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File transfer from MacBook Pro into external hard drive.

It's probably just not Mac-formatted. Some hard drives come pre-formatted as a Windows format (NTFS), some come as Mac (HFS+), and some are unformatted.


Connect the drive, open Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder, or search for it in Spotlight). In the DU window, click on your drive on the left side, go to the Erase tab, change Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a different name if you'd like, and click Erase. It should then become writeable.


Note that Windows PCs cannot write natively to an HFS drive, so if you need to exchange files between Mac and PC, we need to talk about different options.


Matt


I follow above instruction and I lost everything on my hard-drive!!! Is there any way to retrieve my old files from my hard-drive?!

Posted on Aug 19, 2019 6:38 PM

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2 replies

Aug 19, 2019 8:00 PM in response to Genetics110

You erased the drive. That's what happens when a drive is formatted. In fact Apple calls it "erase". It doesn't convert data on the current drive to the new format.


It might be possible to "unerase" if you didn't do a secure reformat. That would specifically overwrite every last bit on the drive to make sure that nothing is recoverable. A basic reformat/erase just creates a new master file directory and has no idea what was previously on the drive. It doesn't actually write over most of the drive, which is why a reformat typically only takes a few seconds.


There are unerase utilities out there that might be able to scour the drive for files. You'll need something that unerases Windows formats, which could be on a Windows machine or even on a Mac. Here's one example:


https://www.easeus.com/mac/mac-data-recovery-resource/format-recovery/mac-unformat-hard-drive.htm


Right now I'd advise not using the drive, as anything you try writing to it could actually overwrite something you're trying to recover. Just look up "Windows unerase utility" in a search engine to find options.

File transfer from MacBook Pro into external hard drive.

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