Should you intend to make an Mac OS installer drive (for OS X Mavericks, OS X El Capitan, OS X Yosemite, etc) or create any other bootable Mac OS X volume from a drive, or use a new drive as a fully compatible Time Machine backup drive, you will also need to complete this process.

Similarly, you can perform the same type of process in Mac OS X for making a USB flash drive compatible with Mac OS using the Disk Utility in Mac OS X, as you can see, it’s a quick procedure that is done in short order on any Mac: The videos below demonstrate the complete process of formatting an external hard drive for full Mac OS X compatibility, this uses the new Disk Utility in modern versions of Mac OS X: When completed, the drive will be formatted to the Mac OS X compatible HFS+ filesystem. Smaller external hard drives, SSD’s, and USB flash keys format quickly, while a larger hard drive may take a while longer. That’s all there is to it, the drive will now format and erase everything on it. Click the “Erase” button and confirm again on the next pop-up window, this will erase all data on the drive and format it to be compatible.Name the drive if you want, the name can be changed at any point.Next to “Format:” click the contextual menu and select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.Click on the “Erase” tab across the top.Locate the drive name from the left hand side of Disk Utility and click on it.Launch Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities.Connect the hard drive or USB key to the Mac.Formatting a drive will erase all data and partitions on the disk: This is a simple procedure and is achieved the same way for all drive types and through all connections, be they USB, Firewire, or Thunderbolt. How to Format an External Drive for Mac Compatibility If you have never formatted a drive before on the Mac, don’t worry, it’s super easy and we’ll walk you through the entire process.

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