How to Format MacBook External Hard Drive - The Disk You Attached Was Not Readable By This Computer
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Adding an external hard drive to a Mac is common when you need more storage. But in the world of Macs and MacBooks, external hard drives don't always work just by plugging them in. That's because most hard drives on the market are formatted for use on a PC straight from the factory. And in this short video, I'll show you how to prepare your new hard drive to work properly on a Mac or MacBook.
My instructions will work with any new USB external drive. When the drive is plugged in I immediately get a message saying the disk you attached was not readable by this computer. This means that if I want to actually use this drive on the Mac it will have to be initialized. But before continuing with my tutorial make sure there's nothing on the storage device you want to keep. Because what I'm about to show you will erase everything on it.
My drive is brand new so I'll click Initialize. On the next window I'm presented with statistics about the computer's internal storage. But I'm going to click on the name of the external drive in the left column. Now I'll click on the Erase button at the top right. At this point there are a few settings that need to be made before I continue. Here I can rename the hard drive to help me identify it later. In the Format dropdown window, there's quite a few options to choose from. If you're only going to use the external drive on a Mac then choose Mac OS Extended Journaled. Choosing this option will not allow this drive to work on a PC anymore. Again select this option only if you will be exclusively working in a Mac environment.
For me I work on Macs and PCs so for the most flexibility I will choose ExFAT. The ExFat format will let me read and write to the drive on both a Mac and Windows PC. Then for the scheme leave it on GUID Partition Map. And here's one last thing. It seems that when I chose the ExFAT format it looks like my drive name had to be shortened so I'm just going to make a minor adjustment before continuing. Remember that what I'm about to do will completely erase the drive so be absolutely sure there is nothing you want to keep on it. Ok now I'll click Erase to start initializing the disk. And even though this is a 20TB drive, the formatting process took less than 10 seconds. When it's done I have a fresh empty external hard drive I can use to store stuff on.
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