You may wish to use an external FireWire or USB hard drive to store your Aperture Library, referenced images, or Vaults. Here are some suggestions on preparing the external hard drive for best performance with Aperture. Many external hard drives come pre-formatted as FAT 32. This is a native Windows file format that can be read by Mac OS X, but is not ideal for use with Aperture.
Jun 22, 2018 - Reading PC-formatted hard drives using your Mac is easy enough. Need access to them, or you can even choose not to mount automatically.
Before you begin to use your new external hard drive with Aperture, reformat it to the Mac OS Extended file system:
![Cannot access hard drive Cannot access hard drive](https://d1rbx.aoscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/disk-recovery-select-disk.jpg)
- Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
- If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
- In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
- Launch Disk Utility.
- Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
- Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
- From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
- Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
- Click the Erase button.
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated on by Disk Drill Team
Yes, it is possible. When a drive is formatted, macOS makes its space available for future use. It does not physically remove the files if you perform a quick format. The data still exists on the drive and can be recovered until it is overwritten. Using data recovery software, you can restore data from a drive after it is formatted.
To recover files from a formatted hard drive on Mac:
- Install Disk Drill on a different drive than the formatted on you wish to restore.
- Launch the app and select the formatted drive from the disk list.
- Click Recover to scan for recoverable data.
- Preview the files and select those to be restored.
- Click Recover to perform the restore.
Follow these steps to recover data from a formatted external hard drive:
- Connect the external hard drive to your computer.
- Start Disk Drill and select the external drive.
- Click Recover to begin scanning for lost data on the formatted drive.
- Preview the files that can be retrieved.
- Select the files you want and click Recover to perform the restore.
Recovering formatted data on a Mac for free requires you to restore from a previously made backup. As a precaution against the problem of accidentally formatting the wrong partition or disk, you should always create a backup before performing a format operation on your computer’s disks. It is the only way to recover from formatting without using data recovery software.