Most users will never need to create an HFS+ disk outside of Mac, but businesses that rely on virtualization to run other operating systems may need to format in Windows a flash drive with an HFS+.
Need to create a new partition, or re-format an external drive? There’s no need to hunt down paid partition managers or disk-management boot disks: your Mac includes a built-in partition manager and disk management tool known as Disk Utility.
Disk Utility is even accessible from Recovery Mode, so you can partition your Mac’s hard drive without having to create and load up any special bootable tools.
Accessing Disk Utility
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To access the Disk Utility in macOS, just press Command+Space to open Spotlight search, type “Disk Utility” into the search box, and then press Enter. You can also click the Launchpad icon on your dock, click the Other folder, and then click Disk Utility. Or, open a Finder window, click Applications in the sidebar, double-click the Utilities folder, and then double-click Disk Utility.
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To access the Disk Utility on a modern Mac—regardless of whether it even has an operating system installed—reboot or boot up the Mac and hold Command+R as it boots. It’ll boot into Recovery Mode, and you can click Disk Utility to open it up.
In Recovery Mode, macOS runs a special sort of recovery environment. This allows you to use Disk Utility to wipe your entire drive—or repartition it.
Partition Drives and Format Partitions
Disk Utility shows internal drives and connected external drives (like USB drives), as well as special image files (DMG files) that you can mount and access as drives.
On the left side of the window you’ll see all mounted volumes.
Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 or Windows 8 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. • The Windows USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7/8 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. Windows 7 usb tool for mac.
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This annoyingly leaves out empty hard drives, but click Views > Show All Devices in the menu bar and you’ll see a tree of drives and their internal partitions. Each “parent” drive is a separate physical drive, while each little drive icon below it is a partition on that drive.
To manage your partitions, click a parent drive and select the “Partition” heading. You can adjust the partitioning layout scheme here. You can also resize, delete, create, rename, and reformat partitions.
Note: Many of these operations are destructive, so be sure you have backups first.
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If you want to repartition your system drive, you’ll need to do this from within Recovery Mode, with one exception: APFS volumes. APFS is Apple’s new file system, the default on solid state drives as of macOS High Sierra, and it’s got all sorts of clever tricks up its sleeve. One of them: volumes on the same drive pool storage space, meaning you’ll see two separate drives in Finder, but won’t have to manage how much storage space each volume uses. To add a new APFS volume, simply select your system drive, and then click Edit > Add APFS in the menu bar. You’ll see the above prompt.
First Aid Repairs File System Problems
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If a hard drive is acting up, Disk Utility’s First Aid function is the first thing you should try. This feature checks the file system for errors and attempts to correct them, all without much intervention from you.
Simply click the drive you want to check, then click the “First Aid” button. Be warned that these checks can take a while, and running them on your system drive will leave you with an unresponsive computer until it’s done.
Secure-Erase a Partition or Drive
The Erase button allows you to erase an entire hard disk or partition. You can also choose to only erase its free space.
You can use this feature to securely wipe a hard drive. Click a drive, then click the “Erase” button, then click “Security Options” to select a number of passes to overwrite the drive with. One pass should be good enough, but you can always do a few more if you feel like it. The maximum number is unnecessary.
Note that this feature will only be useful on mechanical drives, as you shouldn’t be able to recover deleted data from a solid state drive. Don’t perform a secure erase on a solid-state drive, such as the ones built into modern Mac Books—that will just wear down the drive for no advantage. Performing the “fastest” erase of the internal drive from recovery mode will erase everything.
Create and Work With Disk Images
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Click the File menu in Disk Utility and use the New menu to create blank disk images or disk images containing the contents of a folder — these are .DMG files. You can then mount that disk image file and write files into it. This is particularly useful because you can encrypt that DMG file, creating an encrypted container file that can store other files. You can then upload this encrypted DMG file to cloud storage locations or save it on unencrypted removable drives.
The Convert and Resize Image buttons will allow you to manage that disk image from the Disk Utility window.
Copy Volumes and Restore Disk Images
The Restore feature allows you to copy one volume to another. You can use it to copy the contents of one partition to another, or to copy a disk image to a partition.
You can also create a disk image that contains an exact copy of an entire partition. Select the drive you’d like to create an image of, and then click File > New Image > Image From [Partition Name].
You can later restore this disk image file to a partition, erasing that partition and copying the data from the disk image to it.
RAID Setup
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The Disk Utility also allows you to set up RAID on a Mac: just click File > RAID Assistant in the menu bar. Combine disks and partitions into one or more RAID sets and choose whether you want to mirror, stripe, or concatenate your data. This is an advanced feature most people won’t need to use, but it’s there if you need it.
Mirroring (RAID 1) means data you write to the RIAD is stored on each partition or drive for failsafe purposes. If one drive dies, your data is still available elsewhere.
Striping (RAID 0) will alternate disk writes between one drive and the other for faster speed. However, if one of the drives fails, you’ll lose all the data — so it’s getting more speed at the expense of less reliability.
How To Format Usb In Windows 7
Concatenation (JBOD) allows you to combine different drives as though they were one, useful in certain circumstances.
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The Disk Utility included with Mac OS X is powerful, and it should handle all the functions you need it to perform. It’s a bit like the Disk Management tool built into Windows, but more capable and, thanks to Recovery Mode, easier to access from outside the operating system.
Photo credit: Joe Besure/Shutterstock.com
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A quirk in the Apple Disk Utility allowed me to create a FAT32 volume that would not mount in Windows. Avoiding the same problem is easy once you have an understanding of how Apple's formatting tool works. Read on, support pros, and save yourselves from future headaches.
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I support both Macs and Windows machines, so I spend a lot of time running between systems. There are a few features in the MacOS that I rely on to make my double life a little easier, one of those being the built-in support Apple computers have for Windows volumes.
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Since Macs can read and write to FAT32 partitions,* I can keep software and utilities for both operating systems on a single drive. That feature helps keep my tool kit a little lighter and my life a little simpler. In fact, when it comes to working with FAT32 partitions, Mac OS can do something natively that Windows cannot: MacOS can format FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB. I frequently use MacOS to format FAT32 volumes, and that feature has historically worked for me without a hitch. At least, it did until last week, when I discovered a quirk in the MacOS Disk Utility that allowed me to create a FAT32 volume that would not mount on Windows.* Microsoft recommends their NTFS format for large Windows-compatible disks. Apple machines can natively read NTFS volumes, but they can’t write to that file system without third-party software. Look into the Mac port of the NTFS-3G project if you need to write to NTFS disks from your Mac.
How To Format Usb In Mac As Ntfs Volumes
The Disk Utility in MacOS version 10.5 is the nexus of file system management on your Apple computer. From that tool you can create partitions and disk images, format volumes, and mount files systems. Disk Utility was the obvious destination for me when I decided to format an old USB drive I had lying around. I needed to copy some files from my PlayStation 3, and I thought I would reformat an external HD for that purpose. The USB drive had some old Mac backups on it and was set up in the Apple-recommended HFS+ format. The PS3 will mount only FAT32 drives, so I thought I’d erase my drive and quickly reformat the volume. Then I’d be off to the races. Not so fast…
When I took my drive over to my PS3, I discovered it wouldn’t mount. The drive wouldn’t mount on my Windows machine, either. Only after investigation did I discover that I had greatly misunderstood how I should have been using Apple’s Disk Utility.
Disk Utility displays a number of action palettes when you select a storage device from its left-hand pane. Two of these palettes, “Erase” and “Partition,” appear to accomplish the same thing, but there is a very significant difference. The Erase pane does not allow you to change your drive’s partition map.
When I used the Erase tool on my HFS+ formatted drive, which carried an Apple Partition Map, Disk Utility obediently erased the HFS+ file system and replaced it with the FAT32 file system I asked for. It did not, however, create a Master Boot Record to replace the Apple Partition Map on the disk. So, when I tried to mount the disk on my PC and my PS3, both of which are devices that require an MBR to get their file system information, I was out of luck.
Editing a partition table is a separate administrative task in Mac OS, distinct from merely erasing a volume, which is probably pretty smart. I ran into this problem because I was jumping between formatting schemes on my disk. If I had not wanted to change the disk format my drive was using, I wouldn’t have encountered this issue. But then I would have missed out on a valuable learning experience, right?
If you want to make sure that the FAT32 disks you create with your Mac are completely Windows compatible, follow these steps:
Once your disk is selected, make sure to switch to the Partition palette, which is highlighted in
Figure A.Figure AOn the Partition palette, follow the numbers.
Step 1: Use the Volume Scheme pull-down menu to chose the number of partitions you want (Figure B).Step 2: Go to the Options… pane and make sure Master Boot Record is selected (Figure C).Step 3: Choose MS-DOS from the Format pull-down menu. Click Apply to reformat your drive.
Figure BThe Options pane in the Partition tool is very clear about what partition schemes can be used where.
Figure CUsing FAT32 volumes is a good way to share files across platforms if you use both MacOS and Windows. Apple’s Disk Utility is a powerful tool for setting up such disks, but being ignorant of how to use its advanced options caused me a little trouble. Now that I have an understanding of the process, I won’t make the same mistake twice.
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