The one and only requirement are that Disk Utility must reside on the drive. macOS version 10.11 and later Select Erase For Format, select OS X Extended (Journaled) For Scheme, select GUID Partition Map Click Erase Disk Utility. When using between macOS and Windows, drives should always be formatted on macOS because not all Windows allocation unit sizes (cluster sizes) are supported by macOS which will prevent the drive from mounting IMPORTANT: Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. The version of the OS X does not matter, by at least must be 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9. Disk Utility can be run from the external drive.
Open the System information and select the storage. Using an external drive or OS X Recovery for the starting up of the Mac from another bootable drive. Just click on the Get Info option and you’ll know the current format a drive is using to store files. You can check the format of a drive inside the Disk Utility Menu bar. If you frequently access a file server from a Mac it’s pretty helpful to map the network drive to your desktop. It is advised not to change the default format of a Mac hard drive under any circumstances. Prepare USB drive for a Mac recovery bootAfter youve inserted the USB drive, open Finder and navigate to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.