Sage-Tips

How do I use a Seagate external hard drive without formatting Mac?

Mac

1. Make sure the storage device is connected to and mounted on the computer.
2. Select Go > Utilities in the Finder menu bar.
3. In the Utilities folder, double-click Disk Utility.
4. Select the Seagate drive in the left column.
5. Click the Erase tab.
6. Choose a format from the drop-down window.
7. Enter a name for the volume.

Can I use Seagate Expansion Hard Drive with Mac?

You can. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve a 1TB, 2TB, 4TB or 5TB or bigger Seagate Expansion. Or if it’s an SSD expansion or a desktop drive. You can have it and use your Seagate Expansion on your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac.

Do I need to format Seagate Expansion?

Seagate internal drives are not preformatted and must be formatted before use. If you have a drive that is formatted for a different type of computer or a drive that is not preformatted, you will need to format the drive before you can use it. Also, drives that will be used for storage need to be formatted.

How do I make my external hard drive compatible with Mac?

How to format an external drive in OS X

1. Connect the drive to the Mac.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select the drive you want to format.
4. Click Erase.
5. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings: OS X Extended format and GUID partition map.
6. Click Erase and OS X will format the drive.

How do I unlock Seagate Expansion drive Mac?

To unlock an encrypted hard drive, Control-click the drive icon in the main Finder view or the sidebar. In the menu that pops up, select Decrypt “Drive Name” and enter the password. This only works if you know the password. And if you don’t, you can still format the drive, which we’ll detail a little further down.

How do I format a Seagate Expansion drive for Mac?

Do I need to format external hard drive for Mac?

Yes, connecting an external hard drive or USB flash key to a Mac will generally read and work fine as is because the Mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including Windows MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFat, and NTFS formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, formatting it to be …

How do I format a Seagate hard drive for Mac?

Are all external hard drives compatible with Mac?

Any external hard drive will work with PCs or Macs, as long as the connectors are there (Firewire, USB, etc.) It doesn’t matter how the drive is formatted out of the box, since you can re-format any way you like. Formatting in HFS (Mac OS Extended) or FAT32 or NTFS-3G can be done with the Mac OS X Disk Utility.

How to install Seagate expansion hard drive on Mac?

If you don’t have any important data stored on your Seagate Expansion hard disk, then you can just format it to a compatible macOS file system. Since macOS can read the NTFS drive, you can attach the Seagate hard drive to your system. Once it gets detected, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and launch the Disk Utility application.

What kind of drive does my Seagate external hard drive have?

When you plug in your Seagate external hard drive into your Mac you’ll see a drive icon on your Mac’s desktop. Right click on your Seagate’s drive icon. Pick ‘Get Info’ from the menu. Then look down the list you’re shown till you get to Format. If you see NTFS or ExFAT then you’ll know which kind of drive you have.

Will my Seagate Drive work with MacOS 10 15 Catalina?

Will my Seagate drive work with macOS 10.15 (Catalina)? Seagate has evaluated current product lines to determine which ones will be supported in macOS 10.15. Older drives that are not listed here may work, but have not been tested. This is a general compatibility article and not a troubleshooting article.

How do I send files from my Mac to my Seagate?

Your Seagate HDD (hard disk drive), or an SSD gets its power from your Mac. All the documents and files you want to send to your Expansion travel down its USB cable. Along with the power your drive needs to work. The desktop expansion drives have a separate power cable.