Formatting is a good method to help you regain the full storage of your WD My Passport portable hard drive. It is also a good way to remove virus-infected files completely. And with special tool, you even can permanently destroy all the data on your WD My Passport portable hard drive after formatting. Plug the drive in. Connect the Western Digital My Passport hard drive to the.
Connect your Western Digital My Passport drive to Mac computer, and let the OS detect and mount the drive for use. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the desktop. On macOS Dock, select Finder. When the Finder window opens, on the menu bar, select ‘Go’ and then ‘Utilities.’. Step-4: Location of WD My Book External Hard Drive For your WD My Book external drive, you have to select the drive letter. After selecting the window, you need to click the Start button. 'how to format my WD My Passport for Mac on to windows 10',I have a WD My Passport for Mac. I used to have a Macbook Air so it would always read the devise cause i guess it was formatted just for Mac. I sold my Mac and bout a windows computer. So how do i get to see my files from my external hard drive on my PC.
Do you keep a backup of your data on an external hard drive? Hopefully, you do. It’s an intelligent way to keep data safe. But if the external drive gets corrupted, then what?
Worry not; you can reformat the hard drive and make it accessible, but what about the data? Again, there’s nothing to worry about; you can recover that data too. But how?
In this post, we will discuss how to reformat the drive and recover data from the formatted hard drive.
But before that, let’s know what formatting is.
What Does Formatting Hard Drive Mean?
Formatting a hard drive means deleting all the data on the drive and creating new file systems. Generally, when the hard drive media is inaccessible or has errors, formatting is required.
How To Reformat An External Drive?
Reformatting a hard drive on Windows and Mac is simple. To learn how to format a drive on Windows, follow the steps below.
Note: Since we want to recover data, we will do a quick format as it only deletes the organizational structure keeping the actual files there. It’s like throwing empty boxes and keeping the content.
Reformatting external hard drive Windows 10
1. Connect the hard drive and wait for Windows to recognize it
2. Launch File Explorer > This PC
3. Look for the external drive > right-click > select Format
4. Make sure you select the Quick Format box. If you make a mistake here, you will lose all the data.
5. To begin the process, click Start and wait for the process to finish.
Once done, do not perform any operation on the disk as this might overwrite the data, and we may not recover the old data.
Reformatting external hard drive Mac
Note: Since formatting hard drive erases all data, we recommend backing up important files.
1. Connect the external drive
2. Open Applications Folder > Utilities >Disk Utility
3. Look for the external driver you wish to reformat
4. Select and click Erase
5. Follow on-screen instructions and choose exFat. We recommend this as both Windows and Mac support this file format.
6. Click Erase. Once done, don’t perform any operation as this will reduce the chances of data recovery.
How To Recover Data From Reformatted Hard Drive Windows 10 & Mac
After reformatting the external hard drive, we will need to use third-party data recovery software to recover data. Here we enlist the best data recovery apps to restore data on both Windows and Mac. All the programs listed below will help restore as much data as possible.
So, without any delay, let’s read further and know about the best data recovery software.
1. Stellar Data Recovery Software
Using this data recovery app, you can recover data from a reformatted hard disk available for both Windows and Mac. The software helps recover all major file types and formats. Moreover, you can preview files before saving them and can retrieve any kind of data from formatted media.
Nonetheless, in just 3 simple steps, you can get back the data you forgot to backup. To use Stellar, follow the steps below:
1. Download, install, and launch the product.
2. Select the type of data you want to recover.
3. Select the folder location or drive volume and click Scan
4. Once the process is done, select a file to recover and click Recover to save recovered data.
Tip: When recovering data, never save it on the same disk from which you are retrieving it, as this reduces the chances of data recovery.
2. EaseUS Data Recovery
This recovery tool is compatible with both Mac and Windows, and it serves 100+ real-life data loss scenarios like formatting, deleting, etc. With a user-friendly approach, this recovery tool comes in handy, and it helps recover files from reformatted external drives, hard disk, and more. Moreover, it offers different scan modes to help recover more data. The quick scan takes a shorter time while the Deep Scan, as the name suggests, is more thorough and time-consuming. Not only this, when using EaseUS, you can recover data even when the scan is in process. If you find the data you have been looking for during the scan, you can recover it and save time. What’s more EaseUS even works as a photo and video repair tool. This means using this recovery software; you can repair corrupt, damage,d and broken MP4, MOV videos, photos, etc.
To recover data, install the product, select the file type, disk volume, scan it, and retrieve data.
3. Recuva – Data Recovery Tool
Offered by Piriform Recuva Professional is available for Windows only. You can recover images, documents, music, emails, and other lost file types using it. Also, it helps recover files from damaged or newly formatted drives. To retrieve a significant amount of data from a reformatted hard disk, we suggest using Deep Scan. This advanced and deep scan helps find traces of all the deleted files and recover them.
Using any of these tools, you can easily recover data from reformatted hard disk on Windows 10 and Mac. In addition to this, to avoid losing data when the external drive gets corrupt, we suggest keeping multiple backups or using cloud storage. This will help access data even when the disk is corrupt. We hope you find the article useful. Do let us know which tool you used and why in the comments section.
A lot of people including you, storing important data on Seagate external hard drive instead of on your PC/Mac hard drive. The reason is perhaps that Seagate external hard drive has been well known for a long time as one of the most reliable drives for storing data. And it has super large storage up to 8TB.
If you're using Seagate external hard drive and you want to reformat your Seagate external hard drive, then you came to the right place. Because on this article, I'll show you the easiest, fastest, and the safest way to reformat a Seagate external hard drive. Whether you're using Mac or Windows, this method will work perfectly.
Please note: Reformating means that all the data you stored inside your Seagate external hard drive will be deleted permanently. And there's absolutely no way to recover the data once it's gone. Of course, it's good if you're planning to sell your Seagate external hard drive. But, if you have a plan to use it again someday, you may want to think again before reformating your Seagate external hard drive. It is strongly rcommended to back up your important data to another hard drive before your reformat the Seagate external hard drive.
Easy steps to reformat Seagate external hard drive
So are you ready to reformat Seagate external hard drive? If so, then keep reading and follow the method below carefully to make sure you're doing this method properly.
How to Reformat Seagate External Hard Drive?Step 1: First of all, as I said before, reformating will erase all your data that stored on the hard drive permanently. So the first step you must do is move all of your important data to your PC/Mac, or to cloud storage service. Remember, once the data is gone, there's no way to recover it.
Step 2: Connect your Seagate external hard drive into your PC or Mac. Make sure it will be connected throughout the process or you may break the hard drive if it's unconnected while the reformatting process is running.
Step 3: The next step is downloading the software AweEraser. This software is the powerful data erasure which is fully compatible both with Windows and Mac. You can easily formate your Seagate external hard drive using this software. Once you downloaded the software, now install the software. Installing this software is easy so I thought it doesn't need to include installation guide in this article. Go install it now!
Step 4: When the installation process is done, now the software should run automatically. Now you'll see there are three data erasure options on the left section. There are: Erase Files, Erase Hard Drive, and Erase Free Space. Choose Erase Hard Drive option, and you should see a list of the drives connected to your PC/Mac including the external hard drive you want to reformat. Choose the external hard drive and click 'Erase' button at the bottom of the screen.
Step 5: Now you should wait until the process is done, while also making sure the process isn't interrupted. And please don't open any apps because it will slow down the reformatting process.
After the long reformatting process is done, good job! You just reformating Seagate external hard drive perfectly. Now you'll see all the data is gone and it's fresh like the first time you buy it. Don't forget to share this article to help people who're looking for this easy, fast, and safe way to reformating Seagate external hard drive.
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