How to Format an OS X Terminal Hard Disk. Mac OS X Mountain Lion gives users several ways to access the Terminal and three common options for formatting a hard drive. You can launch Terminal ...

If you want to format a drive that will be used as your Macu2019s startup disk, the procedure is a little different from formatting it for use as a secondary drive for storing data.

To format a hard drive before you start using it in Windows, use the Disk Management utility; on a Mac, use Disk Utility.

While the Mac can use a hard drive formatted for Windows, some features may be limited. So it's a good idea to format a new hard drive specifically for macOS.

If you have to use a flash drive on both Macs and Windows PCs, make sure both systems can read it. Here's how to format the drive correctly.

In Knowledge Base article #107285, Apple notes that Mac OS 9 disk drivers are required after reformatting a disk. Otherwise, the Startup Disk preference pane in Mac OS X will list the Mac OS 9 ...