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I am looking to purchase a Seagate External Hard Drive for my MacBook Air.

The products claims it works only with PC (windows), however, I have read multiple places that I can just format the drive and it will work fine with a mac.

1) Is this a correct statement. I assume it is but I am new to OSX and like to check.

2) What is the process to format an external drive? (Using OS X 10.9)

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  • Buyer beware! I have seen this kind of thing before where a manufacturer states only windows and even after reformatting the drive it doesn't work after a week or so. Please consider looking for something that has the official "Made for Mac" logo. A perfect example of this is at: wd.com/en notice that it has a different section for drives and drives for mac. If you like the Seagate then purchase it from somewhere with a good return policy
    – Andrew U.
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 6:49
  • @AndrewU. - Amazon has a good return policy. => After posting here I came across another review saying it works just fine with a mac as long as you format it first.
    – L84
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 5:34
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    @AndrewU., Is it even possible that a disk can't be reformated to work for Mac? Aren't disks just disks?
    – Pacerier
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 4:59

1 Answer 1

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As long as the drive connects to your MacBook Air via a connection protocol that the Air supports like Thunderbolt or USB 2 or USB 3 you can format the drive and use it with your Mac just fine.

To format an external hard drive on your Mac (paraphrased from here):

  1. Connect the drive to your Mac
  2. Open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
  3. On the left hand side of Disk Utility you'll see a list of drives. Find your external drive and select it.
  4. Select the Erase tab and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format and give it a name
  5. Press the Erase button to kick off the process. NOTE: This will erase everything currently on the hard drive!
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  • It is a USB 3 drive so it will connect. Thank you for the information!
    – L84
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 21:13

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