One of the tasks we often find ourselves doing on a Mac is formatting external storages, such as hard drives or USB flash drives. This process can be necessary for several reasons, whether to prepare the device for a specific use or simply to clean it and start from scratch.
Fortunately, macOS offers us an extremely useful tool for this task: Disk Utility. A simple yet powerful application that is very easy to use for, when appropriate, formatting an external storage on a Mac in a simple and quick manner.
How to use Disk Utility on a Mac
The first step is to connect the external storage device to our Mac. Normally, we should see the device's icon appear on the desktop or within the "Locations" section in the Finder sidebar, indicating that the device is properly connected.
With the device already connected, the next step is to open Disk Utility. This tool is located within the "Utilities" folder, which we can access from the Finder in the Dock, selecting "Applications" and then "Utilities". Alternatively, we can use Spotlight (Command (⌘) + Space bar) to find it quickly.
Inside Disk Utility, we will see a list of all the storage devices connected to our Mac. It is vitally important that we carefully select the device we want to format to avoid any unwanted data loss. Once selected, we click on the Erase button located at the top of the window.
A dialog box will open, allowing us to configure the formatting options. Here, we enter the name we want to give the device after formatting and choose the file system that suits our needs. For exclusive use with Mac, "APFS" is generally the best option. If we need compatibility between Windows and Mac, "ExFAT" will be the right choice. As for the Scheme, the "GUID Partition Map" is usually the recommended standard for Mac.
Finally, after configuring these options, we proceed to click on the Erase button. The formatting will begin and, depending on the size of the device, it may take a few minutes. Once completed, we will receive a success notification and the device will be ready to be used again.
As we can see, formatting an external storage on a Mac is a really simple process, thanks to Disk Utility. By following these steps, we can ensure that our external storages are clean and ready to store whatever we need, keeping our workflow efficient and organized.
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