So, this past year I bought myself a Toshiba USB 3.0 portable hard drive that's 1TB. It clearly states on the box that it CAN be reformatted for MAC; so I bought it.
I've had it sitting around since I am just now organizing my iMac for space and backing up data. I opened the box and it doesn't state ANYTHING for the MAC format; ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
Next step, check their site; nada. Ok, now I'm getting really annoyed, and after talking to people in my FB circle of techie friends I found out how to do it.
Here's what I did:
1. Plug in the Hard Drive to your USB port.
2. Go to finder.
Don't have any programs open or just click on your desktop and you'll see FINDER show up on the upper lefthand corner of the screen; next to the apple.
Click on FILE --> NEW FINDER WINDOW.
Now you should see the hard drive's name on the top. If you right click on the name and go to GET INFO., you'll see the FORMAT is for Windows, we don't want that.
3. Go to Disk Utilities. If you do not know where that is, type DISK UTILITIES under spotlight (the little magnifying glass on the upper right corner of your screen).
4. In the Disk Utilities select Toshiba, or whatever your hard drive is called, and you'll see the info for this drive.
Click ERASE. A few options for formatting will come up. I chose MAC OS EXTENDED ( Case-sensitive ), and click erase.
5. If you go back to the FINDER--> NEW FINDER WINDOW --> RIGHT CLICK DRIVE --> GET INFO., now it should have MAC OS Extended ( case sensitive ) as the Format type.
I can now use this like I do a USB flash drive/memory stick. I have not messed around with Apple's time machine, but I'll post about that later. Right now I just need space on my MAC for editing, and I need to update it.
Hope this helps.
-Los
