- Apple Tv External Hard Drive Formatting
- Upgrade Apple Tv Hard Drive
- Apple 1tb External Hard Drive
- External Hard Drive For Mac
- Apple Tv External Hard Drive Formatted
- External Hard Drive Tv Capable
If you've been considering buying a brand new external hard drive to plug into your TV's USB port for media playback, you might want to reconsider. Things aren't as simple as they might seem.
Not every external hard drive will play nice with your smart TV right out the gate.
How to Format a Hard Drive on Mac: Formatting is a very simple procedure that is operated in a similar way for all sorts of storage media. So, whether you wish to format the internal hard drive, external drive, or a USB flash drive, the procedure is the same for all. To play iTunes movies from external hard drive freely, you can simply click the format bar and choose 'Lossless MP4' from the profile list. The quality of the output video will be lossless and almost all devices and players support MP4 video file. On Windows: Plug your hard drive into your computer. Insert the drive's USB cable into one of the. Some users want to free up some space on their Mac, so they move iTunes movies/TV shows to their external hard drives. You can save iTunes movies on external hard drive, but you still can not play the movies without iTunes. You will find that it is really inconvenience. In iTunes, in Preferences, select the external hard drive of your choice (or a folder you create in this drive) and select it as the new location for iTunes files. I guess this does the trick. Today, I selected a folder I created in Time Capsule and iTunes synchronized my earlier iTunes folder into this new one, omitting to delete the old one.
Why don't all external hard drives work with my TV?
Regardless of their size, many new external hard and SSD drives usually rely on a partitioning format called GUID Partition Table (GPT).
GPT allows the entire capacity of the drive to be usable on a computer system. However, this very same partitioning format may not be recognised by your TV. It's one of those things that's very dependent on the brand and model involved.
What's more, if you plug a GPT-based drive into a TV, it might show up as being recognised by the TV, but it will not be able to display any of the information that you may have previously put onto it. We recently found this out when we plugged in a 3TB WD Elements (Amazon) hard drive into a 32-inch Samsung LA32C450E1D LCD TV and found it couldn’t be read.
How can I fix this problem?
The solution is a harsh and time-consuming one: you'll have to re-partition the drive so that it uses an MBR (Master Boot Record) partition instead. This is far from an ideal solution because it means that only up to 2TB of space will be usable on a 3TB or 4TB hard drive.
Now, no matter how you slice it, this space is being wasted. But at least now there is a chance that the data on your new external drive will be able to be correctly detected and read by your TV. Recovery macbook pro yosemite.
[Related: How to tell if you’re watching 4K video]
All data on the disk will be erased if you attempt to change the drive's partition type from GPT to MBR, so you should make sure that you have a copy of all your data on another drive prior to changing it.
All data on the disk will be erased if you attempt to change the drive's partition type from GPT to MBR, so you should make sure that you have a copy of all your data on another drive prior to changing it.
To change a drive’s partition type from GPT to MBR in Windows 7, you will first need to launch the disk manager. You can go there by right-clicking Computer from the Start menu, selecting Manage and then Disk Management. Then, right-click on the drive's label and convert it to MBR.
You can then create a new partition and format it using the NTFS file format.
If your TV does not support the NTFS file format, but prefers the Fat32 format instead, then you will need to download a third party utility to convert your NTFS drive to Fat32 — since Windows 7 cannot do this natively.
Note - As opposed to Windows 7, the latest version of Windows 10 can convert drives to Fat32 natively. Simply follow the same process mentioned above and select Fat32 instead of NTFS.
One go-to application that has worked well for us in the past is Fat32format. It's a relatively straightforward utility to use:
- Select the correct drive that you wish to format (double-check to make sure that you have the right one)
- Leave the file allocation unit size of 32768 bytes (as you'll be storing large media files on it rather than tiny files)
- Click the start button. It should only take a few seconds to format.
Again, all this isn't an ideal solution for a 3TB or 4TB drive. Unfortunately, it's a necessary one for the moment if you’ve bought a large-capacity external drives and are looking to use them as a media repository for a TV.
That being said, there is nifty way to game the system. If you are currently shopping for a hard drive that can be used to play media through your TV's USB port, try to stick to drives that are less than 2TB in size, that way no space will be wasted if you need to convert the drive's format.
This article was updated in 2020 by Fergus Halliday.
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This article was originally written by Elias Plastiras and published on the 19th of August, 2012. It was updated by Fergus Halliday on the 14th of September, 2020.
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Sep 27,2020 • Filed to: Hard Drive Recovery • Proven solutions
'How to format an external hard drive Mac? What format system to use when reformatting my storage drive for a Mac?'
This is a frequent question asked by first-time, as well as the not-so-tech-savvy, macOS users. Learning how to format an external hard drive Mac is essential. Because saving all your data on the Cloud is nice and all, but physical storage is still popular. Especially if you don't have a stable internet connection or if most of your files are large.
Luckily, you don't have to learn rocket science to be able to format an external hard drive for Mac or PC. The operation is pretty straightforward. When it comes to your iOS device, we have listed two methods for you, read below and explore more.
Part 1: What Is the Best Format for External Hard Drive Mac?
The first step to formatting your external drive for a Mac computer is choosing the right format. There are four possible choices:
- APFS (Apple File System)
- HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
- exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
- FAT (MS-DOS)
To understand which is the best for you, let's have a comprehensive overview of each of them.
1. Apple File System
The APFS was first introduced in 2017 as a replacement for the HFS+. Nowadays, all new Macs come with the operating system preinstalled on APFS, as this system is optimized for use with SSD and flash storage drives. However, it still works with traditional HDD drives too.
This is the best format to pick if you have an external SSD or USB flash drive that you don't intend to use with a Windows device.
The biggest strength of this system is the speed, as well as the encryption and metadata handling. However, you won't be able to use this system with Time Machine.
2. Mac OS Extended
The HFS+, or Hierarchical File System plus on its real name, was the main file system used for Mac until 2017.
This type of file system is suitable to use with both HDD and SDD drives, but the latter will perform slightly better with the APFS mentioned above. If you have an older Mac, though, choosing the HFS+ is your best bet.
In general, all external drives formatted to HFS+ work nicely with older Mac versions but are incompatible with Windows.
3. Extended File Allocation Table
Designed by Microsoft, the exFAT is a good choice if you plan to use the external hard drive with both macOS and Windows systems. Yet, you won't get top performance on either. This choice is more appropriate for USB flash drives, although you can still use it for SDD and HDD units too.
The main issue with exFAT is that your drive will be more prone to fragmentation when used with Apple devices and is less stable than NTFS on Windows. If you really have to share the drive between Mac and Windows machines, that's your best option though.
4. MS-DOS
Macs also support FAT32 drives, marked as FAT in Disk Utility. Open source video editing software. This format should be avoided at all costs unless you're dealing with a really old Windows computer, which you really have to use in parallel with your Mac system.
Typically, there is no reason to choose this option unless you're planning to use the external hard drive on a Windows XP or earlier machine.
Part 2: How to Format an External Hard Drive Mac?
Now that you know which format to choose, it's time to learn how to format an external hard drive for Mac. There are essentially two methods, with Disk Utility or Time Machine function.
Note: If you plan to format an older external drive, perhaps one you used with another device, make sure to backup all data before proceeding. Formatting is a permanent procedure that can't be reversed. While there are data recovery software you can use if you lost data, it is always better to prevent.
That said, here's how to format an external hard drive Mac:
Method 1: Format Mac Hard Drive with Disk Utility
Disk Utility is a utility application proprietary to macOS that is used to both format and manage internal and external disks. Here's how to use it:
Step 1 Connect the external hard drive you want to format to your Mac, then start the Disk Utility app that you can find under Applications -> Utilities. Macbook pro hard drive for sale.
Step 2 On the left side of the Utilities screen, find the name of the external hard drive you want to format and select it. Then, on the top side under the Disk Utility, click on the Erase button.
Step 3 Follow the on-screen prompts to select the desired file system and allow the drive to format. That's it! After the process is complete, you can either start using the drive or choose to create partitions on it.
Method 2: Format Mac Hard Drive with Time Machine
Formatting an external hard drive with Time Machine is as easy as formatting it with Disk Utility. Time Machine, however, gives you the possibility to create an automatic backup of the data on your hard drive before formatting it.
![Hard Hard](https://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/e/ef/Change-a-Macbook-Pro-Battery-Step-10.jpg/-crop-342-184-245px-Change-a-Macbook-Pro-Battery-Step-10.jpg)
Before you proceed, therefore, you should first set up the external drive to use with Time Machine. To do this, open System Preferences and select Time Machine after you've connected the external drive to your Mac.
Now, click on Select Disk and select the desired drive from the list. Click on the Use Disk button. At this point, the system will run an automatic backup two minutes after you've clicked on the Use Disk button, or you can proceed with the formatting if the hard disk is empty.
To format an external hard drive for Mac with Time Machine, you must follow the steps below.
Step 1 Open Finder, Applications, then go to Utilities and Disk Utility.
Step 2 Follow the steps above to format the drive, and then you can use it with Time Machine on your Mac system.
Part 3: Bonus Tip – Data Recovery from Formatted Hard Drive on Mac
Apple Tv External Hard Drive Formatting
Sometimes, it may happen that you accidentally formatted an external hard drive containing important data. Whether it's your wedding pictures or your bachelor's degree thesis, chances are you want to get that data back as quickly as possible.
If you have a newer version of Mac, you can use the Apple Time Machine to recover your canceled files, or you could choose to use external software, such as Recoverit Data Recovery.
1. Recover Data with Apple Time Machine
In the former hypothesis, you can try to recover your data with the Time Machine. This app is Apple's backup feature present on the newer systems. If you followed the steps above before formatting the hard drive with Time Machine and allowed the app to execute the backup, then there are high chances that you can recover any lost data without too much hassle.
To do so, just launch the Time Machine and browse through the folders to see if it has saved the files you require.
For easier browsing, you can use the time stamp feature on the right side of the screen and select the date or time when you executed the backup. Once you found the files, simply click on Restore to get them back.
2. Recover Data with Recoverit Data Recovery
If you didn't use the Time Machine function or couldn't find the files you need, you can try to recover any lost files with trusted third-party software, such as Recoverit - Data Recovery.
Recoverit (IS)
A Life Saver to Solve Your Data Loss Problems!
- It allows you to recover unlimited lost or deleted files from your Mac device, including photo, video, and audio data, document files, and more.
- It supports all types of Mac files irrespective of their extension.
- Compatible with both internal and external drives, USB pens, memory cards, and other hardware, so you can rest assured it will retrieve your data if it's there.
- Retrieve data from accidentally deleted files, lost or formatted partitions, data lost due to virus attacks, system crashes, or data lost by the Time Machine.
- It is free to download and supports all leading macOS versions, including the 10.14 release.
3,165,867 people have downloaded it
This system is also very easy to use, in just three easy steps:
Step 1Install the application and choose the desired location
Download and install the software on your Mac computer, then open it and select the external hard drive, partition, or location where you want to retrieve data.
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Step 2Start the scan to retrieve your lost data
Click the Start button. The software will now scan the selected drive and display all retrieved data in an easy-to-scour list.
Step 3 Preview the recovered files and save them in your chosen location
Review and select the target files, then launch the recovery process. That's it. The software will restore your lost data.
Apple 1tb External Hard Drive
Conclusion
External Hard Drive For Mac
As you can see, how to format an external hard drive Mac is not particularly complicated. The Disk Utility allows you to format the desired drive to the desired system in a blink of an eye. Backing up the data on your drive with Time Machine also allows you to avoid the recovery hassle. If you still lost some data, you even know which software to use to recover all lost files.
Apple Tv External Hard Drive Formatted
![Apple 1tb external hard drive Apple 1tb external hard drive](https://web.archive.org/web/20180830120426im_/http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/552562DSC02320bis.jpg)
External Hard Drive Tv Capable
Now it's your turn. Use this guide to format your unreadable external drive, download, and use the data recovery software if needed, and don't forget to share this article with your Mac-addicted friends. They might make good use of it too.