How to Format an External Hard Drive

External hard drives are awesome. You store everything into it, take it anywhere and everywhere, attach it to any computer system, and voila! you have your data ready for access. However, some excited computer users have a habit of flooding their HDDs with so much data and information, that soon it loses its swiftness and pace. Sounding similar? Well, it sure does. You see, many computer users, especially the ones who are hardcore entertainment freaks, love swamping their computer systems with unlimited movies, media files, games, etc. and when there's not even a bit (pun intended) of space left, they switch to an external hard drive, and wreak havoc on it too! Now, it really isn't my place to wonder what causes you to format your drive - it could be a device crash, a glut of unnecessary information, or simply a virus attack. However, what I can do is, help you figure the process of formatting a hard drive in simple, easy steps. Doesn't matter which computer system you own. For your convenience, we've segregated this write-up with respect to formatting an external hard drive on Windows and Mac. Take a look at the following guidelines.

Formatting on Windows

One of the most important things to keep in mind while formatting a hard disk is to keep a check on the file system of your computer. Just so you know, Windows operating systems support two file systems for external hard drives; NTFS and FAT32. NTFS is a better file system for it supports files which are much larger than 4GB when it comes to size, and hence, allows you quite some space for your backup. For the purpose of this section, we'll be dealing with formatting external hard drives on Windows with the help of NTFS. Following are the step-by-step instructions. Take a look.

• Log in to your system as Administrator, and click on the Start Menu.
• Right click on My Computer and select Manage.
• In order to begin with the formatting, right click on your hard drive (it's either E drive or F drive), and select Format.
• Now, when you click on Format, a dialog box appears, wherein, you need to type a name of your hard drive, along with choosing the file system. Type NTFS, and click Ok.
• Clicking Ok would pop-up yet another dialog box that will warn you about erasing all data that is existing in the hard drive. Click Ok again, and let it format.
• You just need to wait for a few minutes till the system formats your hard drive. In no time, your HDD will be formatted, leaving you with an empty hard drive ready to be filled with data again.

Formatting on Mac

If you're a proud owner of Mac, formatting a hard drive is tackled by a program called 'Disk Utility', which allows you to erase all data that exists in your hard drive. The operating system of Mac is known as the Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which has its own set of instructions for hard drive formatting. Here they are:

• Attach your HDD with the USB cable, and wait till it gets listed on the left-hand side of your screen.
• Select the hard drive (titled Macintosh HD usually), and click on the tab which says Erase.
• Once you click on Erase, the system asks you to name your hard drive, and choose the file formatting system you want to use on the external hard drive for formatting. By default, Mac OS X Journal is the file system that is always recommended for formatting purposes as it is specifically designed for Mac systems. Select it, and click Erase again.
• Wait for a few minutes till the hard drive gets formatted. In a while, you'll have your empty hard drive back.

Formatting a hard drive on either of the operating systems is an extremely easy process. However, one step missed or gone wrong can lead to unexpected device crash. Hence, it is always recommended to read every message that pops up during the formatting process. What's more, formatting a hard drive results in an empty disk with all data erased. Hence, if you have important information in your hard drive, better create a backup of the same. Later on, you can format your external hard drive, and fill it up again.