Tag Archives: format

How to choose a format for an external drive in OS X

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USBDriveIconXFormatting an external drive to work with your Mac can be done in several ways. While for the most part drives ship in formats that are universally recognized among operating systems so data can at least be read, there are times when you may wish to wipe a drive and set it up to be most compatible with your Mac. On the other hand, you may have a drive you have primarily used with your Mac, but now wish to use it with a Windows system. In these cases, it helps to know how best to format your drive. Continue reading →

How to determine if your Mac’s hard drive is failing

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HardDriveIconXYour hard drive failing can mean loss or corruption to important data, or perhaps to applications and system software that can destabilize the system. If your Mac is regularly showing hangs, is running exceptionally sluggishly, crashes, or you get odd permissions denied errors about the inability to access certain files for which you previously had access, then your drive may be about to fail. Continue reading →

How to prepare a drive for use in OS X

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USBDriveIconXWhen you purchase a thumb drive or hard drive and attach or install it in your Mac, you likely will be able to use it right away; however, depending on the uses you intend for the drive, its default setup may not be the most optimal.

In most cases, manufacturers ship drives formatted to the FAT32 filesystem, since this format is universally supported Continue reading →

How to fix deep formatting problems with OS X drives

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DiskUtilityIconXEven though formatting advances like Journaling in Apple’s filesystem formats help prevent data corruption, problems can still happen that result in a drive not only being unreadable, but also unable to be reformatted.

If this happens, the drive may show up in the Finder sidebar but not show data when clicked, Continue reading →