1. Download Disk Utility For Mac
2. Hard Drive Test Utility Mac

Nov 16, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

Disk Inventory X (Free) - A simple disk usage utility to determine where space is being used on a hard drive. DaisyDisk ($9.95) - Another disk usage utility. This one is easier to navigate but is not free. Disk Drill (Free / $89) - Disk Drill provides Mac users with data recovery capabilities. If you’ve deleted a file, wiped a drive or any. Recently my hard drive died, and in order to figure out what happened the Apple Genius ran the Disk Utility diagnostic on it using an external computer. Unfortunately it sounds like the HD is trying to die AGAIN.diagnostic the first time, but I know it's in Disk Utility. Disk Utility is used to repair disk errors on Mac related to the hard disk drive formatting and structure. It comes with a First Aid feature for a quick repair of disk issues on Mac. Use it regularly to eliminate any issue turning into a bigger problem. OnyX is a multifunction Mac hard drive optimization utility that can be used to verify the startup hard disk and the structure of its system files. You can use OnyX to clean up Mac, clear Mac caches and run miscellaneous maintenance. It can help you configure parameters in the Finder, Dock, Safari, and some other Apple applications.

It doesn't matter what kind of situation you are in, it is important to learn how to format HDD for Mac and Windows. You might want to resell your system, get rid of something, or simply want to make more free space on it.

While it might sound complicated, both Mac and Windows give us dedicated features to manage our disk space. You can use it to manage your storage, merge partitions, and even do a disk format for Mac and PC. In this post, we will cover dedicated solutions on how to format your hard drive in Mac and PC.

Part 1. Why should you consider formatting your hard drive?

You might already know the consequences of formatting a hard drive. It will erase all the data stored in it, making it empty in one go. Therefore, before you format Mac/PC drive, make sure that you have taken a backup of your important data. Once it is done, you can do a hard disk format for Mac and PC to enjoy the following advantages.

• It will help you get rid of any sensitive data from your hard drive so that the other user can't access it.
• Once the disk is formatted, it will make it empty and let you store new content on it. Therefore, you can consider formatting a partition if you are running low of space.
• In case if the hard drive has been corrupted by a virus, then you can format it entirely to get rid of any malicious activity.
• By formatting a partition, you can manage the storage on your PC/Mac and merge the free space with another sector as well.
• It will automatically defragment the disk, which will let you reclaim the lost space on the storage unit.
• You can also resolve any disk issue by formatting your hard drive.
• After formatting a disk, you can reassign a file system to it, and make it compatible with your PC/Mac.

Part 2. Major Formats of Hard Drive for Mac and PC

Over time, more than a hundred different kinds of file systems and formats have been developed for Mac and PC hard drives. Though, here are some of the most commonly used and compatible formats.

• exFAT: It stands for Extended File Allocation Table and is developed by Microsoft. The file system is mostly used to allocate space on external storage units like USB drives or SD cards.
• NTFS: The New Technology File System is used by Windows NT operating systems. It is the common format for the native hard drive of the system and is equipped with tons of new-age memory allocation techniques.
• FAT32: The File Allocation Table format is used to store data on units that have a capacity of more than 32 GB. It mostly works on external storage units like flash drives and is compatible with both Mac and Windows.
• APFS: The Apple File System is the native technique for macOS, iOS, tvOS, and even watchOS. It provides high-end encryption and is a replacement for the age-old HFS+ system developed by Apple.

There are different other kinds of file systems that your hard drive can support. To check it, just select the partition or the external disk, right-click, and visit its 'Properties'. Go to the 'General' tab to know details about the file system of the disk.

Part 3. How to Format Hard Drive for Mac and PC on Windows?

If your Mac or PC has a Windows OS installed, then you won't face any trouble managing it. Every major version of the operating system provides a dedicated solution to format hard drive as well as external storage units. Also, you can manage the internal partitions, merge them, create new ones, and do so much more. Here's how to format hard drive on your Windows PC.

1. First, you need to access the Disk Management tool on your Windows. To do this, just click on the Start menu and look for 'disk management'. Alternatively, you can also access it from the Control Panel.
2. This will open a dedicated window for various disks on your system. Simply select a partition that you wish to format and right-click it. Choose the 'Format' option to proceed.
3. As the formatting wizard will open, select the kind of file system that you wish to convert it to. For instance, it can be NTFS, exFAT, and so on.
4. You can also allocate it to the relevant size or label it here as well. If you have less time, then you can choose to quickly format it by enabling the relevant option.
5. In the end, you will get a confirmation prompt like this. Just click on the 'Format' or 'Yes' button and wait for a while as the disk would be formatted.

Important Note: Formatting an external device

Windows also let us format an external device like SD card, pen drive, etc. quite easily. Simply right-click its icon from My Computer and from the context menu, click on the 'Format' option. Choose a file type and formatting option and click on the 'Start' button to format the disk.

Part 4. How to Format Hard Drive for Mac and PC on Mac?

Just like Windows, macOS also gives us a seamless option to format the hard drives for Mac (and PC). The operating system has an inbuilt tool, which is known as Disk Utility. Using it, you can erase a hard drive, create new partitions, and even repair your disk as well. To learn how to format in Mac your hard drive, follow these steps:

1. To start with, just go to Finder > Applications > Utilities to view all the available tools and features. From here, you can launch the Disk Utility application.
2. Here, you can view all kinds of storage units available on your system (both internal and external). Simply go to the left panel and select the disk you wish to format.
3. On the right, you can view details about the selected disk. Go to its toolbar and click on the 'Erase' option.
4. This will display the following pop-up on the screen. You can give the partition/drive a label, select its partition scheme, and specify its file format as well.
5. Click on the 'Erase' button in the end and confirm your choice as Mac would format the selected disk.

In no time, the entire disk would be emptied and you can manage it the way you like. You can follow the same drill to format an external device on Mac as well.

Part 5. How to Recover Formatted Hard Drive on Mac?

By following the above-listed methods, you would be able to format hard drive for Mac and PC seamlessly. Though, if you have formatted a hard drive accidentally, then you might end up losing your important files. In this case, you can take the assistance of Recoverit Data Recovery software to get back your lost or deleted content from Mac. The data recovery tool is available for free and supports all the major macOS and Windows versions. Following a simple on-screen process, you can easily extract your data from your Mac's hard drive or an external device.

Recoverit - The Best Word File Recovery Software

• Recover Word documents from all storage devices like Mac.
• Recover 1000+ types and formats of files in different situations.
• Scan and preview the files before you recover them from MacBook hard drive.

If you have deleted a partition on Mac or have lost it due to any other reason, then you should use Recoverit Data Recovery. It can help you restore partition data on Mac by following these easy steps.

Step 1: Select a Location

Firstly, launch the Recoverit Data Recovery application on your Mac and from its home, pick a location. A list of all the available locations will be displayed. You can just pick a source and start the scan.

Step 2: Scan the Location

This will commence the data recovery operation on the selected location. You simply need to wait for a few minutes for the scan to finish successfully.

Step 3: Preview and Recover

Once the process is completed, you can just preview the extracted data on Recoverit's interface. Make the needed selections and click on the 'Recover' button, so that you can save your files to a safe location.

Important Note:

If you are running the latest version of macOS, then you should consider disabling its System Integrity Protection feature first. This will allow third-party apps like Recoverit to access the partitions and file system on your Mac. Restart your Mac and press the Command + R keys to boot it in the Recovery mode. Launch the Terminal app by visiting the utility menu and enter the command: csrutil disable. In the end, restart your Mac in the normal mode and launch Recoverit again.

Part 6. Tips for Formatting Hard Drive

If you want to get positive results while formatting your hard drive on Mac or PC, then consider following these steps:

• Since formatting will erase all the existing data on your hard drive, make sure you have taken its backup beforehand.
• When your system is formatting the drive, don't halt the process in between as it can make the storage unavailable.
• As both Windows and Mac provide native solutions to format the hard drives, you should avoid using any unreliable third-party tool.
• While formatting, you would be asked to pick a file system for the disk. Therefore, make sure that the file system is supported by your Mac or Windows.
• Instead of a quick format, you should follow the standard process. This will save the empty space on your system and avoid disk fragmentation.

Conclusion

Now you can easily format hard drive for Mac and PC like a pro, without facing any trouble. Apart from formatting the internal drive, we have also listed a smart solution to format external devices as well. Not just that – the guide has also included a working solution to recover data from a formatted drive. If you have accidentally formatted a drive, then use Recoverit Data Recovery. An excellent recovery tool for Mac and Windows, it will make sure that you never suffer from an unwanted loss of data again.

At times data stored in Mac’s internal hard drive suffers from data corruption and damage. To rid of such issues, you need to take help from professional disk repair software. In this blog, there is an earnest attempt to list the top five disk repair software for Mac users.

You might have used the Disk Utility functionality of Mac to diagnose and resolve problems encountered in your computer. Disk Utility is an in-built macOS diagnostic tool to rid of basic issues such as hard disk drive directory structure damage, file system permission problem, and so forth. But, the utility lacks comprehensive storage drive management features, repair functionality, and other advanced diagnostic & tech tools that are essential for you to run Mac smoothly. Therefore, you need to use a third-party tool to augment advanced utilities catering to repair, diagnosis, and disk management. The following list of top five Mac disk repair software is an earnest attempt to showcase other enhanced options and use Mac to its fullest.

Best Tools for Mac External Hard Disk Repair

The top 5 list is as follows:

1. Stellar Data Recovery Technician for Mac (supports macOS Catalina 10.15)

This is the world’s first and only software that recovers corrupt Mac hard disk’s data & repairs your video & photos files. Moreover, the software recovers lost APFS partitions, external hard disks, SSD’s, Time Machine, password-enabled drive and Fusion drives. The latest version of the software creates recovery drive and performs file recovery from non-booting Mac systems.

Leverage this Mac Technician data recovery tool if the storage disk drive has logical corruption and the external drive is unmounted or not showing up on Mac. Stellar Data Recovery Technician for Mac scans the Mac storage disk drive to recover permanently deleted files as well.

You can connect an external hard drive and perform formatted recovery, partition recovery and restore lost data conveniently. The software has a built-in Drive Monitoring utility that monitors the health and S.M.A.R.T. status of your start-up drive. With the Technician version, you can run a Surface Scan to find out the bad-blocks on Mac’s storage disk. Apart from data recovery capabilities, this software also has ‘Video & Photo Repair’ features that fix corrupt or damaged digital files like your favourite video or photos in a few simple clicks.

You can free try this software on your Mac system without the need of an expert.

Explore the Mac data recovery options and download the brochure of Stellar Data Recovery Technician software for detailed information.

Download Disk Utility For Mac

2. DiskWarrior

This is a useful disk repair utility for Mac with quite a different repairing functionality, unlike other disk repair tool. The software creates a replacement data basis the original data instead of rebuilding damaged data. Subsequently, the software ensures there is no inaccuracy in creating the new data structure from the original one. The software can also be used as a preventive maintenance utility for Mac storage device. When you execute the software, it rebuilds and optimizes the directory, thereby removing any kind of data structure damage and improving drive performance.

3. Drive Genius:

This is a really beneficial disk utility tool for your Macintosh computer. The tool can be used to repair hard disk drive even if your Mac does not boot; supplementary bootable DVD comes handy to boot your computer from it and launch the tool. Some of the important features of the tool include directory repair, repartitioning, cloning, surface scanning, defragmenting, executing bench tests, performing integrity checks, and above all shredding data (which is generally not a consolidated feature of a repair utility).

4. OnyX

This is a personalization, optimization, and maintenance utility for Mac OS X. The software has advanced features to execute system maintenance, run storage drive diagnostics, configure system hidden features, and delete caches. Its repair utility helps you to repair hard disk drive for errors and inaccessibility. The software is great for up keeping your Mac so that it functions without any glitch.

5. TechTool Protogo

This is quite a good holistic Mac utility that is laden with advanced features. The volume rebuild tool examines, rebuilds, and repairs corrupted directories of hard drives. The utility can help you to create a bootable Mac repair toolbox on your flash drive or external hard disk drive, which can be used in the situation when your Mac does not boot. The software can be used to run diagnostics, repair and recover data, optimize hard disk drive’s performance, defragment the drive, and delete data securely.

To Sum Up

Hard Drive Test Utility Mac

Now you are aware that the inbuilt Disk Utility tool of your Mac computer is not sufficient to meet your advanced troubleshooting needs. Functionality beyond Disk Utility is a must to get your Mac up and running. The top five Mac disk repair software presented in this blog can be used to repair your hard disk drive for errors, inaccessibility, or system corruption. This 5 software is either free or can be availed as a trial. So, download the trial version of any repair software to recover your hard disk drive. And above, do not forget to give Stellar Data Recovery Technician for Mac a considerate try, as its latest release excels in disk repair capability, appealing GUI, advanced features, and excellent technical support.

Moreover, the software has a price advantage over the other disk repair utilities. Stellar Data Recovery Technician for Mac is 100% Safe & Secure and has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied.