Before 2011, Samsung used to manufacture their own hard disk drives. But in the year 2011, they sold their hard drive business to Seagate. Nevertheless, the older Samsung external hard drives are still being sold over eBay and I have recently bought two of them only for US $15. Both of them were still in their original packing and were unused. I checked the manual which talked about a “Samsung Format Utility” that can quickly prepare these portable hard drives for use in Windows or Mac.
Upon visiting the mentioned Samsung HDD website (samsunghdd.com), the browser is redirected to the Seagate website (because Samsung HDD business is now owned by Seagate). After some groping in the dark I found the link to the Samsung Format Utility. This utility works only with Samsung external hard drives and can format them using FAT32, NTFS or HFS file systems. But this utility can be used only on a Windows computer (not on a Mac or Linux computer).
Basically, you have to attach the Samsung hard drive to your PC using the supplied USB data cable. Then launch the Samsung Format Utility and select this hard drive from the drop down list. You can choose various options like choosing the “Whole Hard Disk” to format or picking any of the supported partitions if the hard drive already has partitions. You can pick a file system and also enter in the volume label of your choice. The option for quick format is also there for a much faster formatting. After this you can click on the Start button and it will perform the required operations.
Of course, you can use the inbuilt tools in any of the operating systems to format these hard disk drives, but if you use the official software released by the manufacturer then it will ensure that the device works in its peak performance.
You can download Samsung Format Utility from http://www.seagate.com/in/en/support/downloads/item/samsung-format-utility-master-dl/.