How to Format an External Hard Drive – Updated
Getting Started with Hard Drive Formats
I use external hard drives to store all of my photos and for my backups. External hard drives are great, but they must be formated properly for before you start filling them up with important information. Here’s a link to an article that I recently wrote on my storage and backup system.
Sometimes the dumbest problems seem to last forever. To this day, a PC cannot read from a hard drive that has been formatted for the Mac without additional software. Likewise, the Mac OS X Operating System can read from, but cannot write to, an external drive that has been formatted for a PC using the NTFS file system without additional software.
Regardless of brand or model, the very first thing that you must do when you buy a brand new external hard drive is to format it properly for your system. Format and partition your new disk immediately, before you start using it for backup or for additional file storage. It is essential that you do this right away, before you start using the drive, because the formatting process erases everything on the external disk.
Most photographers will want to format their new external hard drives using their operating system’s optimal style. NTFS is the standard for Windows users and OS X Extended (Journaled) is the standard for Mac folks. Most photographers using Macs will not get any extra benefit from the “case sensitive” option.
How to format an external drive (Windows):
Hard Drive Formatting – PC from ASMP dpBestflow on Vimeo.
PC users might also want to follow these links for tutorials on drive formatting.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/tips/advanced/ntfs.mspx
http://reviews.ebay.com/Formatting-an-external-hard-drive-using-Windows_W0QQugidZ10000000004054118< br/>
How to format an external drive (Mac):
Hard Drive Formatting – Mac from ASMP dpBestflow on Vimeo.
For more great advice on drive formatting I urge you to read this article from the American Society of Media Photographers fantastic dpbestflow.org project.
Getting Fancy: Going Cross-Platform
What if you need to use the same external hard drives with both types of computers? If you set the external drive up using NTFS then the Mac can’t write files onto it. Rats. If you set the drive up using OS X Extended then the PC won’t even recognize it. Double-rats. So what to do?
The best solution that I have found to this dilemma requires an additional piece of software. PC users who face this problem should look into a super cool program called MacDrive 7
Mac users who find themselves in a similar position should look into a program called Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X. Like MacDrive, this inexpensive utility gives a Mac the ability to both read and write to an NTFS hard drive. Once I have MacDrive installed on my PC, I can use an external hard drive that has been formatted using either the NTFS or OS X Extended system. Likewise, with Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X installed, my Mac suddenly works with either drive format. Problem solved!
Options for Formatting a Hard Drive
Filed Under: FAQ • Getting Started • Hardware • Workflow
About the Author: David Marx has an extensive knowledge of digital photography and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. David is a talented instructor and his entertaining teaching style works for students of all skill levels. He has been teaching digital photography and image enhancement with Adobe Photoshop since 2002. In addition, David’s sports and landscape images are often featured on the web and in outdoor sports publications.
In 2009, David Marx led digital photography programs for the 
[...] forget that every external disk must be formatted properly before you put anything on it. See how to format an external drive for more details. GD Star Ratingloading… Share [...]
Dave…great info as always. But here’s a wrinkle for you…
What if you have a Mac laptop but you run Bootcamp on it to make it act like a PC. Would you want your external hard drive formatted as if your laptop were a Mac or a PC? Would it matter if you’re using one of the software solutions you mention? Which one would apply or would you have to have both?
Hello Kathy E.,
I’m flattered that you follow this site! When your run Bootcamp your computer truly loads Windows and thus NTFS is the format of choice. An OS X formated drive (Mac) is not usable with Bootcamp without additional software.
If you have some reason to use the same drive with your Windows Partition (Bootcamp) and with the Mac Partition then I suggest formatting it NTFS and adding NTFS for OS X.
Hope this helps,
David
[...] video tutorial is all about our initial Lightroom setup. In this movie, I start from square one by formatting a brand new external hard drive and then forcing Lightroom to put my Catalog, the index of my [...]
Before any format you should have in mind that you have to backup your data in order to keep your important files and keep them in a safe place.
As a addition at this tutorial i must say that you can use for backup a software called http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html , is free to use and also it has some cool features and also you will be able to store the database online on their server