So to format the drive you need to run Disk Utility, which is an app that comes with your Mac. Put it on another drive, move it to your internal drive, make sure there is nothing you need on the drive because you're going to erase it and all those files are going to be gone when you format the drive.

So if this isn't a new drive, but something you've had for awhile and you want to format it correctly now, the first thing you want to do is get all the data off of it. Now keep in mind formatting a drive means erasing it. But chances are you're going to see something else there. Now you can see here this is formatted for modern Macs using APFS. Then you'll see information about the drive including Format. Now to see the format of the drive you can select it here and then go to File, Get Info. If I select it it shows what is in there and chances are if it is a brand new drive that you bought it should mount just fine and show there is no files in there or maybe some junk in there like some software that was included with the drive. It's not a new drive but I'm going to use it for this demonstration. So when you connect a drive it should appear here on the left side of the Finder under locations.

Even if when you buy the drive it says that it is formatted for Mac, it maybe using an older format and most of the time when you buy drives they are actually formatted for Windows. Now when you buy an external drive, whether it is a large hard drive like this or just maybe a small USB thumb drive, you need to format it for your Mac. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Let me show you how you should format an external drive for your Mac. Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with. Check out How Should You Format An External Drive For a Mac? at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

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