This brief guide will show you how to use Disk Utility to format a drive or partition with the HFS+ file system.

If you’re formatting a USB drive (external hard drive or memory stick), memory card etc, make sure it’s plugged in. This tutorial will use a USB Thumb Drive as the example. Launch Disk Utility by selecting Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility. Select the drive you want to format from the list on the left. Important: Make sure to select the correct drive. You do notwant to format the incorrect one, as formatting will erase all the data on that drive.

Click the Erase tab, and from the Volume Format: list, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Give the drive a name (in my example I named it USB Thumbdrive). When you’re ready, click the Erase… button.

You’ll be prompted with a confirmation screen. Click Erase.

The status of the format will be shown in the bottom of the Disk Utility window.

Once completed, your drive might be listed as MS-DOS (FAT), and it may not be named correctly. Ignore that.

If you select the partition itself (under the drive in the left column) you may notice that the name isn’t “correct” either. Ignore that too.

Your drive will appear on your desktop, correctly named. If you get the info on that drive (select the drive and click Apple Key + i) you’ll see that it’s formatted as HFS+.