All you need to know about setting up an external hard drive in OS X

At the present time, virtually anywhere using cloud storage technology. Cloud - a fast, convenient and most importantly, always at hand. However, without physical drives us is still not enough. Hard drives and SSD-drives are used as system drives, and the usual stick is still around. Some drives are ready to work right "out of the box", while others need to be formatted; in addition, the kits come proprietary utilities, which the manufacturer recommends that you use. In this article you will learn how to prepare an external drive to work in OS X.

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When you first connect an external drive to the Mac, it will automatically be installed and ready for use. However, before you rely on it, it's worth checking a few important things.

Note. I do not drive under the hand on which you can make fun, so I'll skip all the example old USB-stick, but do not worry, in the case of hard disk setup procedure will be similar.

The first point that should be taken into account - this is what is likely to be your new drive Formatted in FAT32, instead of the more common and extended ntfs (for Mac and Windows, respectively). FAT32 is good because it has the support of both reading and writing in both OS. This is the easiest way, if you need a versatile disc, although it has some limitations.

Firstly, in FAT32 does not support journaling, which would help to prevent data corruption. Secondly, it does not support the assignment of access rights to the file system. In addition, FAT32 drives usually have an MBR partition scheme, which does not work with Apple CoreStorage, and therefore does not allow the use of data encryption on the drive. Thirdly, FAT32 file size limit of 4GB, which by today's standards is very very bad.

Sometimes the disc is supplied with special software that allows you to make a disk partitioning and backup data. It may be comfortable, but I still would not recommend using it since OS X has all the necessary tools for this. Third-party tools to manage disk can cause compatibility problems that lead to data loss.

If you intend to use your external drive only with her or another Mac, the best thing would be to format it in the extended-format used in OS X by default. If there is a need to connect to the Windows-cars, then definitely use FAT32.

Partitioning

For all the manipulations with the drives in OS X is used disk utilityWhich is in the folder Programs — Utilities. Well, let's run it and proceed to the layout of our external drive.

Step 1. Selecting a disc and the number of sections

We choose our drive in the sidebar on the left and specify the partition table. If you need more than one volume, specify the number in the drop-down menu partitioning scheme or via buttons +If there is unallocated space on the disk.

hint. If you select a disk in the sidebar, then Disk Utility will display all of its partitions. For your primary drive, they will be gray because it is impossible to change the format or partition table for the boot disk. For all other connected devices, these options will be available.

Step 2. Specifies the partition scheme

Default is usually worth the GUID partition scheme, but it is better to open Options and verify that it is indeed the case. And in general, for all operations with the disc, saying "Measure twice - cut once" is more relevant than ever, especially if the disk already contains some data.

Step 3. We check and confirm all changes

After you have checked all the settings, is the final touch - to apply them. Hit the proper and wait for the end of our drive breakdown process.

Once the changes come into effect, eject the disc and re-mounted to the file system your Mac. Now he is ready to work.

Something else

If you want to go further, you can test drive to make sure there are no broken sectors and other errors. You can use third-party applications, such as Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro, because the disk utility It has no such functionality. But there is one trick that will help to check disk errors with it. This method is based on the Secure disk erase. As you probably know, this erasure is performed by writing zeros each sector, thereby allowing us to understand whether there is a bad sector in the case of unsuccessful completion of the operation.

It should be noted that the procedure is safe erase and other similar operations with the hard drive, which check every sector on the disk, take a lot of time (several hours).

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I wish all your discs work perfectly, let them work quickly and delight you, dear readers. If you have any questions for setting up an external hard drive to the Mac - ask them in the comments.