In the Mastering Home VO Gear course, we explain the importance of having both an external storage drive for the data you’re working with, and a series of backup drives to have a copy of that data in case disaster strikes.
Attaching and using those drives requires preparing them for use with your particular computer and its particular operating system. This is called, variously, formatting, initializing, installation and other names, but it’s a one-time process that preps your hard drive for continuous use thereafter.
NOTE: Unless they are labeled specifically for Macintosh, hard drives usually ship from the manufacturer pre-formatted to simply plug and play with Windows computers. Mac users need to erase and reformat the drives before use. The links below will give you instructions on how to do this.
Following the disk manufacturer’s step-by-step process for installing your drive is crucial, because installation varies based on your computer and operating system version. Here are the links to those instructions:
Western Digital (WD) My Passport Portable Hard Drives:
Once you reach the page below, it will display several different options: scroll down until you see the link to the instructions that matches your version of MacOS or Windows.
Seagate:
Seagate gives you the information for all computer models and operating systems on one page. The Mac instructions are below the Windows instructions.
Those are the links for the drive manufacturers we recommend. If you don’t see your drive manufacturer listed here, message the team and we’ll research it.