While this won’t help you in your current predicament, there is a simple bit of advice you can follow to help avoid data corruption: always disconnect your drive safely. 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.

ExFAT: Upgraded version of FAT32 without file limits, compatible with PC, Mac and Linux.Ĭhances are that if your drive is recognised on PC but not Mac, it uses the NTFS file format.

FAT/FAT32: Older file format limited to a maximum 4GB file size, but compatible with PC, Mac and Linux.APFS: File format introduced in macOS Sierra, not compatible with PC.Mac OS Extended: Pre-Sierra file format for Mac, not compatible with PC.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.

Mac external drives info