How To Reformat My Passport For Mac
- How To Format My Passport For Mac Mojave
- How To Configure My Passport For Mac
- How To Reformat My Passport Ultra For Mac Os
So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
Here is step-by-step guide on how to format WD Passport. Install and run it. In the main console, locate the partition on the WD Passport external hard drive, right click it and choose Format Partition. On this pop-up screen, choose NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT among listed file systems and click OK. Here I choose FAT32. You’ll go to main interface. With my previous laptops (PCs), I've always stored my data on an external hard drive. Now, I have a new MacBook Pro and all my data is still on that external HD. I realized soon that there's a little problem: can't move files from MacBook to external HD. Read about it and found that I'd have to reformat it in Mac OS Extended )Journaled. Best Answer: After you plug it in and the Mac recognizes it open up Disk Utility, located under Applications/Utilities on your hard drive. Click on it's icon and go to Erase. Be sure to indicate Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It will take a while, but that will set your drive up to be used on the Mac.
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
- Without a doubt, this WD 2TB My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive - Blue, USB-C/USB-A - WDBA2D0020BBL-WESN is an excellent means for storing and maintaining your important data. At its current price ($90.00), I believe that it represents excellent value for money.
- WD My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0. Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive. Related Posts. How to Reformat A Hard Drive for Mac: Step by Step Instructions; How to install Windows 8 using a USB Drive. How to reformat hard disk, how to reformat hard drive, reformat a hard drive for mac.
- Step 3: Reformat your hard drive. Click on Erase from the buttons at the top of the Disk Utility window. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the drop-down menu next to Format. Select GUID Partition Map from the drop-down menu next to Scheme (where applicable - not ever Mac has this).
- Dec 16, 2013 I just got a WD My Passport drive, 1TB. It's formatted for Windows NT. How should I re-format this for Mac 10.7.5? Do I use disc utilities FAT32 or is there.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.
How To Format My Passport For Mac Mojave
How To Configure My Passport For Mac
Important: |
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To reformat an external hard drive to the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) file system, please follow the instructions below:
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- Download, unzip, install, and run the WD Quick Formatter for Windows ( if running Windows, or WD Quick Formatter for Mac if running macOS 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks).
- When the application is started, the WD Quick Formatter's welcome screen will appear displaying the following warning message. After reading the warning, click Continue to move to the next screen.
- Click on Accept to accept the End User License Agreement.
- Next, the application will scan for WD external drives to be formatted.
- Depending on the size of the drive and the Operating System (OS), one of two screens will appear. If the system is running Mac OSX, follow the instructions under the first choice below. If running Windows, however, follow the instructions based on the drive size:
- When the scanning process comes to an end, there will be a drop down menu listing a WD external drive under Drive to format. This is the screen displayed when the drive is 2TB in size or less. Click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive.
- On a Windows system and if the drive is greater than 2TB, the screen below will be displayed. Decide if the drive is to be used with a computer running Windows XP. If it might be used on Windows XP, then select XP Compatible.If the drive is not to be used with Windows XP, then select Factory Default. Once this selection is made, click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive.
Important: - XP Compatible configuration option is not available on Windows 8 and 10
Important: - If an error is received stating that the drive cannot be unmounted, this means that another application, service, or program is actively using the drive. Proceed to determine what is interacting with the drive and close that application or process prior to formatting the drive. Common programs that may be using the drive are automatic backup programs (such as WD SmartWare), anti-virus, file downloading applications (BitTorrent clients, FTP clients, etc.), and remote access applications.
- Do not disconnect power while the utility is running.
- When the scanning process comes to an end, there will be a drop down menu listing a WD external drive under Drive to format. This is the screen displayed when the drive is 2TB in size or less. Click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive.
- The WD Quick Formatter will show the progress bar while the format is taking place.
- Once the Format is completed, click on the Format Another Drive button to select another WD external drive to format, or click on the Exit button to exit the program.
Note: | WD Quick Formatter for Mac is not supported on macOS Yosemite, El Capitan, or Sierra. It's best to use Disk Utility. Please see Answer ID 8200: How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on Windows and macOS for more information. |
Note: | When WD Quick Formatter is finished, the drive will have one partition. This is necessary in order to optimize the performance of the drive. |