Q&A for How to Format an External Hard Drive

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What does it mean to format a hard drive?

Yaffet Meshesha
Computer Specialist
Yaffet Meshesha is a Computer Specialist and the Founder of Techy, a full-service computer pickup, repair, and delivery service. With over eight years of experience, Yaffet specializes in computer repairs and technical support. Techy has been featured on TechCrunch and Time.

Yaffet Meshesha

Computer Specialist

Expert Answer

Formatting means erasing all of the data off of a storage device so it can be used to store more data. Essentially, it's like a clean slate for your devices, in terms of its storage.

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Question

Can I format an external hard drive to work for both Mac and windows? If so, how?

Community Answer

Yes, you can. You should format the external drive as either FAT 32 or exFAT. The former has an individual file transfer size limit of 4GB, and the latter doesn't have that limitation.

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Question

How do you format an external hard drive which says it can't be formatted?

Community Answer

Try removing the external drive's partition in Disk Manager and setting up a new one.

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How can I format a protected SD card?

Community Answer

Simple - you can't. You need to figure out how the card is protected - either by software or a physical LOCK switch on the card, then UNLOCK it, then you can format it.

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