Format wd drive for windows and mac

If your product is not listed above, please visit the product page. I show you how to format a western digital or any brandhard drive for use on any device be it a mac, pc, linux, ps3, xbox 360, etc. To start, your first step will be to find disk utility. However, the new macs are shipped with the latest mac os version, macos high sierra which supports the apple file system or apfs. However, by formatting your my passport differently, you. Unable to format wd my passport for mac external hard drive in windows 10 mini spy.

How to partition hard drive in windows and mac teknologya. These two formats are not compatible with each other thus preventing data modification when used with other computer or laptop. To format the drive in windows, rightclick it in the file explorer window and select format. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac.

First to format your wd elements external drive to mac os extended journaled file system. Continue below to format an external hard drive or learn more about disk management. Give the drive a descriptive name and leave the default settings. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on mac and windows as exfat. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. Aug 01, 2016 my passport ultra was previously used on my windows 7 pc.

How to format a hard drive to work on mac and pc youtube. Setting up and using wd security and wd drive utilities. This is because the drive has been initialized for windows nt file system, ntfs for short, and ntfs is primarily for pc use. It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it. One is by using the indigenous file format option in the windows os powered computers and other is through the similar tools found in the mac os. Type diskpart into the command prompt window and press enter. If the drive is smaller than 2tb, you can format it as fat or exfat on the pc and then connect it to the mac. To partition and format the drive with disk utility, follow these steps. Plug in your wd my passports usb cable into its micro usb b port. Mac os journaled is the formatting option for mac and ntfs or msdoc is the.

Give your settings a final lookover and click apply. Apr 14, 2020 why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. This thing is still unknown for many users but doesnt worry its not complex. After that you can use your wd passport on both mac and pc. A hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for pc windows or for mac. Dec 29, 2015 how to format a hard drive for both windows and mac. How to reformat western digital portable hard drive. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive. That said, if you are using both a pc and mac in the workflow, youll need to use a different format. Well my wd passport is working but i still get the message that my file history drive has been disconnected for too long. How to format an external hard drive on windows 10 sweetwater.

Now, click on the top partition, name it windows, and change its format to msdos. Next you format your wd my passport drive to an exfat file system. To format western digital my passport for mac or windows, you can rely on inbuilt applications of your system to format your wd my passport in exfat or fat32 format. You can replace ntfs with exfat or fat32, if you want to use it both in windows and mac computer. Dec, 2019 you can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. You can format wd passport and other external hard drive for windows effortlessly and effectively with diskaprt utility or free third party format tool aomei partition assistant. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next. Choose the exfat file system in the list and click start. Please keep in mind that reformatting will result in the loss of all the data on the hard. Look for the external hard drive icon on your desktop. Connect your western digital my passport hard drive to your windows pc through the usb cable. Whether you are trying to backup mac to an external hard drive, wipe out any personal information and sell the computer, or even use a new operating system, you need to format the hard drive on your mac or pc.

So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable ssd and wanted to use it on your mac. Usb drives and external hard drives use the windows fat32 to format for compatibility. Wd portable hard drive reformatting software for windows mac in order to reformat wd portable hard drive and permanently erase the data on the wd portable hard drive, we strongly recommend you to use this tool super eraser to help you reformat the wd portable hard drive. Gpt is a newer format supporting larger capacities, but isnt compatible with.

Unformat hard drive recovery program as long as you protect your formatted hard drive well, its quite easily to unformat hard drive and get the vital data back. But somehow, macos doesnt allow you to write data to the drive. Plug your hd into the mac and open disk utility, which can be accessed by searching for it in spotlight. If you format your external hard drive to hfs, you can use it on mac and linux by removing journaling. To use hfsexplorer, connect your macformatted drive to your windows pc and launch hfsexplorer.

With disk utility open, locate the hard drive you want to partition and select partition. How to format or partition an external hard drive on mac. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. How to format wd my passport for mac and pc easeus. Mar 22, 2012 the best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. Next, open a command prompt window as administrator. If you recently purchased an external hard drive or portable ssd for your mac, you probably noticed that mac os x doesnt allow you to write data on to the drive. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at. How to format a wd hard drive to exfat or fat32 file system answer id 291 a western digital external hard drive can be used on both windows and mac osx. When i try to copy the files from the mac to the windows drive, the computer does not allow as the files do not move. Ntfsformatted drives work with windows computers, and. From the volume format menu, choose mac os extended.

Mar 31, 2020 how to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Although there are third celebration instruments you are able to do this with. How to format reformat wd elements for mac depending on the system that you are using, there are 2 ways to format you hard disk into a mac supported format. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac. However, in file explorer, if you right click partition on the wd hard drive and choose format, youll find that there is no exfat option. Both windows and mac can read disks formatted with it. Then, select your hard drive from the left sidebar. In order to use the drive on both systems you can just format it. How to use same external usb or hard disk with mac and.

Mar 12, 2018 want to format a hard drive for mac and pc compatibility. Then click the second partition, name it mac, and change its format to mac os extended journaled. How to solve my wd hard drive not recognized in windows 10. I want to format it to work on my macbook pro for time machine, so i looked into how to do that. The easiest way to do that is hit cmd and the spacebar at the same time and type in disk utility to find the program. Format the drive as exfat requires windows 7 or later, or appropriately updated windows vista sp2 or windows xp with kb955704. How to format external hard drive to use on mac and pc. Windows will format the drive as exfat and youll be able to use the drive on both windows and mac. 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.

Whats more, you can share digital files between mac and windows system easily. Macos can solely read ntfs, it can not write to it. How to erase my passport and reformat wd portable drives. Moving files from macformatted external hard drive to pc. You can find effective ways here to format wd my passport for mac and pc to fat32 or exfat file.

This is a default file system for linux os including raspberry pi. After realizing that you can reformat wd hard drive to fat32 or exfat to make it compatible with mac os x and still can be used under windows, it is time to check out how to reformat wd hard drive for mac and pc in windows successfully. Some people are asking for a way to format a hard drive for mac. How to convert mac hard drive to windows without losing.

Apple mac machines support a different file system. Unable to format wd my passport for mac external hard drive. Cant access mac hard drive on windows 10 microsoft. How to format hard drives on windows, mac and linux. People might need to format a hard drive or an external hard drive in windows 10 for various reasons. You can then rightclick in the empty space and select new simple volume to create a partition and format it with the windows ntfs or fat32 file systems.

If you are techy and use windows and mac computers frequently, then you might need to transfer data between mac and pc. The best news is that most devices included mac computers can read and write from fat32 devices. Using wd 4 tb my passport for both mac and pc external. How to format a hard drive windows 10, 8, 7, vista, xp. Format a disk for windows computers in disk utility on mac. Click the link below to download the 5 day free trial of a great utility macdrive install that, then restart your pc, start the utility and connect the drive, you will then have access to that mac drive like any other pc hard drive. A driver for wd passport compatible with windows 10. If youre lucky, you can just rightclick each partition on the mac drive and select delete volume to remove the partitions. How to format a wd hard drive to exfat or fat32 file system. Aug 16, 2019 in this guide, we show you virtually every method to format a usb flash drive and quickly erase its contents or fix data corruption and other issues using windows 10s builtin tools. However, to use it on windows you can hfs explorer read only. Here you will get to know about the process to format your my passport portable drive in fat32 and exfat file system in both windows and mac platforms. You have to set it up correctly before getting starting. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the name field.

For a hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a pc and mac. Saving you money because you wont have to use a more complicated way to share files. Windows on the other hand cannot read mac formatted drives period. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. Next, under the partition layout column, specify the number of partitions you want. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. As formatting will going to erase everything on your drive and thats why avoid formatting. This is useful if a drive is being used under both operating system osto move files between the two environments. Then your western digital external hard drive is ready to use on your mac and on your windows pc. The main distinction is that it may well retailer data over 4 gb.

New apple devices will be formatted with apfs while old mac drives can use the hfs file system. If you run into the issue of not having enough space format it to be the ex fat as. Easily use your wd my passport for mac and windows in 7 steps. If you fail, you can choose free disk formatting software to do that. In this video tutorial, i show you how to easily format an external hard drive to work on both a mac and a pc. This process is data destructive and cannot be undone. Thats all because its been initialized with windows nt file system ntfs, which is primarily for pcs. Click the file menu and select load file system from device. Windows cannot natively access a mac formatted drive.

A vast majority of video production will be done on a mac or windows operating system, so we arent going to cover linux. Once the process begins, all the data on the drive will be lost. A new windows explorer window opens, on the left side. For instance, users want to write data to and read data from, to do a clean installation of the windows system, to get rid of a virus or malware, to erase the data before giving the drive to someone else or throwing it away, or some other reasons. Before proceeding further, it is recommended to take a backup of your important files. Jan, 2020 thus, well protecting the formatted hard drive is extremely important, which can determine if you can unformat hard drive or not. I went in settings back upoptions and it is still saying last back up was 250915 which was probably just before i installed windows 10. And the whole thing takes only a few minutes to do. Try to format wd passport for windows and thus you can use it. This answer explains how to format a wd drive for use on windows and macos.

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. How to format an external hard drive on windows 10. The mac drive may have an efi system partition on it. Exfat luckily is a file format that both your windows pc and your mac can use. Quickly format an external hard drive for mac and windows pc. We have 1tb seagate hard disk that is completely used as a backup drive for mac s time machine.

How to partition and format a wd drive on windows and macos. To put it simply, if you want to share external hard drive between mac and pc, you need to format an external hard drive for mac and pc. Format external hard drive on mac for mac and windows. Jan 14, 2020 format your wd elements drive for both your home mac and work windows pc makes your life easier. Apr 16, 2020 can i use wd hard drive on mac and pc. How to format external hard drives for mac and windows. How to use my wd passport external hard drive both in. Windows only formatted drives are ntfs and they are readonly on a mac. Mar 15, 2018 rather than use a macformatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs.

How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Wd passport external hard drive not recognized on windows. How to partition and format a wd drive on windows and. Some hard drives may also include drivers, firmware, or format wizards so be sure to check the user manual before formatting the hard drive. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the operating system that you are using. To finish such formatting task, you can directly right click the wd hard drive in windows file explore, choose format, or open disk management to format the hard drive. Wd external hard drive work for mac os an apple community. How to format a hard drive for both windows and mac laptop mag. Format wd elements for mac and pc have your drive for both. Plug your wd elements drive into either and they can see all the files on the drive. You format your wd my passport to mac os extended journaled file system.

Formatting, however, deletes the content of a volume to clean it. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. The first tool occurs to your mind to format wd hard drive might be file explorer. For example, in the screenshot below, the macformatted drive is disk 2. Wd portable hard drive reformatting software for windowsmac in order to reformat wd portable hard drive and permanently erase the data on the wd portable hard drive, we strongly recommend you to use this tool super eraser to help you reformat the wd portable hard drive. You can format the external hard drive or usb drive to make it compatible with both mac and windows machines. Find out how to format an external drive or usb disk making the drive work with both windows pc and mac can read and write. If you are going to use the external hard drive on mac only, i would format it as mac os extended journaled and a guid partition. Unable to format wd my passport for mac external hard. You can format a drive as fat32, which would allow it to work on both windows and mac, but it wont do automatic backups, wont take files larger than 4gb and will have a high risk of data corruption.

December 3, 2018 by tarun bhardwaj partitioning a hard disk means having the ability to split the disk into multiple units so you can, for example, install multiple operating systems on the same computer, store sensitive data in an independent disk area and so on. Why need to format external hard drive for mac and pc. Not only that, they can write files onto the drive. Format a usb drive as exfat for mac and windows compatibility. Plugged it back into my mac, time machine doesnt recognize it, and the mac only shows. I have since reformatted it on my pc just to get all the info off of it. To access the disk management tool, click the windows icon and type disk management. Rather than use a mac formatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exfatformatted drives for moving data between macs and pcs. How to make wd passport compatible with mac and windows.

How to partition hard drive in windows and mac published on. How to properly format reformat a hard drive for mac os. Product firmware product if your product is not listed above, please visit. Feb 26, 2020 format is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solidstate drive, or usb flash drive for initial use to accept windows files. Here are two ways offered and you can choose on based on your own situation.

You can select to use a fat, fat32, exfat, ntfs, or refs file system when formatting. By default, mac uses macos extended file system and windows uses ntfs. How to convert wd external drive to apple file systemapfs. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Reformat wd my passport ultra for mac not apple community.