I'm about to purchase my first external hard drive for my MacBook Air M2, OS- Sonoma 14.5. Considering a Toshiba Canvio Flex 1TB. Toshiba website says it's compatible with macOS 14.0 but nothing about Sonoma 14.5. Will it work? Is there something else that's better that I should buy? Thank you!
MacBook Air, macOS 14.5
just about any manufacturer's drives will work. just don't use any bundled software (or install such software yourself) that supposedly makes the drive "Mac ready". when you use software from just about any manufacturer for their storage device you run the risk of that same software not being compatible with macOS updates / upgrades. it can cause the software to stop working. at best this will cause you a headache. at worst it can render your data inaccessible. it is always best to use disk utility to erase and format a drive before use to remove any preloaded software.
please see Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
just about any manufacturer's drives will work. just don't use any bundled software (or install such software yourself) that supposedly makes the drive "Mac ready". when you use software from just about any manufacturer for their storage device you run the risk of that same software not being compatible with macOS updates / upgrades. it can cause the software to stop working. at best this will cause you a headache. at worst it can render your data inaccessible. it is always best to use disk utility to erase and format a drive before use to remove any preloaded software.
please see Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
jeffreythefrog has your back. Hard drives are commodities. There’s no such thing as a PC hard drive or a Sonoma hard drive. But do be sure to erase it as he said. Most drives ship formatted for PC use and you’ll want it formatted for the Mac (unless you intend to connect it to both a PC and a Mac which is possible).
external hard drives compatible with Mac M2 Sonoma 14.5
