09]

Love the vid, was wondering if you know whether you can re-fomat a single partition without affecting any of the other partitions on the disk? I know you can do it in windows but can't see a way of doing it with disk utility

cheers

[johnphilbrick]

you saved my life, when i bought a WD hard drive and partitioned it wrong, i though i had completely lost 100 gigs, but now its all good :D

[Alicaz81]

Hi,

I've just bought my first Mac along with an external hard drive. I have not yet set up Time Machine on my Mac. I was just about to follow your steps to format and partition my new Ex. hard drive, but wondered if i should set up Time Machine before I do so? Please help.

Thanks :)

[TbagTroopers]

What recording program are you using?

[mhachtma]

@TbagTroopers Quick Time - if you go to File and then New Screen Recording

[zizobashaxx]

Thanks for the video..=)

but i have a problem when i start ti erase the hard drive it says

Zero Disk failed with the error:

Could not unmount disk.

[bellacouturee]

HEY! Thanks for the video! But I was wondering if you knew how to un-format if that makes since? I want to use it only with my PC now! HELP!!!? or link to another video?

[smurow]

@bellacouturee don't kill me if I'm wrong... but I'm pretty sure you could change to one partition and use the ms-dos (fat) setting. with ms-dos (fat) both mac and pc files can be put on it if you ever get a mac too.

[STr34per]

Thanks a lot for this my friend, Subbed.

[choneythief]

hey bro good vid! i I dont have time capsule and I just want to format my wd 1tb external HD only, so would i just go to disk utility and select my wd hard drive and erase it?

thanks

[kscott920]

i no this is not on topic but where did u get your wallpaper from. I'm a big entourage fan and thats an awesome wallpaper. If you could give me a link or something that'd be great

[wakeskatefein]

is it normal to take 7 hours to erase everything?? I have the 1 tb

[NathanielFriend]

I realize this vid is new, and you got your 1TB drive new, but you might want to add an annotation that when you Zero out your data it could take QUITE a while. My WD 250G is taking my Macbook Pro 2 hours. Not to complain, it was just quite a shock that it would take that long to Zero data.

[NathanielFriend]

Some how I'm connecting the voice of the video with the guy on the left in the wallpaper haha

[warhawkman57]

i have a question???? i bought 2 external hardrives... my dad only uses 1 and 1 wasd in the box for ages,,he changed the format on 1 to make it work on mac but on the other 1 it says the format is "windows NT filesystem" and i havent used it once plz help..when i drag stuff into it it says "the file cannot be modified"

[iMactheIphone]

Thanks for your question. It depends if you want to save Mac files on it you will have to repartition it to be Mac Compatible if you are using something like Windows XP or Vista or even Windows 7 you will have to repartition it as MS-DOS so it can read those types of files. I hope this helped. Good Luck!!

[meerak87]

@iMactheIphone I have a 2tb external hard drive. Can I format half of it to work with mac and the other half to work with windows? like making 2 partitions? does it work like that? give 1tb to each?

[mundocious]

Thanks for the Help.

[benthemiester]

I have an external drive that is formatted in two sections one for dedicated audio files for recording software, and the other half for time machine back up in general. I want to install windows 7 on my mac using external drive. Is it possible to erase time machine partition and then repartition half of partition for windows 7 and then use other half for time machine. I guess the question is can I reformat half a drive without erasing entire drive.