

There are too many to cover here, but our sister site Macworld UK outlines theīest data recovery apps for those interested. These are generally paid apps, but they could restore your external drive depending on the issue. If all else fails, you’ve always got the option of using a third-party data recovery app. Reformatting an external drive for Mac in more detail separately. Click Erase to confirm and start the reformatting process.Only fast external SSDs can utilise APFS formatting. If you want to use the drive across PC and Mac, we’d recommend ExFAT, but if you’re on macOS exclusively, we recommend Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Enter a new drive name and select the new format.Select the external drive from the list on the left.Plug your external drive into your Mac.When you’re ready to reformat the drive, follow these steps:

We’d recommend using a PC to transfer files prior to reformatting the drive for use with Mac where possible. The good news is that it’s easy to change the format – the bad news is that doing so will completely wipe the drive, deleting any previously-stored data.

NTFS: Default file format for Windows PCs, not compatible with Mac.For those unfamiliar with data formats, there are several popular options: If your external drive appears when plugged into a PC but not your Mac, chances are that the drive’s formatting isn’t compatible with macOS.

Once repaired, you should be able to access your external drive as normal.
