Understanding how to FORMAT your NEW External Hard Drive for your MAC - A look at Apple Disk Utility

welcome back everyone my name is joel feld and  today's video i wanted to discuss hard drives and   specifically formatting hard drives like possibly  an external one just like this guy let's do it at some point you're probably going to need an  external hard drive whether it be to back up   your computer which i highly recommend and if you  do want to back up your computer there's a nice   little utility called time machine i'll link that  down below you can check out that video maybe you   want to move content and archive it off of  your computer to make room for new content   you want to just store files so that you can go  from one computer to another there's a variety   of reasons of why to use an external hard drive  and whenever you do use an external hard drive   you always want to format it and format it  just means putting it into a language that   the computer can understand and work with we're  going to cover that process getting a brand new   hard drive like let's say one of these extreme  sandisk pros or maybe you've gotten one of these   my passport western digital there's a whole ton  of options out there you might have a big g drive   like this or you have one of these lacey drives  or one of these lacy drives as you can see   there's you know they add up over time and they  tend to get smaller and smaller over the years so   let's go ahead dive in let's learn how to format  your hard drive the thing is whenever you purchase   an external hard drive no matter what your use is  you always want to format it to the language of   your computer so let's take this brand new hard  drive right out of the box we're going to plug   it into the computer it's going to mount on the  desktop if it doesn't show up here on the desktop   it could be because we've told it not to if we  went to finder and chose preferences and go to   general there's this option that says show these  items on desktop if external disks is unchecked   it will not show up on your desktop so i like to  have this option checked another way to access   it is if you go to the finder and you scroll on  the left hand side you will see under locations   this is where external drives and network drives  appear also so here is that extreme ssd now   there's a utility on the mac called disk utility  and disk utility allows us to format the drive   so that it will work properly with the hardware  that you have so let's go ahead and open that   up so i'm going to go to the finder here let's go  to applications i'm going to scroll to utilities   and open up disk utility now let's move this over  here disk utility it looks a little intimidating   but let's keep it simple i want this to be as  easy as possible so that you feel comfortable   with doing this depending on what operating  system you have on the mac this might look   slightly different but you're going to have a  lot of the same tools i'm going to make things a   little bit easier i'm just going to say show only  volumes here and i can see that over here on the   left hand side it breaks it into internal external  and disk images we're just going to ignore disk   images and we're just going to focus on internal  and more specifically external now internal here   this is telling me or showing me information  about the internal hard drive of this computer   so i can see different information about it  i can see how much space is used the capacity   i mean it gives me all the detailed information  i could ever want for this hard drive   in the top right there's a little info button  that shows me even more detailed information   do you have to know all this information no  honestly unless you have a very specific need   it's just there if and when you need it  our specific goal is to format this drive   maybe i want to use this for a time machine  backup maybe i want to use it to archive photos   and videos maybe i want to use it as a means of  moving files from one computer to another computer   so i'm going to choose extreme ssd over here on  the left hand side notice underneath here it says   usb external physical volume exfat this is one  of the languages that i'm going to reference of   the different formats that we can have so when  i say formats just think of them like different   languages your hard drive talks to different  computers and specifically your windows computers   and a mac computer and there's languages  and formats only for mac there's languages   and formats only for windows and then in between  there's languages and formats so that you can use   that hard drive for both mac and windows so it's  very very important to ask yourself the question   what is your main goal with this external hard  drive do you want to use it purely only with a mac   do you want to use it with a windows  computer or do you want to use it with both   now what i'm going to do here i'm going  to select this hard drive and i'm going   to click on erase in the top right and when  i do that it says what do you want to call it   and what do you want to format it as so here i  have all of these different options apfs apfs   encrypted apfs case sensitive mac oss journaled  ms-dos exfats so all of these different choices   and you may be asking well i don't know what am i  supposed to choose for now i'm going to go ahead   and choose aps fs we'll keep it as extreme ssd and  we'll click erase now whenever you're erasing or   formatting a hard drive you're wiping all of the  content off there you're deleting everything so   if you have content on there you might want to  put it someplace else before you actually erase it   now i'm going to go ahead and choose done here i'm  going to link some articles that are very helpful   that can tell you exactly what these formats do so  here they are and this is where it breaks down the   file system formats available in disk utility  on a mac so the apple file system is the apfss   and this is designed for pretty much newer  macs anything with a solid state hard drive   mac oss extended is the previous language both  of these are only for mac if you plug this hard   drive into a windows computer you're not going to  be able to copy and use it as you normally would   so these are designed specifically just for your  mac now the other two are ms-dos fat and exfat   i don't know where they come up with all these  names but just just roll with it but ms-dos   and exfat these file systems are compatible with  windows now i'm not going to go through and read   this whole thing i'll link it down below so that  you have it for reference but just know that   this gives you a more detailed information  for what these actually do so for example   when it gives me an option for encrypted or  case sensitive case sensitive for example is   either homework or homework notice how homework  is all in caps here but homework here is not so   when you're searching a file on your computer you  have to be very very specific if you've made it   to be case sensitive so let's actually  do that let's go back to disk utility   if i were to take this hard drive again and click  on erase in the top right notice i have the option   for the apple file system by itself encrypted case  sensitive or case sensitive encrypted now if you   do encrypted that just means that you're doing a  password so in order to use this hard drive you're   putting another layer of security so that you need  a password to access the files on here i'm going   to go ahead and choose cancel because i don't want  to do that so my recommendation would be this if   you are only using this for your mac and you have  a relatively new mac with a solid state hard drive   do the apple file system the apfs if you need to  use this hard drive for going back between windows   and mac then you can use the ms-dos or the exfat  both of these are going to allow you to move files   between those environments if you plan on using  this for a time machine backup it's automatically   going to format it for mac os extended or the  apple file system it's not going to do the ms-dos   or the exfat so just keep that in mind if you're  using this for a time machine and as a backup   you pretty much dedicate that hard drive to your  mac because you're not going to be able to use it   with your windows computer at all anytime you want  to find out what format or what language these   hard drives are in if i didn't have disk utility  up i could select the hard drive on my desk and if   i right click on it i can say get info and this  is going to bring up the information for this   drive and right below it's going to show me the  format that it is in the general tab here so you   can always tell what kind of file or what format  the hard drive is you can also select it here on   the hard drive go up to file choose get info and  that does the same exact thing or you can go back   to disk utility select it on the left hand side  here and go to info and it's going to even bring   up more info that shows the volume type is apfss  uh other information down here like is it a solid   state drive yes it is so on and so forth i'm going  to click on this little button up here at the top   that gives me options for the sidebar  and i'm going to say show all devices   now when i do that you'll notice that over here  on the left hand side it just opened up into a   whole bunch of other options under the internal  it actually shows me that this is a pny brand one   terabyte solid state drive it's got a container  and it contains the mac and the macintosh hd and   then i have external drive which is that sandisk  and the container and the volume of extreme ssd   now if i go back to the top level and i choose  erase notice it's saying okay what do you want   to erase and call this drive now notice we have  a few other options so not only can i name it   but it gives me the same format options but it  gives me the scheme option that's honestly you   probably won't use that often but it's important  to know and understand why it's there and if you   were to need it you have an understanding of why  so the partition schemes are available are the good guide think gooey id i don't know good  partition map and this is option for all   intel based mac computers the master boot record  choose this option for windows partitions that   will be formatted for ms-dos and x-fat and  then apple partition map choose this option   for compatibility with old power pc computers so  naturally this takes it a step further because   again we have to define your goal and your need  for this hard drive but chances of you using this   third option are very very slim to none the second  option you might use if you do find yourself that   you're going from a windows to a mac and you're  not using this for time machine and you want to be   in both environments you could probably partition  it and put it at this master boot record but 99   of the time if you're only using the mac stick  with the guide whatever that is let's see what   actually it is i'm going to right click and do  speech start speaking g-u-i-d oh okay g-u-i-d it's   gonna spell it out for me instead of speaking  the word that's cool too okay so i digress   we're gonna keep it at that so i just wanted to  let you know that's what these options are for   now this is where we title it and i can say  joel's backup and we're going to format it as apfs   because that's the drive that i want and there's  some benefits to that back in that article i'm   gonna click erase here but back in that article  here there's some really nice reasons that we'll   go through here of why to do that it features  stronger encryption space sharing snapshots   faster directory sizing and it just gives  you some more abilities now all of the other   buttons across the top we have this volume  first aid partition erase restore unmount and   info well we saw the info before this just shows  us the detailed information about the particular   hard drive that's selected but let's take a look  at some of these other ones so we formatted this   main hard drive as joel's ssd and we made it an  apfs volume and it's 1 000 gigabytes so it's one   giant bucket for this external hard drive now disk  utility has some options where you can actually   sub categorize or split this one giant bucket into  smaller containers called partitions and volumes   let's take a look at that and what it would be  for and why you would want to do that and in the   top here i'm going to click on partition partition  allows you to pretty much say i want to allocate   500 gigs here and 500 gigs here and it's almost  like they're two different rooms in the house   and it allows you to kind of separate your files  in different ways so here it's saying okay here's   one big pie i can click the plus sign and it says  hey do you want to add a volume or add a partition   we'll talk about volumes in a second so  let's go ahead and just choose add partition   now also at any given point if you wanted more  detailed explanation if you ever forget click   the little question mark here and this is going  to give you an example more thorough answer about   volumes versus partitions and containers and  all that good stuff so i'm going to close   out of this we're going to say add partition and  notice here it gives me this little visual graph   to dedicate part of this hard drive and part of  this hard drive so notice this here joel's ssd   it's already formatted as apss now i could change  it if i wanted to because again i'm formatting it   so by doing this i could change it to something  else but let's say i wanted to change this because   maybe i'm using this hard drive between a mac and  a windows computer so i want to dedicate this for   windows and we're going to format it to ms-dos  and we're going to say i want this to be 500 so we're going to split it 500 and 500.  so this is mac side and this is windows side   so i'm going to choose apply  here and it's going to say hey   it's going to partition that means that it's  going to add windows and the partition is going   to be resized so i'm going to say yes that's  fine it's going to go through his magic behind   the scenes and it's going to go through  and create two different partitions for us all right so that is done notice we have  windows ssd and w i guess it did not uh take   the w can we do windows there we  go so it took that 1000 gigabytes   and it turned it into kind of two different  uh two different buckets so this one hard   drive now is partitioned into two different  spaces so if we get the information on here   go right click and choose get info we can see that  the format is ms-dos the capacity is 500 or 499 is   got available 4.99 same thing on the joel ssd 500  and it shows the available space there i'll give   you a practical example of why some people would  do this someone like me i would actually take one   of these hard drives and create different volumes  on it so that i could put different windows or   different mac operating systems over the years  so that i can easily install software and have   it dedicated for that operating system so let's  say that i want to install the past three or four   mac operating systems and i want to be able to  troubleshoot that and be able to look at those   options i can partition this so that they're  not all on one big bucket but they're in their   separate containers so again for the majority of  people are you going to be doing this probably   not you're just going to be formatting it and  the big takeaway is just knowing the format   and your main goal format it once and you're  good to go now at any given time i can   undo what i did before if i go back to partition  i can still select both of these and if i wanted   to reformat this i could choose mac os journaled  i could dedicate different hard drives space to it   i could add another partition we could do three  so i could say this is going to be photos this one   is going to be videos and this one is going to  be picture or not pictures uh we'll do music   and we'll change this to journaled all of them  are the same format which is fine and i could   say apply it's going to go through reform at  those other partitions and i'm going to end   up with three different partitions one for videos  one for photos and ones for music that way when   i plug this one hard drive in i actually have  three different containers to organize my files   there we go so we have videos music and photos  all on one and if we go to videos it's got 250   gigs available 250 here and then 500 on the  music so that's how partitions work it just   gives you the ability to kind of split up your  hard drive to a more manageable concept so in the   grand scheme of things there's lots of ways that  you can format and manipulate your hard drives   depending on the purpose of what you're trying to  accomplish your help menu for sure is your friend   on this one because if you're not 100 sure go up  to help go to disk utility help and then use the   table of contents to look at what you're actually  trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish   and if you need a volume or a  partition or what kind of format   and that will guide you in the right way  and walk you through what you need to do   but overall whenever you get a hard drive just  remember you always want to format it first and   this is a great tool to do that so now let's say  i just want to put this back to square one i want   to keep it simple i just want this one hard drive  that's formatted to use only with this mac i don't   use a windows computer i don't need any fancy  partitions any fancy volumes so we're going to   select this external hard drive on the left we're  going to go up to erase we're going to say joel's ssd we're going to leave it at apfs guide guide  partition map choose erase and we are going to   be left with one single location for one single  external hard drive and there is that the last   few buttons up here at the top we have a first  aid first aid allows you to just do a test to   verify that your hard drive is good so i have this  selected on the on the external hard drive i'm   going to choose run and it's going to go through  a series of tests just to make sure that the hard   drive that i have plugged in is okay you can do  that with your internal one also if i select the   internal hard drive here i can click on first aid  choose run and it will go through those same tests   depending on the hard drive that you have if it's  a not a solid state drive it may take a little bit   longer to do let me actually take a step back when  i say solid state drive i mean a hard drive like   this hard drives that are not solid states means  that there's a there's a little disk that spins   in there really really fast and you can often hear  it those hard drives are a lot slower but they're   also a lot less expensive than solid state drives  so solid state drives more expensive but more   reliable and way faster than a traditional hard  drive something like this western digital where   this is a big bang for your buck but it's slower  it's louder and there's more wear and tear on it   solid states definitely the way to go so that's  first aid the last thing i want to show you is   kind of a fun tip you know you have all of these  hard drives here and sometimes you can get a whole   bunch of hard drives i like to customize it as  much as i can so here's a little side tip for   you whenever you have an external hard drive or  even your hard drive here or really any folder   there's a way that you can actually customize  the picture here which is kind of fun   i have ghostbusters on my mind for whatever  reason so we're gonna do ghostbusters characters   we're gonna do images oh what's the green guy oh  let's do marshmallow man marshmallow i like this   picture right here okay so we're going to take  this image i'm going to drag it to the desktop   and i'm going to double click on it open it  up and here we have the marshmallow man so i'm   going to minimize our window here so when  i open this up it's opening up in preview   and if i do if edit select all and then edit copy  if i go to my external hard drive here and go   right click do get info if i click up here on the  top i can do edit choose paste i'm now pasting   that little icon as my little external hard  drive so now i can move this picture to the trash   i can quit out of preview and now i've just  customized the icon of my external hard drive to   marshmallow man fun tip huh so you can do that  actually with any folder any external hard drive   so if i eject this right click on it and choose  eject if i take this here and i plug it back   in it's gonna have that nice little icon show  up with my external hard drive so fun little   tip there customize it make it unique make it  yours so that is formatting your hard drives   very very important make sure that  when you format it know that it's   going to wipe everything off of there and really  understand why you're formatting it in general   usually out of the box first thing that  you do is to format your hard drive   whenever you get a brand new one so that you  can use it with the computer that you have   so thank you so much for watching if you like  this video hit that little like button if you   learned something please hit that subscribe button  tap that little bell and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Learn with Joel Feld

Views: 156,750

Keywords: apple, ios, osx, photo, photography, icloud, ipad, iphone, learn, Photos, iMovie, Finder, Mac Basics, Apple tutorials, FCPX, iOS, iCloud, Apple Photos, Format external hard drive, how to format a mac, format drive for mac, format external drive for mac, Apple File System, APFS, Snapshots, FAT32, hard drive, sandisk, external hard drive, ExFAT, Mac OS Extended, encryption, MS-DOS, FAT, partitions, volumes, Time Machine, iCloud backup, partition schemes, disk utility, how to use time machine, NTFS, tutorial

Id: caYfZWyN4CQ

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021