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.īefore getting to that, though, it’s important to understand what hard drive formatting is. In this guide on how to format external hard drives, we’re going to help you make sure your portable disk works with everything. It can also be used to prep a hard drive for use with another operating system. 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.

If you’ve run into issues with your hard drive, formatting is one of the first steps you should take to troubleshoot it.