by Shirly Chen, updated on 2017-12-28 to Erase Data
Once Disk Utility is open you'll see the list of available drives on the left. Choose the drive you'd like to format. NOTE that formatting your drive will erase the contents, so make sure you back. Formatting allows you to overwrite all the information on the hard drive, resetting the file structure and how the drive interacts with the operating system. It can also be used to prep a hard.
'Hi, I am going to sell a 2TB WD portable hard drive. I think it is necessary to reformat the WD portable hard drive and permanently erase my private data. Is there any fast way to reformat the WD portable hard drive and erase all the data on the hard drive?' – Norio
'Hello, I connect my Western Digital portable hard drive with my computer. But my computer can't recognize the portable hard drive. Is there any way to reformat the portable hard drive to solve this issue?' – Misa
'My WD external hard drive is attacked by unknown virus, most of the files on the hard drive are infected. I want to reformat the WD external hard drive and permanently erase the virus-infected files.' – Jimmy
Reformatting is the best way to reset the Western Digital (WD) portable hard drive to factory status. Then the WD portable hard drive is able to securely be reused, resold, recycled or donated to other people. Especially, when you are going to throw an old WD portable hard drive into a trash, you'd better reformat it and permanently erase all your private data on it. However, do you know how to reformat WD portable hard drive? There may be lots of methods to reformat a WD portable hard drive on PC or Mac. Today, we will introduce an easy, secure and efficient way to reformat WD portable hard drive.
WD portable hard drive reformatting software for Windows/Mac
In order to reformat WD portable hard drive and permanently erase the data on the WD portable hard drive, we strongly recommend you to use this tool – Super Eraser to help you reformat the WD portable hard drive. Download this WD portable hard drive reformatting software here:
DoYourData Super Eraser offers certified data erasure algorithms to help in reformatting and erasing WD portable hard drive. Before you use this tool to reformat your WD portable hard drive, make sure all your important data on the WD portable hard drive has been backed up to another hard drive. Once the WD portable hard drive is reformatted by Super Eraser, all the data on the WD portable hard drive will be permanently erased, can't be recovered by data recovery software.
Easily reformat WD portable hard drive with Super Eraser
Super Eraser can help you efficient reformat WD portable hard drive on PC or Mac. Here, you can follow these steps to reformat WD portable hard drive with Super Eraser.
Step 1: Connect your WD portable hard drive with the computer.
Just connect your WD portable hard drive with the computer which has installed Super Eraser. Then run Super Eraser on your computer.
Step 2: Reformat the WD portable hard drive.
Choose this mode 'Wipe Hard Drive', select the WD portable hard drive, click on 'Wipe Now' button. Super Eraser will reformat the WD portable hard drive and permanently erase all data on the WD portable hard drive.
Super Eraser is 100% safe data erasure software. It will not shorten the service life of the WD portable hard drive even the WD portable hard drive is erased 35 times by this software. Super Eraser also can help you permanently erase files/folders from WD portable hard drive, and wipe the free disk space of the WD portable hard drive.
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Securely and permanently erase data from HDD, SSD, USB drive, memory card or other device, beyond the scope of data recovery.
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Do you keep a backup of your data on an external hard drive? Hopefully, you do. It's an intelligent way to keep data safe. But if the external drive gets corrupted, then what?
Worry not; you can reformat the hard drive and make it accessible, but what about the data? Again, there's nothing to worry about; you can recover that data too. But how?
In this post, we will discuss how to reformat the drive and recover data from the formatted hard drive.
But before that, let's know what formatting is.
What Does Formatting Hard Drive Mean?
Formatting a hard drive means deleting all the data on the drive and creating new file systems. Generally, when the hard drive media is inaccessible or has errors, formatting is required.
How To Reformat An External Drive?
Reformatting a hard drive on Windows and Mac is simple. To learn how to format a drive on Windows, follow the steps below.
Note: Since we want to recover data, we will do a quick format as it only deletes the organizational structure keeping the actual files there. It's like throwing empty boxes and keeping the content.
Reformatting external hard drive Windows 10
1. Connect the hard drive and wait for Windows to recognize it
2. Launch File Explorer > This PC
3. Look for the external drive > right-click > select Format
4. Make sure you select the Quick Format box. If you make a mistake here, you will lose all the data.
5. To begin the process, click Start and wait for the process to finish.
Once done, do not perform any operation on the disk as this might overwrite the data, and we may not recover the old data.
Reformatting external hard drive Mac
Note: Since formatting hard drive erases all data, we recommend backing up important files.
1. Connect the external drive
2. Open Applications Folder > Utilities >Disk Utility
How To Reformat Portable Hard Drive For Mac Hard Drive
3. Look for the external driver you wish to reformat
4. Select and click Erase
5. Follow on-screen instructions and choose exFat. We recommend this as both Windows and Mac support this file format.
6. Click Erase. Once done, don't perform any operation as this will reduce the chances of data recovery.
How To Recover Data From Reformatted Hard Drive Windows 10 & Mac
After reformatting the external hard drive, we will need to use third-party data recovery software to recover data. Here we enlist the best data recovery apps to restore data on both Windows and Mac. All the programs listed below will help restore as much data as possible.
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So, without any delay, let's read further and know about the best data recovery software.
1. Stellar Data Recovery Software
How To Reformat External Hard Drive
Using this data recovery app, you can recover data from a reformatted hard disk available for both Windows and Mac. The software helps recover all major file types and formats. Moreover, you can preview files before saving them and can retrieve any kind of data from formatted media.
Nonetheless, in just 3 simple steps, you can get back the data you forgot to backup. To use Stellar, follow the steps below:
1. Download, install, and launch the product.
2. Select the type of data you want to recover.
3. Select the folder location or drive volume and click Scan
4. Once the process is done, select a file to recover and click Recover to save recovered data.
Tip: When recovering data, never save it on the same disk from which you are retrieving it, as this reduces the chances of data recovery.
2. EaseUS Data Recovery
This recovery tool is compatible with both Mac and Windows, and it serves 100+ real-life data loss scenarios like formatting, deleting, etc. With a user-friendly approach, this recovery tool comes in handy, and it helps recover files from reformatted external drives, hard disk, and more. Moreover, it offers different scan modes to help recover more data. The quick scan takes a shorter time while the Deep Scan, as the name suggests, is more thorough and time-consuming. Not only this, when using EaseUS, you can recover data even when the scan is in process. If you find the data you have been looking for during the scan, you can recover it and save time. What's more EaseUS even works as a photo and video repair tool. This means using this recovery software; you can repair corrupt, damage,d and broken MP4, MOV videos, photos, etc.
To recover data, install the product, select the file type, disk volume, scan it, and retrieve data.
3. Recuva – Data Recovery Tool
Offered by Piriform Recuva Professional is available for Windows only. You can recover images, documents, music, emails, and other lost file types using it. Also, it helps recover files from damaged or newly formatted drives. To retrieve a significant amount of data from a reformatted hard disk, we suggest using Deep Scan. This advanced and deep scan helps find traces of all the deleted files and recover them.
Using any of these tools, you can easily recover data from reformatted hard disk on Windows 10 and Mac. In addition to this, to avoid losing data when the external drive gets corrupt, we suggest keeping multiple backups or using cloud storage. This will help access data even when the disk is corrupt. We hope you find the article useful. Do let us know which tool you used and why in the comments section.
