How do i format my harddrive

[Ammitzboell]

Hi, my friend used my external harddrive to clone her mac to tranfer her data to her new macbook.

how do i format it on my Windows computer so i can use it again? i cant even view it in the pathfinder.

[Eigenvektor]

That's because macOS uses a different file system, which Windows can't see. Press Win+X and select Disk Management, you should be able to see the drive there. You should be able to create a new partition/format it from there.

[Bombastinator]

Windows is traditionally very hardcore about wiping anything it cant read.  Merely mounting it generally produces a request to initialize.  You’re saying this is not happening?

[Husky]

Since it was used with macOS, it may have an unrecognizable partition table. Normally using Disk Management to format the partition is enough, but I would highly recommend the following diskpart method as it ensures a fresh partition table that is compatible with Windows:

 

Open a Command Prompt or PowerShell window as Administrator. Type the following, pressing enter after each command:

- diskpart

- list disk

- select disk * (replace the * with the number of the external drive that you can see in the list disk above)

- clean (WARNING: please make sure that you used the correct number in the select disk command as this will wipe the drive)

- exit

- exit

 

Open Disk Management by right-clicking the Start Menu and clicking on Disk Management, then it will ask you to initialize a disk, choose GUID (GPT) and click OK, then find the drive (probably Black Unallocated) and right click the Unallocated space, then click Next and go through and give it a name, use NTFS, 4096, Quick Format ON, Compression OFF, Finish.

 

Done. You now have a fresh drive with a brand new partition table.

[D.U.F.F.]

-Censored-

[Ammitzboell]

17 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That's because macOS uses a different file system, which Windows can't see. Press Win+X and select Disk Management, you should be able to see the drive there. You should be able to create a new partition/format it from there.

i got it working, thanks