So I recently purchased a Seagate 4TB External Hard Drive for the sole purpose of backing up my photos/videos/music from my MacBook. The HD came formatted NTFS (not really sure what that entails) and there was a "NTFS For Mac" software that was included. From my understanding the software is supposed to help me transfer things from Windows to Mac freely. BUT I only have Macs, and I doubt I'll ever need a file from anything windows. With that being said, wouldn't it just be better to ditch the "NTFS For Mac" software since I won't ever use windows? It seems counterintuitive to keep the HD formatted as a Windows HD where I need a software to use it on my Mac, when in actuality I'll never use it on windows. Shouldn't I just reformat the HD to be 100% Mac formatted or is there something I'm missing? I'm pretty good with technology but I'm not an expert. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks
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Should I use "NTFS for Mac" or reformat the drive? Confused, PLEASE HELP!
- Thread starter Dechaunte
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Reformat with HFS+ (Mac OS Extended Journaled) and GUID partition map. And, if you won't be using it for Time Machine you can format as APFS.
Note that you can get Windows software which reads and writes HFS+ just in case you need to read it on Windows.
Note that you can get Windows software which reads and writes HFS+ just in case you need to read it on Windows.
OP wrote:
"So I recently purchased a Seagate 4TB External Hard Drive for the sole purpose of backing up my photos/videos/music from my MacBook."
That's all I needed to read.
If you're going to use the drive for Mac Backup, then YES, you DO want to reformat it to "Mac format".
As gilby101 recommends, use Disk Utility to reformat (erase) the drive to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format.
For backup, a personal suggestion:
Before you settle on Time Machine, try out both CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper. Both are free to download and try for 30 days.
I prefer and recommend bootable cloned backups over TM.
"So I recently purchased a Seagate 4TB External Hard Drive for the sole purpose of backing up my photos/videos/music from my MacBook."
That's all I needed to read.
If you're going to use the drive for Mac Backup, then YES, you DO want to reformat it to "Mac format".
As gilby101 recommends, use Disk Utility to reformat (erase) the drive to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format.
For backup, a personal suggestion:
Before you settle on Time Machine, try out both CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper. Both are free to download and try for 30 days.
I prefer and recommend bootable cloned backups over TM.