Mac Os Reformatting Usb Waiting For Partitions To Activate
Windows and Mac OS X use What is a file system and why do they. External hard disks and USB drives are generally formatted with the. Step Three: Reinstall macOS. With your information wipe complete, you are now ready to reinstall macOS. If you booted from a functioning recovery partition, click the “Reinstall macOS” button. The installation process will begin. If you booted from an USB disk, click “Continue” to advance to the installer.
So you just got a new external hard drive, and wanted to sell or donate your old one? Or your current external drive just got over-cluttered, and you want to completely wipe it out to regain all the storage space?
Either way, in this article we are going to show you two different ways to securely erase an external drive on a Mac computer (iMac, MacBook, etc.).
The guide should work with all types of external disks, including hard disk drive (HDD), solid-state drive (SSD) or a flash drive.
Warning: Before you proceed, make sure you’ve already backed up all your important data. Once you use any of the methods below, the drive will be completely erased and all data will be removed permanently.
1. Erase External Hard Drive on Mac via Disk Utility
First off, connect your external hard drive to your Mac. Make sure the device can be detected by the machine. Then follow the step by step tutorial below:
- On your Mac, go to Applications > Utilities >Disk Utility.
- Click on the Erase tab (next to “First Aid”).
- Select the disk or volume in the list on the left panel.
- Choose a file system to which you want to format your external drive.
- Next, click the Security Options button at the bottom.
- Here you can specify how securely you want to wipe the drive, move to Most Secure if you are paranoid because this option overwrites more times to the disk space, though the process tends to be slower.
- After that, click Erase to continue.
Note: If your drive is an SSD, you won’t be able to click “Security Options” as this option will be grayed out. It’s because SSDs don’t have to go through this process due to the way it manages files.
2. Wipe External Hard Drive on Mac via Terminal (Command Line)
If for any reason Disk Utility fails to wipe your drive. You can also try the Terminal app, though it’s a command-line tool that requires you to be a bit geeky.
- Search “Terminal” in Spotlight.
- Open it and enter this line: diskutil list
- Now you’ll see a list of disks there, target yours through the disk identifier. Jot down the information.
- Next, type: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ (diskname diskidentifier)
- Press the Enter key and your external drive will be erased completely.
This video also has more:
BRUM Design is a Dutch packaging design company that found the perfect balance between sketching concepts by hand and turning them into beautiful packaging on the Mac. They use Esko Studio to test, improve and visualize their designs – in 3D. Esko studio for mac.
Wiping an external hard drive on Mac is an easy task. With one of the above methods, you should be able to get the job done quickly. If you have any questions during the wiping process, let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Jessica is the co-founder and content manager. She has been fascinated by the startup culture in Silicon Valley and she loves building things from zero to one. When she is not writing, she loves getting close to nature and shoot photos with her iPhone and Canon EOS 80D.