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Level 2

160 points

How to "initialize" an external USB hard disk?

I erased an external HD.

Now when I want to use it, it cannot be mounted, alert tells me it is not initialized.

How do I do that??

(In both Catalina and Ventura?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Feb 4, 2023 11:21 AM

Top-ranking reply

Level 7

23,189 points

Posted on Feb 4, 2023 1:31 PM

You'll use Disk Utility to initialize an external drive, aka erase, format and partition.

FInd Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities folder.

For Catalina and newer macOS use, use the APFS format and GUID partition map.

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