Jul 17, 2015 But this time, Western digital has introduced a range of portable hard drives named 'My Passport', which are designed for both Mac and Windows systems. These portable hard drives are shipped in preformatted or in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) format. In order to use the same drive on both the platforms, you need to format or reformat it.
The My Passport for Mac performed well relative to its comparables, posting higher numbers than the My Passport Pro but falling a bit short compared to the G-Technology G-DRIVE. This is a reasonable finding though, since G-DRIVE is a higher end (and more expensive) model and WD mostly intends to provide inexpensive portable storage.
Your Mac can read a WD My Passport drive in NTFS format. But you can’t update any of the documents on the drive. Or copy new documents onto the drive using your Mac. You’ll need to format the drive to be able to drag and drop files. Or copy and paste files. Or use the drive for a Time Machine backup. And you only need to follow the 10 steps above.
How To Format My Passport For Mac To Windows
External hard drives are handy tools in storing files, data and documents. There are various reasons why you might need to format external hard drives. If you purchase an external hard drive as an addition to expand the storage space of your computer, most likely you would need to format it. More often than not, a lot of external hard drives are impacted by incurable virus infection. A lot of people would format their hard drives as soon as it is infected to avoid more damage. If there are errors or system failure where the external hard drives are not accessible, this would prompt for the action of formatting as well. This article will teach you how to format external hard drive for Mac and PC.
Part 1. How to Format External Hard Drive on Mac
If you need to format your external hard drive, do not worry as you can do it as easy as the following steps:
Step 1. Launch Disk Utility
After you have connected your external hard drive on you Mac, launch the 'Disk Utility' application which can be found under 'Applications'. Once the application is open, you would be able to see a list of available drives on the left side of the window. Identify and click the drive that you would like to format. Next, click the 'Erase' button on the top of the window. It is located next to 'First Aid' button.
Step 2. Choose the Format Option
In the 'Format' option, you can find that there are four options for formatting under its drop-down button. The 'Disk Utility' function will automatically choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the default format and this format is the most chosen format by users.
You can name your drive with any name that you like. You can change this at any point in time.
Step 3. Format the Drive
Finally, click the 'Erase' button at the bottom of the window and confirm it again at the next pop-up window. This action will begin the formatting of the external hard drive and erases everything in it. https://providerever226.weebly.com/bookkeeping-software-for-mac.html. A progress bar will appear and will show you how long it will take to complete.
Part 2. The Steps for Formatting an External Hard Drive on Windows
If you are a Windows user, formatting an external hard drive on your Windows is as easy. Simply follow the following steps:
Step 1. Launch 'My Computer' and Choose 'Format'
After you have connected the external hard drive, launch 'My Computer' and you would be able to see the list of drives on the left side of the window or in the main window. Right click on your external hard drive and click Format.
Step 2. Format the External Hard Drive
Another window will pop-out. Simply click the 'Start' button and the formatting process will start and you are good to go!
Part 3. The Steps for Unformatting External Hard Drive on Mac and Windows Computer
I formatted my external hard drive on Mac by accident! The drive contains thousands of photos! Can I restore it back and retrieve my files again? Worry not, with iSkysoft Data Recovery for Mac (or iSkysoft Data Recovery for Windows) (macOS High Sierra supported), you can do just that and recover your precious photos and files. With powerful feature like the ease of use, flexible recovery settings and comprehensive 'Deep Scan' mode, the chances of recovering your formatted files are heightened!
Step by Step Guide to Unformat External Hard Drive
Step 1. Launch the Software
Connect the newly formatted external hard drive on your Mac computer. Once this is completed launch iSkysoft Data Recovery. Next, simply choose the right file type tabs from the main window interface and click 'Next' button. This option will allow the quick and accurate retrieval of data from accidental reformatting activity.
Step 2. Choose the External Hard Drive
Select the hard drive that you have formatted after it has been detected by the software. If it does not detect your desired external hard drive, click the 'Refresh' icon on the right of 'External Removable Device'. Thereafter, click the 'Start' button at the bottom of the window to start scanning.
Step 3. Restore the Formatted Data
After scanning process is completed, a list of files that can be retrieved will be available for your preview. Highlight the file name and you should be able to see the content in the preview window. Once you are satisfied on which files you want, choose the files that you would like to recover by clicking on the boxes on the left side of the file names. Click 'Recover' in order to retrieve them back and save it to your desired folder. Remember to save it locally in your Mac or in another removable drive, not in the newly formatted external hard drive. If needed, you can do this later. Free anti malware for mac.
As you can see, it is really easy to recover files that you once thought to be gone forever. Thanks to the iSkysoft Data Recovery software, you can now breathe a sigh of relief that this will never be the case in the future.
Related Articles & Tips
When I bought the WD My Passport Ultra 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.
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.
Related: Check out our Ultimate Guide to OS X Yosemite.
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 the two tips for using Disk Utility and 8 ways to free up space on your Mac.
What Do You Use It For?
What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Time Machine backups perhaps? Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section.
Also See#backup
How To Format Wd Passport For Mac And Windows
#hard disk
Reformat My Passport For Mac
Did You Know
How To Format Wd My Passport For Mac And Pc
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