'Format', a word which is connected with 'all data clear' and which is different from what it is called so on Windows, has another name on Mac, 'erase'. Of course, there are different occasions where people want to get their external hard drives erased.

When there are bad sectors which don't store the data of bootstrap procedure, but of some important private files, people expect for formatting and backing up to make these files accessible again; when people's hard disks can no longer write in further, they expect for erasing disk to pave way for new items to write; when there are file system errors in people's hard disks resulting from frequent hot swapping, they expect for formatting to give rebirth to these dying disks and make them in use again.

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Rename your Mac’s hard drives to personalize your desktop. When you get a Mac, its internal hard drive will have a default name, such as 'Macintosh HD.' You may add extra internal hard drives, if your Mac can accommodate them, or connect an external hard drive. Each of these drives will appear on the desktop. Under Devices, click on the hard drive. Below the icon of the hard drive, click and hold on the name of the hard drive, until a field opens. Enter the new name for the hard drive. A hard drive format refers to how the operating system stores the data on the drive. There are three common filesystems that are used today: HFS+, NTFS, and FAT32. Mac OS X uses HFS+, Windows uses NTFS and used to use FAT32. However, not all of these filesystems are compatible with every operating system. The Clean Drive tool in Parallels Toolbox. The Clean Drive tool, one of the more than 40 tools in Parallels Toolbox, is tailor-made to help you manage free space on the Mac Hard Drive, especially in the area of files that you really don’t need, like log or cache files, or the temp files created by some Mac apps. (See Figure 2.).

Then how to format a external hard drive on Mac? Here are two methods for those people who urgently need to erase a external hard drive.

Part 1: Two methods to format external hard drive on Mac

Method I: Format an external hard drive through 'Disk Utility' (newbie friendly)

Step 1: Connect the external hard drive with your Mac, and the computer will mount your external hard drive. Click here when external hard drive does't mount on Mac.

Step 2: Launchpad → Other → Disk Utility, and click the Disk Utility.

Step 3: Choose your target external hard drive or volume, click Erase on the top. If you find there's something wrong to read your external hard drive, then you can turn to external hard drive does't show up in Disk Utility for help.

Step 4: Edit the disk name, select a format and a scheme.

There are 10 formats (file systems) you can select in macOS 10.13 or above:

And 3 kinds of Scheme you can choose:

• GUID Partition Map: for all Intel-based Mac computers.

• Master Boot Record: for Windows partitions that will be formatted as MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT.

• Apple Partition Map: for compatibility with old PowerPC-based Mac computers.

Step 4: Click Erase to format your target disk.

Note: As for our example to erase a whole external hard drive, the original physical volume 'X' and 'Y' will have been deleted and a new volume 'Untitled' will have been established. At that time, there will be an icon of your new-established volume on the desktop.

Step 5: Click Done, and congratulations that you have finished all the steps.

Steps to format a volume are 99% the same as that of a external hard drive.

The most distinguishing difference of formatting between a volume and a external hard drive is that: if a external hard drive gets formatted, then all the volumes inside the external hard drive, which means all the data, will be deleted. Compared with that, if a volume gets formatted, only the one that gets formatted will be deleted, and that's to say, only the data of the formatted volume will be deleted.

Method II: Format an external hard drive through 'Terminal'

Step 1: Launchpad → Other → Terminal, and click Terminal.

Step 2: Input 'diskutil list', press Enter to list out all your disks.

Step 3: Input the 'erase' command: diskutil erasedisk + new file system + new disk name + identifier.

For example: to format the whole disk 2 to hfs+, then the operating command is:

To format a single volume to hfs+, like disk2s1, then the operating command is:

Note:

1. There's no limitation of uppercase or lower case.

2. HFS+ can be replaced by other file system formats, and here provide some references like APFS, JHFS+, FAT32 and ExFAT.

3. 'TD' is the name that I give to the new disk and it can be replaced by any word you like.

Access Hard Drive On Mac

4. 'disk 2' is the IDENTIFIER, or rather, the target disk that I want to format.

Well done! Finished erasing on disk2! Now I believe you have master another method to format your external hard drive. Take a try!

Well, if you find that you can't format your disk due to the loss of some fatal meta files, you are bound to stop to recover your data and the iBoysoft Data Recovery can help you find the lost meta files.

Part 2: Understand external hard drive, container, volume and partition on Mac

If you newly switch from Windows PC to Mac, you may get confused with external hard drive, partition, container, and volume in Disk Utility. Here are the differences.

Hard Drive Name Mac

External hard drive: external hard drive is the hardware component like HDD and SSD that you used to store the data. In Mac Disk Utility, it shows in the first line of the whole disk directory (e.g. disk2).

Partition: different from Windows, the partition is more like an operation to divide the entire, large, uncultivated, lonely, and original disk space. When you partition your external hard drive, the partition map is created when the external hard drive is erased and the partition map defines how and what the partitions should be. But on Mac, a partition can't be in effect unless it has been activated, i.e. being formatted with a file system. A partition with a file system will be called a volume on Mac.

Container: Only the APFS has the Container where volumes share space with each other, which meanwhile implies that if one of the volumes is up to the entire partition capacity, there will be no space left for the other volumes to use in this partition. The Container is a special kind of partition on mac.

Volume: on Mac, any partition that is formatted with a file system before storing data is called a volume (e.g. disk2s1). Any available partition can divide its capacity into numerous volumes in a very easy-going way on mac while their names are editable. For an APFS external hard drive, APFS volume is a third-level unit of the storage device.

Ending

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This is going to seem mighty silly, but could someone remind me what my one and only hard drive was originally 'named' when i took my MacPro 2.66 out of the box?
Through a strange combination of keyboard keystrokes while cleaning my keyboard with the machine running, I somehow renamed my harddrive '-OX' without trying to do so. I thought the hard drive was originally called 'Macintosh' but since I've renamed it that, when I opened Dreamweaver it no longer recognizes any of my root site files.
Could you take a peek on your desktop and tell me what your default name for the hard drive that shipped with your machine actually is? I'm hoping this will restore my settings in DW and I won't have to manually re-assign all my local root folders.
Many thanks!
Pedro
MacPro 2x2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.9)
MacPro 2x2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.9)
MacPro 2x2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Jun 20, 2007 2:33 PM

Hard Drive Name For Mac