How Do You Format an External Hard Drive in Mac OSX (Yosemite)
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Seriously, this can't be this hard. I have an external hard drive that is currently formatted to NTFS which, obviously, does not work on a Mac. So I need to format the drive. But I can find no means of doing this in Mac OSX. I find thread after thread online where people say to use the Disk Utility. But Mac OSX Yosemite has no such utility anywhere to be found.
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What type of disk is it? I've found most externals include a utility with the drive. Sometimes it requires a Windows machine though...
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That took way too much effort. This definitely is a great example of why Mac OSX is the most convoluted, complicated, hard to use operating system made in over a decade. In order to do this incredible simple and straightforward task you must be a complete expert knowing all kinds of undocumented things about Mac OSX.
First, you cannot Google for this information. This simply is not out there as everybody expects you to know one piece of this or another.
Second, you start by going to Spotlight Search. What is that you ask? It's a hidden and completely ridiculous substitute for having a good menu system in OSX. You get to it by clicking that generally useless magnifying glass icon in the top right of the screen. This opens a confusing thing called Spotlight Search that is never explained and somehow searches for things that the Finder does not. Apparently instead of replacing Finder when it was broken, they made a second Finder with an equally dumb name and put critical functionality partially in both.
In the Spotlight Search you have to "just know" that you need to search for the words "disk utility." Once you do this the completely hidden, but completely needed, disk utility that does not show up in the Finder App list, nor in a Finder file search, nor in System Preferences will appear.
From here, simply select the drive that you want to format and voila, you can format it. Of course, you still have to know that the term erase is used instead of format. Of course you might realize that formatting erasing the drive, but erasing a drive doesn't imply formatting it. So this term is very confusing and, once again, requires you to know more than you should to do something really basic.
Why Apple has to make everything accessible only to experts and nothing intuitive for new users is beyond me. This setup took more effort, not less, to make difficult to use. They had to go very much out of their way to keep it from being easy.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
What type of disk is it? I've found most externals include a utility with the drive. Sometimes it requires a Windows machine though...
Western Digital My Passport. Funny enough, they have a "how to" on their site for exactly this circumstance. But, because they tried some fancy JavaScript trickery to force an ad on me, they broke their own site and they cannot display the information.
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@scottalanmiller the number one thing Apple genius bar techs teach people is to always use the search for anything.
That said, I do the same on Windows too.
On windows I hit start, and then type what I want. I never use any other method for things I do not have pinned to my task bar..
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller the number one thing Apple genius bar techs teach people is to always use the search for anything.
That said, I do the same on Windows too.
On windows I hit start, and then type what I want. I never use any other method for things I do not have pinned to my task bar..
But on Windows there is only one search, not three. It was having to use a third, hidden search tool that was the problem. I use search on Windows too. On Windows it is easy and works. On Mac it is hard and you have to be an expert to know that the first two search tools weren't enough and that a third one is necessary and how to find it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Second, you start by going to Spotlight Search. What is that you ask? It's a hidden and completely ridiculous substitute for having a good menu system in OSX. You get to it by clicking that generally useless magnifying glass icon in the top right of the screen. This opens a confusing thing called Spotlight Search that is never explained and somehow searches for things that the Finder does not. Apparently instead of replacing Finder when it was broken, they made a second Finder with an equally dumb name and put critical functionality partially in both.
Naming conventions aside,
Finder is a file manager and searches files.
Click on Launchpad and then type int he search there to search only applications.
Spotlight is a general search tool searching applications and files and the internet.use the tools as they are designed to be used.
Complain about naming all you want, but if you take the time to learn the tools you are using the system is no more or less difficult than windows.
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@JaredBusch in Windows there is an obvious place to search and it searches everything. In Mac there is an obvious place to search and apparently it only searches applications. That's confusing enough. But I was searching FOR an application. So how was I not using it as designed? Even if I knew that I had to learn this special, non-intuitive, thing it would have led me to the same bad conclusion. Since I was looking for an application, the application search tool was the right one.
If Finder is never the right one, why does it exist as a stumbling block? If it is sometimes the right one, why are there multiple and how do you learn which is for which application? And if you have to know every application by name AND know which tool will find them, how is that easy?
In Windows, at least there is a way to get a list of the applications available to me. This application, as far as I can tell, is completely hidden on the Mac. Yet is a very basic application that you need for pretty fundamental tasks.
The fact that I have to learn so many more things that on Windows you can just tell by looking at the screen means it isn't as easy to use. It's an "expert system" that expects you to have a lot of knowledge for basic tasks. Sure, once you are an expert it works fine, but my whole point is why did they make it that only experts can use it effectively when they could have made it just as useful for the experts while still being accessible by casual users?
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@JaredBusch said:
Complain about naming all you want, but if you take the time to learn the tools you are using the system is no more or less difficult than windows.
Right, after much learning and work, they are roughly equal. But until you reach the point of being a desktop use expert, Windows is easier. "Approaching" equal usability for a small number of users agrees with my assessment is a nice sounding way.
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@JaredBusch said:
Click on Launchpad and then type int he search there to search only applications.
Click on the Launchpad. It is right there someplace. That is the "All Applications" icon equiv. the start menu.
Mine is in a subgroup Other that I pushed most things to in order to have a 1 page Launchpad.
