New hard drives and SSDs, including NVMe drives, must be initialized and formatted in macOS before they can be used for storage or Time Machine backups. Formatting is completed using Apple's built-in Disk Utility application to erase the drive and set a compatible file system and partition scheme.
How to Format a Hard Drive or SSD in macOS
- Connect the external hard drive or SSD to your Mac.
- Select Initialize if macOS prompts you upon connecting the drive, or open Disk Utility by navigating to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
- Click the View drop-down menu in Disk Utility and select Show All Devices.
- Select the top-level external physical drive or SSD from the left sidebar.
- Click the Erase button located in the top toolbar.
- Type a preferred name for the drive in the Name field.
- Select your desired file system in the Format drop-down, such as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
- Select GUID Partition Map in the Scheme drop-down.
- Click Erase to format the drive.
- Click Done once the formatting process completes.
Applicable To
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