

For an external or non-boot volume, copy all your valuable files and folders, and paste them to another external storage device.

Back Up Your Mac Hard Drive before Formattingīefore erasing your Mac hard drive be it internal or external, you must back up the drive to ensure zero data loss. Methods to Format Mac Storage Drive Without Data Loss 1. The next section discusses the correct way to format your Mac storage drive without data loss. DO NOT click the Initialize button unless it’s a new drive or you have recovered data from it. So, you end up losing your data.Īlso, when you connect a corrupt or unreadable external storage drive to your Mac, macOS will prompt you to initialize the disk. When your Mac storage drive has stored data on it, and you accidentally erase the drive in a new file system format, macOS removes all references to the data.

Changing the file system format for cross-compatibility.Resolving corruption or unreadable error of the storage drive.Preparing the startup disk to reinstall macOS.You may even need to manually format your internal or external Mac storage drive or volume in the compatible file system.

