How to format new internal SATA hard drive

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Level 1

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How to format new internal SATA hard drive

I recently purchased a Mac Pro and, since the store did not yet have additional internal hard drives in stock, I purchased a 2T drive for Bay 2 directly from Apple. It came in record time (next day instead of the 5 days indicated on the phone, which yea). The installation was a snap, literally, just as advertised. Side panel off, drive in, side panel on, completely smooth and effortless.

However I haven't installed an internal hard drive in years -- and never on a Mac. What are the steps in Disk Utility to format it and make it useable.? Confused by options and rusty.

Any help appreciated! Itching to use it. 🙂

Mac Pro, 8 core, Mac OS X (10.6.4), ATA Internal drive formatting?

Posted on Aug 25, 2010 8:56 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Aug 25, 2010 10:35 PM in response to Onag

Couldn't be easier.

Disk Utility-Hightlight drive on left-Erase Tab-Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled)-Name Choose the name you want.

Should only take about 2-3 minutes from start to finish.

Regards,

Roger

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Answer 2

Aug 26, 2010 3:39 AM in response to Onag

2TB is big so you may want to consider partitioning it. How big the partitions are depends upon the nature of your use. The other thing is lots of HDs quite understandably come with a PC partition scheme. You need to decide on that though not being a boot drive you have more options. Remember if you put a non Time Machine backup on it, use GUID as the scheme. I usually keep a small partition formatted as FAT to ensure I can read and write Windows files.
Decide these things before you start putting data on it. As you know partitioning destroys access to the data.

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Answer 3

Onag Author

Level 1

10 points

Aug 26, 2010 7:54 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks, Roger. Here's how fast this machine is: it formatted it in under 10 seconds. Wow.

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Answer 4

Onag Author

Level 1

10 points

Aug 26, 2010 8:00 AM in response to Robert Newall

I'm working out my long term storage strategy as we speak. Like a lot of people, I fell in love with the sleek form factor of the Macs (among other things). But since taking up HDR photography AND getting into expanding my iTunes library, my poor iMac had jump drives hanging off of it like weird hair extensions -- and the sluggishness of accessing that data was unacceptable.

I'm using Lightroom for Photography, which is not yet network-aware (I'm betting that's its next evolution), so I'll mostly put photos on this second drive (about 500Gb per year) and back them up via Drobo-FS.

I do interface with Windows folk for work. In the past I've used Parallels to launch my Windows stuff. Is that not necessary if I do the FAT partition? Will read up on this, any links appreciated. Yet another item I haven't paid a great deal of attention to, but with this new structure, need to grapple with.

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Answer 5

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Aug 26, 2010 12:13 PM in response to Onag

Your welcome and thank you for the star.

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