Next, choose how many bytes of the drive you want to back up using the numbered range dropdowns menus. On the window that appears, select where you want to save backup and whether you want to format your backup by bytes or sectors (bytes is fine for most cases). Select the drive you want to backup, then click Create backup. On the left sidebar under Extra Tools, click Byte-to-Byte Backup. Next, navigate to the Applications folder, then double-click Disk Drill.

To open Disk Drill, first open the Finder app from your Dock. If you don’t want to use your OS drive for your backup files, plug in another storage media (not the one you’re formatting).

So the first thing you have to do is back up your data.įor this guide, we’ll be using Disk Drill – it’s a data recovery tool that offers a free backup feature (as well as a data recovery tool, which we’ll be covering later in the guide). I can’t stress enough that it means that you’ll be wiping all the files and folders from that hard drive – there’s no other way to do it.

In order to format a Mac drive for Windows, you’ll first need to erase it. The data recovery tool we’ll be using, called Disk Drill, can recover data even from formatted drives. How to Convert Mac Hard Drive to Windowsįor this process, you’ll need 3 tools: a backup utility, a tool to recover data (just in case), and Disk Utility for the actual formatting process – fortunately, macOS already comes with Disk Utility installed.

Remember: reformatting a Mac hard drive for Windows completely wipes all the files and folders on it – so you’ll need to do some preparation.

Format disk for mac on windows