how to format seagate hard drive for mac

Format Seagate Hard Drive Mac Chances Are

You can also see it in the Finder in the left column under Locations (or Devices on older versions of macOS).

Format Seagate Hard Drive Mac Chances Are

If the drive is not showing up on your Mac chances are it has not been formatted correctly, has been corrupted, or is faulty.

If you have a NAS drive that connects over the network then you should read this article about connecting to a NAS drive.

It may have been formatted incorrectly, it may be corrupted, it may have a faulty (or inadequate) cable, or there could be something else.

Try the following to make sure your Mac is set to show mounted drives on the desktop.

Very old Macs may require a USB power cable, a cable that splits into two USB connectors that need to both be plugged into your Mac, in order to deliver enough power to the drive.

Similarly, make sure that the drive doesnt have an external power supply it should be using.

Try using a different cable with the drive to see if that fixes the problem.

Similarly, if you are using a USB port via a hub check thats not whats causing the problem.

Or if you only have the one, plug another device in and see if that works ok.

If it also fails to mount there you will know that there is a problem with the drive while if it does mount then the problem is with your Mac.

If the drive mounts on the PC its likely that you have discovered what the problem is: the drive is formatted for PCs and cant be read by your Mac.

If your Mac has already mounted the drive the option Unmount will be displayed instead.

If there is no volume listed your Mac is not able to access the drive.

First Aid will check the disk for errors and then repair the disk if necessary and this is the option to choose.

Restore allows you to erase the contents of the drive and replace that with data from somewhere else.

If you need the data on the drive do not choose Erase or Restore).

Choose your format, probably exFAT if you want to make sure its compatible with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is probably the best option.

If after running First Aid the Mac finds errors you could fix you may see the option to Repair Disk.

To unmount your drive you can right-click (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.

Apparently most drive issues are caused when the disk is removed without ejecting it properly.

How To Format Seagate Hard Drive For Mac