Formatting Your Hard Drives
External hard drives are a necessary part of the photo organizing process, but did you know you have to format them? This prepares the drive to be used on different operating systems. Depending on if you have a Mac or a PC, there are different ways to format your hard drives. We always recommend formatting to exFAT since it is readable by both MAC and PC.
IMPORTANT: Only do this process for unused drives. Formatting hard drives will erase everything that is on them so you should not format drives that you are already using.
How to Format Hard Drives on a Mac
Connect your external hard drive to your Mac
On your Mac computer, hit command + spacebar. This will open a search bar
Search for “Disk Utility” and open it up.
On the left side of Disk Utility, click on the drive you want to format.
5. Once the drive is selected, click on “Erase” in the upper right corner
6. Rename the drive
7. Make sure “exFAT” is selected and hit erase. Your drive is now formatted.
How to Format Hard Drives on a PC
1. Connect your external hard drive to your Windows computer.
2. Open the File Explorer and right-click the external hard drive.
3. Click Format… in the pop-up menu.
4. Select a new File System format. Click the drop-down menu and select exFAT
5. Click “Start” and your drive will be formatted