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Mac os disk utility format scheme full#
If not, we’re always looking for new problems to solve! Email yours to including screen captures as appropriate, and whether you want your full name used. Click Erase to wipe all the data that’s currently on the drive and reformat it for your macOS install. We’ve compiled a list of the questions we get asked most frequently along with answers and links to columns: read our super FAQ to see if your question is covered. Disk Utility showing GUID option for drive format.
Mac os disk utility format scheme mac#
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Joe. The Scheme only appears in Disk Utility (highlighting in red added) when you opt to show all devices. Now, you can select a drive, click Erase, and view the Scheme options for the drive as well as the default format type applied when the drive has completed applying the new scheme. Why is that? Because you’re displaying only volumes, not drives nor are they containers (for APFS formatted drives and partitions).įrom the View menu in the upper-left corner, select Show All Devices, and you will see the hierarchy of drive > volume (most formats) or drive > container > volume (APFS). For drives only mounted on Macs, APFS is the current best choice, but is only backwards compatible a few versions of macOS for maximum compatibility, pick HFS+, which is labelled “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Disk Utility.įormat always appears when you select an item and click Erase, but Scheme never for you. The format describes the way divisions in the disk are organized to read as files and directories by an operating system. (Apple Partition Map dates back to PowerPC Macs.) For all modern Macs, GUID Partition Map is the only choice and it nearly never needs to be changed Master Boot Partition is useful for cross-platform drives that can be mounted in Windows and in macOS, as with using the ExFAT format type. You can select among GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Partition, and Apple Partition Map. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose. Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map. In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to erase, then click the Erase button. The scheme defines the overall organization of the drive, which can feel pretty obscure, because you rarely need to change it. If you want to erase any other type of storage device: Double-click Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder. If you want to use Disk Utility to format-and more often than not, re-format-a drive in macOS, you may sometimes want to first choose the scheme for backwards or multi-platform compatibility.