Video:How to Format a Mac OSX Hard Drive

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Transcript:How to Format a Mac OSX Hard Drive

Hi I'm Ron Lipsky for About.com. Today I'm going to show you how to format a hard drive using the Mac OS X operating system. This is good for you if you use a Mac Book or a Mac Pro, maybe even G4. Most of these computers run the OS X system.

Deleting Information

I want you to remember when we're formatting a disk, we're erasing it. So make sure there's nothing on this disk you care about. Forewarned you are.

Select the System Drive

What we're talking about today is an external drive, a cable to connect the hard drive to the laptop and third your Macintosh computer or laptop. The first thing to do is connect your hard drive. Now that it's all plugged in, what you need to do is go to your desktop on your Macintosh operating system and select the system drive, which is usually Macintosh HD.

Open Disc Utilities

Now you need to open applications, and open utilities. Under utilities, double click the disk utility application to open it. A window is going to open and it's going to list all the hard drives that are available on your computer.

Select Erase Tab

Select the disk that you just connected, and it's going to be on the left, and you're going click on the erase tab to the right of the list of drops. The window is going to display the options for erasing the hard drive and formatting it to work with a Mac. What you need to do is select "DEVolume Format" from the pop-up list. In most cases, you want to leave it at Mac OS extender, if this is the default. That's the best .

Name the Hard Drive

Now you have to name the hard drive, so in my case, I'm going to name this guy Ron, OK that's my name. Click on erase. A window is going to open, asking you to verify the erase procedure. And click on the erase button in this window, to start the process of erasing this disk.

Working With the Formatted Hard Drive

Once the process is complete, the drive is going to appear with the name that you gave it on the left side of the window with the list of drives and on the desktop of the computer. So as you can see, "Ron" is right there on my desktop and that's what I'm going to be using as my hard drive with my Mac OS X system. This hard drive is now ready.

You can put anything you want on it, store your pictures and videos. It's simple to do. You just want to make sure you prepare appropriately. I hope that worked for you as easily as it worked for me.

If there's any more information you want, go to About.com. Until then, I'll see you next time.