If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Start the disk utility, located under applications utilities. I think it is necessary to reformat the wd portable hard drive and permanently erase my private data. Back up all important information on the drive before beginning. Surely, 4tb provides ample storage for your growing collection of photos, videos, music, documents, and more. External drive like wd elements, my book and my passport can be formatted to fat32 via this tool. Learn more the automotive industry is undergoing significant transformation with electrification and the development of autonomous vehicles. How you format a mac hard drive is entirely dependent on what kind of drive you plan on formatting. Pick your wd my passport in the external hard drive list. After doing so, i was still unable to utilize the drive unable to create new folders, dragdrop anything. My passport wont format external drives for mac wd. How to convert a macformatted drive to a windows drive. This is because you must format the drive with a specific file system before using it with a computer, and windows and mac computers run on different file systems.
This is useful if a drive is being used under both operating system osto move files between the two environments. Your exfatformatted drive or partition can now be used for both windows and mac. How to installuse wester digital my passport for mac and pc windows, western digital 100gb 200gb 300gb 400gb 500gb 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, 4tb, 5tb, 6tb 7tb 8tb 9b 1. Reformatting a western digital my passport hard drive to function well on windows and macintosh systems is neither timeconsuming nor technologically demanding.
If youre a mac user, this drive comes formatted in hfs, so itll work for your right out of the box, no problems. A western digital wd external hard drive can be used with any computer once it has been formatted by the computers operating system. After reformatting will i get all of the 1tb of space i had before. Is there any fast way to reformat the wd portable hard drive and erase all the data on the hard drive. How can i reformat my external hard drive without losing data. How to reformat western digital portable hard drive. Format wd my passport for mac, 10 quick steps mactakeawaydata. Wd drive utilities open wd drive utilities and click the help button found in the bottomleft corner. How to partition and format a wd drive on windows and macos. Best external hard drive for mac top 5 picks mach machines. Western digital inand memory has become an important part of automated driver systems with local storage to fit the demanding data needs of the vehicle.
This is a common connection type for many external hard drives. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Then your western digital external hard drive is ready to use on your mac and on your windows pc. The 4tb wd my passport pro thunderbolt portable drive is great for. However, it tells me that it cant read the drive and asks if. If first aid was unable to fix the errors in the wd my passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the wd my passport for mac not showing up on mac problem by reformatting. You should then a see it mount on the desktop, and b automatically get a prompt to use the drive for time machine if not, you can go into the time machine menu top right of the screen, go to tm preferences, and select it. First to format your wd elements external drive to mac os extended journaled file system. This is useful if a drive is being used under both operating system osto.
About your wd drive my passport for mac user manual 2. Connect it, power it up, go to disk utility in applicationsutilities, select the wd disk on the left, go to the erase tab, and choose mac os. In a few simple steps you are ready to go and can save your backup files to the external drive, keeping your information safe and giving you peace of mind. Just keep in mind if you want to use your drive also for os xs time machine backups, we advise you to format your drive through mac because there is an additional step to make drive compatible with time machine backups. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Connect the external drive or the usb drive to the mac. Top level view of formatting wd elements for a mac and a pc. There is no 1tb mac version, but if you really want a 1tb mac drive, you can buy the windows version, find the appropriate cable somewhere, and reformat the drive. For a hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a pc and mac.
These seagate and wd external hard drives are on sale. I had to install wd utilities and then erase reformat the drive in that application. If you connect your wd hard drive without reformatting, youll be unable to copy files to the disk as mac read only supports ntfs file system. External hard drives free delivery possible on eligible purchases. I think the mac os doesnt know what to do with it in the windows format. Hello all, today i bought the 4tb my passport from best buy. I came home to set it up and backup my computer a 2015 macbook pro running. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. To make your western digital hard drive work on both mac and windows computers, you need to format the drive with the fat32 file system.
Tutorial on how to format a western digital elements harddrive for a mac. Format wd elements for mac and pc have your drive for both. With the way we poweruse our macs these days, there is always a need for more storage. I have a 2tb external drive called wd my passport for mac its been over a year since i last used it on my imac.
And yes if you want to use your wd elements drive for a time machine backup. But unfortunately it bit the dust and i decided to get a pc. The my passport for mac drive s builtin 256bit aes hardware encryption with password. In the next 5 minutes read, you will master yourself in formatting a wd my passport safely and in a manner best suited for sharing your digital files between a macos and windows os. Connect your western digital my passport drive to mac computer, and let the os detect and mount the drive for use. Western digital is known for its safe and reliable hard drives, and this one is no different. Converting an external hard drive into an internal drive. I then tried reformatting it by erasing and setting the format from windows nt file system ntfs to mac os extended journaled for my macos sierra version 10. This answer explains how to format a wd drive for use on windows and macos. Download wd quick formatter to format external drive in. How to format wd my passport for mac and pc easeus. If you want to use your wd elements drive without any special software on your mac. Buy wd 2 tb my passport for mac portable hard drive online on amazon. My passport ultra for mac is formatted for time machine and ready to deliver plugandplay storage out of the box.
How to reformat a wd external hard drive it still works. Product firmware product if your product is not listed above, please visit the product page. A western digital external hard drive can be used on both windows and mac osx. But reformatting will delete all data stored on the hard drive, and most of the time, many important files are stored on the wd my passport for mac hard drive. We reformat a hard drive if we are switching from one platform to another windows to mac and vice verse back to the main topic, below is a step by step instruction on how to format reformat a hard drive for mac os.
Wd my passport external hard drive set up guide for mac. How to unlock a wd external drive without a password ccm. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. You can find effective ways here to format wd my passport for mac and pc to fat32 or exfat file system with the help of the professional format tool easeus partition master or other solutions. Download wd quick formatter to reformat wd external hard drive to ntfs, fat32, etc in windows 1087. Reformatting an external hard drive for use with mac osx is not as difficult as it might seem. And instead get some software so that you can use on your. However, all of the solutions can be divided into two types.
How to reformat passport external hard drive from read only to read and write for use with mac computersimportant. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. My passport wont format external drives for mac wd community.
Formatting a wd external hard drive does not require any additional software. I thought this would be as simple as removing the drive from the enclosure shucking it and then putting it into the mac pros drive sled. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the name field. Easily format wd my passport portable hard drive on mac.
When the finder window opens, on the menu bar, select go and then utilities. Buy wd 2tb silver my passport for mac portable external hard drive usb 3. Of course, there are more than two methods that can help you format a wd my passport portable hard drive under mac os. How to format wd my passport in windows system just like disk utility on mac, there is an inbuilt tool known as disk management in windows.
Find the name of the drive in the left side of the utilities window and select it. Click erasing the drive for more information on how to proceed. For mac users, buying an external hdd already formatted for your system makes getting started much easier. You can format your external hard drive from either the pc or mac. Ive got several usb drives that i would like to use as internal drives on my new mac pro 5,1. Then yes you need to put the wd elements drive in a format your mac can read and write to. Two easy methods to format wd my passport portable hard drive on mac. Setting up and using wd security and wd drive utilities. The my passport for mac drive includes usbc and usba cables, so you can save tomorrows content with the mac computers of both today and yesterday. Formatting and reformatting a drive erases everything. Free download western digital fat32 formatting tool for.
With wd discovery software, you can also work across both mac and pc. Hi, when i first plugged in my new wd easystore 2 tb portable drive, i installed the necessary software off the drive. Note that using a drive frequently between windows and mac could increase the. Try wd advanced format utility alternative easeus external hard drive formatter to format disk while wd external drive format failed with wd quick formatter tool. Wd my passport portable hard drive external hdd manual set up guide for macbook pro, imac, mac mini, mac pro, macbook air. Now, i am trying to use it on my macbook pro, and it lights up, its also recognized by my mac, i can see it on disk utility, but i cant open it. How to reformat my external hard drive for windows 10. If youre a windows user, youll have to reformat it to ntfs or just buy the regular wd drive, which is usually same price or even cheaper and comes already formatted for windows. How to fix wd my passport for mac hard drive not mounting. I then tried reformatting it by erasing and setting the format from windows nt file system ntfs to mac os extended journaled for my macos sierra version. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. However, if first aid is unable to fix wd my passport for mac hard drive not mounting error, the last solutions is to reformat the hard drive.
Right click the partition on the wd hard drive and choose format partition. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left. You can reformat a western digital external drive to fat32 or exfat to make it compatible with mac and pc, when you want to use it under mac. Step 6 once formatting completes, you can then use your drive in mac as a usual hard drive part 3. From the volume format menu, choose mac os extended. For instance, is the hard drive internal or external. Fix wd my passport for mac not showing upnot working on mac. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the desktop. Wd quick formatter, also known as wd advanced format drivers afds, is an external hard drive format utility for windows and mac, developed by western digital technologies, inc. How to format a wd hard drive to exfat or fat32 file system.
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