You will notice a status bar appear with the progress of your format. button to start.įrom the popup that appears click the Erase button to confirm you would like to format. You can choose: Don't Erase Data, Zero Out Data, 7-Pass Erase, or 35-Pass Erase. button to specify how to erase the drive. Launch Disk Utility from the Applications:Utilities folder.įrom the list on the left select the drive you would like to formatįrom the Volume Format dropdown select the format you would like the drive to be in.Įnter the title for your volume in the Name field. If your hard drive is an external drive, connect it to the computer. The erased volume is written seven times to ensure the data can't be restored.These are instructions on how to format a hard drive using Mac OS X Disk Utility. Department of Defense (DOD) 5220-22M standard for securely erasing magnetic media. Most Secure: This method of securely erasing a volume or disk meets the requirements of the U.S.No.2 disk formatting tool for Windows and Mac AweEraser. However, the formatted data can be recovered by data recovery software. If you are using a Mac, you can run the built-in Disk Utility to quickly format a hard drive or external hard drive under Mac OS. For Windows, it offers quick format feature when you right-click the hard drive on the computer. Both Windows and Mac OS offer built-in disk formatting tool. It writes two passes of random data to the volume or disk and then writes a single pass of a known data pattern to the volume or disk. No.1 disk formatting tool for Windows and Mac Built-in Formatting tool. Three-Pass: This is a DOE-compliant three-pass secure erase.Advanced recovery techniques could restore the data, but it would require a great deal of time and effort. Zero Out the Data: This erase method writes a single path of zeros to all locations on the selected volume or disk.It doesn't scramble the file data, which means a recovery app may be able to resurrect the erased data. Fastest: This is the quickest erase method.The drop-down Secure Erase Options menu presents options similar to the ones in earlier versions of the operating system, but it uses a slider for making choices instead of an options list. Options for OS X Lion Through OS X Yosemite Don't expect this erase method to finish any time soon. It writes over the data on a volume 35 times. 35-Pass Erase: This is the highest level of data erase security that Disk Utility supports.

Department of Defense's 5220-22M standards for erasing magnetic media. 7-Pass Erase: This method meets the security requirements of the U.S.The length of time this method takes depends on the size of the volume. It erases the volume's data by writing over it with zeros. Zero Out Data: This method provides a good level of security.It removes the volume's catalog directory but leaves the actual data intact. Don’t Erase Data: This method is quick but not secure.Options for OS X Snow Leopard and Earlier

Mac os disk utility format