Seagate Mac Setup - Format Your Drive
1. Log Into Your Mac. And Connect Your Drive.
Depending on the model of drive you may need an adaptor cable to plug into your Mac’s USB port.
2. Open Disk Utility.
You’ve free disk management software on your Mac. It’s part of your Mac OS X (operating system). The name of the software is Disk Utility.
You find it by doing a Spotlight search.
Click on the Spotlight icon at the top of your Mac’s desktop screen.
Then type in ‘Disk Utility’ and press the return key.
Double click on Disk Utility to start.
3. Pick Your Seagate Drive Under External.
After Disk Utility opens. On the left hand side of the pop up window you’ll see a list.
You’ll find your Seagate external drive listed under ‘External’.
Click on your Seagate drive in the list. The red arrow on the photo above shows you where.
It’s important that you pick your USB drive at the right level. Or your Seagate drive set up may not work.
Expand the list if you can’t see the levels. You do that by clicking on the down arrow to the left of the drive icon on the list.
You may need to change your Disk Utility view to see all the levels.
Click on View from the top menu on your Mac’s desktop.
From the drop down menu pick ‘Show All Devices’.
Click your external hard drive at the top level.
4. Click On Erase.
At the top of your Disk Utility pop up window you’ll find the Erase button. Click on that.
Now you’re taken to the next pop up window. There you’ll put in how you want to set up your external hard disk for your Mac.
But wait a moment.
Before you set up your Seagate drive on your Mac, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.
Are there any important files on the Seagate external hard disk you want?
Because continuing to set up and format your external drive means you’ll lose any files on the drive.
And then you’ll be seeking the services of a Data Recovery Company. Or Data Recovery software to get that lost data back.
If you know there are files on your Seagate hard disk drive. Or Seagate external SSD (Solid State Drive) then copy them somewhere safe first. Then you can go ahead and format.
5. Name Your Seagate Hard Drive And Pick Your Format.
Choose and put in a name where it says Name.
Next pick your file format.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when formatting a drive that is right now in an ExFAT or NTFS format.
Even if you want to format to APFS. Or ExFAT but change the partition map. Because you have to choose Mac OS Extended first.
6. Pick GUID Partition Map For Scheme.
The next option you choose when setting up your Seagate drive for Mac is Scheme.
Pick GUID Partition Map.
7. Click Erase Bottom Right.
8. When Setting Up As APFS Or ExFAT.
Run through the steps 3 and 4 again. And the second time under format you pick APFS or ExFAT depending on what you want. Be sure to pick GUID Partition Map for scheme.
Then click on the Erase button to format.
In a few moments the setting up of your Seagate storage device on your Mac will be all done.
When Disk Utility is finished you can get rid of its pop up window.
And in a few seconds your Mac will show your Seagate external hard drive on your Mac’s desktop.
Right click and pick eject on your Seagate External drive’s icon when you’re done with your drive.
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