Oct 16,2019 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
- Wd Elements 2tb External Hard Drive For Mac
- Best 2tb External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
- 2tb External Hard Drives For Mac Backup
- Seagate Backup Mac
- 2tb External Hard Drives For Mac Book Pro
- Best Portable Hard Drives For Mac
We all treasure our precious data on our Mac. Therefore, we do not need to wait for a disaster to strike so that we can learn ways to backup files. One way to backup data is by copying them to an external hard drive. External hard drives are significant when your Mac has a minimal storage, since offers more storage. With this mind, you need to get yourself an external hard drive for Mac. Before purchasing an external drive for your mac, there are things you should consider such as compatibility, speed, storage, transfer speed, portability and price. In this article, we are going to give you best 5 external hard drives for mac picked by media websites.
LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB 3.0 USB 2.0 compatible, Drop Shock Dust Rain Resistant Shuttle Drive, for Mac and PC Computer Desktop Workstation PC Laptop (LAC9000298) 3.5 out of 5 stars 318. May 22, 2017 The stylish external hard drive MacBooks, Backup Plus Slim for Mac makes it easy to store and access 2TB of content on the go The perfect compliment to personal aesthetic, this USB drive features a minimalist metal enclosure. Hard Drives G-Technology 2TB Mac. Image from WD website. On its website, Apple does sell and recommend the G-Technology (made by Western Digital) and LaCie external hard drives. The drives are.
Part 1: Top 5 Best External Hard Drives for Mac
1.Seagate Backup Plus
Company: Seagate Technology
Seagate backup plus is an ideal mac external hard drive that is highly recommended by most websites. This external hard drive for mac is well known for its slim and sleek design. Its capacities are 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and latest 4TB. Moreover, it offers a 200GB cloud storage that is limited for two years. However, this option may not be available in all countries. This external hard drive for Mac can be used interchangeable with Windows OS. Seagate backup plus is designed with three modes of connectivity namely, USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and thunderbolt. Seagate external hard drive for Mac is formatted to HFS+ file making it compatible with your MacBook or MacBook pro without formatting it. This drive has been recommended over 8 times by the chosen media websites.
Review:
Seagate Backup Plus drives makes your life simple with its huge capacity storage. These external hard drives for Mac are well integrated with Backup software. It also offers a two-year 200GB cloud storage to Microsoft OneDrive. The only flaw of this software is that it lacks security option to protect data.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Price: $76.99 for 2TB as listed on Amazon
Recommended by: www.cnet.com
2. Western Digital My Passport Ultra external hard drive for mac
Company: Western Digital Corporation
Western digital My Passport is another best external hard drive for mac. It has been recommended over 8 times on the selected 10 media websites. It offers a minimal storage as low as 500GB, 1TB, and as high as 3TB. This external hard for Mac comes with 3-year warranty. Moreover, it offers two connectivity modes that are USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 that enable data transfer faster. This Western digital external hard drive for Mac is compatible with Windows operating after formatting it to a supported file system such as FAT or NTFS format. The good thing about this external head drive for mac is that it allows you to encrypt and protect its hardware with a password.
Review
WD My Passport ultra is one of the best external hard drives for Mac that offers a high transfer speed with different size capacities. Its price is slightly higher as compared to other external drives.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Price: $74.99 for 2TB as listed on Amazon
Recommended by: www.pcmag.com
3. Toshiba Canvio Slim II
Company: Toshiba Corporation
Another portable external hard drive for your Mac is Toshiba Canvio Slim II. It is compatible with Mac OS x. It comes with 500 GB and 1TB storage making it vital to use to backup data as well as transfer data. This external hard drive mac is offers you a 10GB free cloud storage to backup all your videos, photos, music, documents and important files. It allows you to backup mobile content. It is USB 3.0 connectivity and USB 2.o which worth mentioning. Toshiba external hard drive is well furnished with aluminum. It has been recommended over 6 times by the selected media websites.
Review
Toshiba Canvio Slim is a useful external hard drive that offers a bigger storage capacity besides its large backup storage. It also has a password feature that ensures that your data is protected around the clock. Its USB2.0 connectivity performance is not up to par.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Price: $79.99 for 2TB as listed on Amazon
Recommended by: www.thewirecutter.com
Wd Elements 2tb External Hard Drive For Mac
4. G-Technology G-Drive Slim
Company: G- Technology.
Just as the name suggests, this external hard drive for mac is slimmer than the other mentioned hard dive. It records a high speed and excellent performance. G-Drive slim which people who are looking for external storage to save pictures a photos and music with a maximum storage of 500GB. It uses a USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 cable connectivity. Moreover, its transfer goes up to 125mb/s, which seems a high speed when you are transferring files. This Mac external hard drive is formatted with HFS+ files system making it compatible with MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Furthermore, it comes with a 3-year limited warranty. G-Technology G-Drive Slim has an aluminum casing and a plastic case around the USB port. It is light thus convenient to carry it around. At least 4 media websites from the selected 10 recommended it.
Review
Best 2tb External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
G-Technology G-Drive Slim is a speedy external hard drive for your Mac. It records high transfer and read speed as compared to any USB 3.0mac external hard drive. To add on it is portable and offers enough external storage. One demerit of this external hard dive for mac is that it does not come with any packaged software.
Rating: 4/5
Price: $69.95 for 1TB as listed on Amazon
Recommended by: www.pcmag.com
5. Transcend StoreJet
2tb External Hard Drives For Mac Backup
Company: Transcend Information
If you are looking for a Mac external hard drive, that lets backup files within a click, then look no more. Transcend StoreJet will exactly does that. This software is well designed and integrated with a military shock resistant. You can quickly transfer your data files from Mac to this external hard drive mac either with UB 2.0 or USB 3.0 connectivity. Transcend Jet external hard drives for mac are available in different capacities, which include 500GB, 750GB, 1TB and 2TB. From the 10 sources it has been mentioned at least three times.
Review
It is the best mac external hard drive especially for those people who travel more often. It has silicon shell with an incredible casing that enable it resist shock. It performance is also good. However, this external hard drive for mac is slightly heavier as compared to other Mac external hard drives.
Rating: 4/5
Price: $69.95 for 1TB as listed on Amazon
Recommended by: www.techspot.com
Sources:
Part 2: How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive
With external hard drive for Mac, people are used to store their business data or personal data on it. However, the wrong protection will cause the data lost from your external hard drive. As accidentally deleted data, lost or formatted data from external hard drive. Under these circumstances, you will need a external hard drive data recovery tool to help you retrieve your lost data from external hard drive.
Your Safe & Reliable External Hard Drive Recovery Software
- Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from any storage device effectively, safely and completely.
- Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera and camcorders.
- Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.
Recoverit External Hard Drive Data Recovery capable of restoring deleted/lost files or formatted partition from external hard drive, hard drive (HDD and SSD), USB flash drive, memory card, digital camera, camcorder, iPod, Music Player and many kinds of mobile devices (Nokia, Blackberry phones and Phones with older Android OS than ICS).
How to recover data from external hard drive on Mac
Download and install Recoverit data recovery on your computer, connect your external hard drive to the computer. Follow the next simple steps to retrieve your data back.
Step 1: Launch Recoverit data recovery, please select a data recovery mode. To recover data from external hard drive, you can select 'External Devices Recovery' mode to start.
Please make sure your external hard drive has connected to your computer, click 'Next' button to process. https://jvbdxq.weebly.com/blog/openvpn-for-mac.
Step 2: Please select your external hard drive to scanning lost data. Click 'Start' button to finding data.
Step 3: Recoverit data recovery will start a quick scan to search lost data. You can preview some recoverable files after the scan. If you cannot find your files, you can go to scan agian with 'All-Around Recovery' mode.
Step 4: With 'All-Around Recovery' mode which can help you deeply search and scan more files from external hard drive. While it will take more time to completed scan.
Step 5: After the scan, you can check all recoverable file. Go to preview some specific recoverable files and click 'Recover' button to get your data back.
What's Wrong with Drive
- Recover Your Drive
- Fix Your Drive
- Format/Wipe Drive
- Know Your Drive
So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
Seagate Backup Mac
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
2tb External Hard Drives For Mac Book Pro
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Best Portable Hard Drives For Mac
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.