. This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system. This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to setup and use WD Security and WD Drive Utilities on a Windows or Mac computer. This answer explains how to install WD Apps software in Windows (10, 8, 7, or Vista) and macOS (10.8.x Mountain Lion through 10.12.x Sierra).
WD Discovery Online User Guide. This answer explains how to erase a WD drive in Windows OS and macOS. This answer explain starting macOS Time Machine backups to My Passport and External USB Drives. Direct Attached Storage Online User Guide and Solutions. This article explains how to safely eject a USB device from a computer. This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system.
This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS.
Getting Started with a My Passport for Mac How to Format a WD hard drive to exFAT or FAT32 File System. Answer ID 291. WD Community WD My Passport not showing up. WD Community| It's taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don't think this should be a problem. I'm sorry, but those 16 inches are. How to install/use 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. Skip navigation Sign in.
This answer explains how to erase a WD drive in Windows OS and macOS. This answer explains why My Cloud mobile app is unable to access the 'TimeMachineBackup' or 'SmartWare' shares on a My Cloud device. This answer explains how to fix WD Software install, uninstall and update issues on Windows PC. This answer explains what the SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) driver is on a USB or FireWire drive that includes WD SmartWare.
It also explains why the driver is needed, and how to stop Windows from requesting you install it. WD Community It's taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don't think this should be a problem. I'm sorry, but those 16 inches are more than enough to damage a drive. The drive is probably physically damaged. It doesn't take much of a bump to damage them. Professional data recovery is likely the only solution. Joe Well, yeah.
Dropping the drive on the floor even from 12-16 inches will break it. Sorry, but if you need the data, you're looking at data recovery, and that's if they can help you. Dropping included, you have several kinds of issues that arise that can cause a drive not to read. The drive itself is broken, which means you can only possibly retrieve your data through data reco.
When I bought the drive, I was surprised to see that it didn’t support OS X out of the box. Yes, it had some software specifically made for OS X on it, but even that didn’t help. Turns out, it just wasn’t in the right format. These hard drives are customized to run well on Windows (as you’d expect), and they don’t run well with OS X. So to get it running, what we’ll need to do is format it in Journaled format, which is OS X only format or MS-DOS (FAT), which means it will run with both OS X and Windows. If you’re only going to be using the hard drive on a Mac, I recommend you stick with Journaled.
Why You Need to Re-Format the External Hard Drive When I first got the hard drive, I wasn’t able to copy anything over to it (but I was able to copy from it). Disk Utility showed that it was formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) but I’m pretty sure it would have been NTFS instead. If you experience the same issue, your only recourse is to reformat it in one of two formats.
Much like my WD My Passport Ultra, most external hard drives out there are customized to work with Windows, not OS X. If you’re only going to use the external hard drive with Macs or you want to use it for Time Machine backups, format it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you’re like me who also needs to use at least a part of the hard drive from Windows PCs, you’ll need to choose MS-DOS (FAT) format. But here you won’t get great support for Time Machine. Plus you can’t make partitions bigger than 2 TB or move files larger than 4 GB around. How to Re-Format the External Hard Drive First, connect the external hard drive, bring up Spotlight Search by using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Space and type in Disk Utility.
Press Enter and Disk Utility will launch. You can also find it in Utilities folder in Applications.
Now, from the left column select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive name is), and click on the Erase tab. From here, in Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a name if you want, and click Erase.
You’ll get a warning. Again, click Erase. In a couple of seconds, you’ll have an OS X ready hard drive to go.
![How to backup my passport wd mac How to backup my passport wd mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125480329/118167011.jpg)
Related: Check out our. How to Create Partitions I’m planning on using my hard drive for both Time Machine backups and to carry media files around. I might need to use the hard drive with Windows computers so I’m going to format one of the partitions as MS-DOS (FAT), fully aware of its limitations. The other one, for Time Machine backups, will be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
To create a partition, select the hard drive from the left column and click the Partition tab. From the drop-down below Partition Layout, select the number of partitions you want. Don’t go overboard here.
Now, just below, you’ll see a visual representation of the partitions. You can use the breakpoint to change the size of the partitions by moving it up or down. You can also click on a partition, give it a name and select the format. Once you’ve decided all the details, simply click the Apply button. From the pop-up, select Partition. Disk Utility: Check out. What Do You Use It For?
What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section. Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018.