Summary: Let’s figure out how to format your WD Passport on macOS & Windows. In this blog post, we will walk you through the formatting process and share instructions to format an external drive on macOS & Windows. But before you proceed, understand that formatting carries a risk of hard drive corruption and data loss. So, in case, if you had accidentally lost your data due to drive formatting or corruption, we also recommend a data recovery software that can rescue data from your HDD. Take a free trial to evaluate the software now.
My Passport™ for Mac is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your on-the-go lifestyle. Compatible with USB-C and USB-A devices, My Passport for Mac comes equipped to connect with today's latest technology. Designed to fit in the palm of your hand, there’s plenty of space to store a massive amount of photos, videos, music and documents. Mar 31, 2020 If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between Mac and PC is an often difficult - but it doesn't need to be. We'll show you everything you need to know about the. Oct 03, 2017 I have a My Passport Ultra which has been used on a Windows 7 upgraded to W 10 OS but i now own a Macbook Pro with High Sierra OS and want to store/process photos on both laptops. Can i format my 1/4 full (750GB remaining) My Passport to exFAT(as appears i need to) using above procedure without damaging or loosing any already stored pics etc?? 'My WD My Passport 2TB Portable External Hard Drive has suddenly become unreadable on my laptop (MacBook Pro Server with macOS 10.12 Sierra) and I have tried on a MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.13 High Sierra with the same results. Disk Drive Format Your My Passport Ultra for Mac drive is formatted as a single HSF+J partition for compatibility with macOS X operating systems. If you want to use the drive with a Windows computer, see Reformatting the Drive and Troubleshooting. Physical Description As shown in figure 2, the My Passport Ultra for Mac drive has. How to Format a New Internal SSD in macOS High Sierra Tuesday, November 28th, 2017 Author: OWC Ben M. Recently, some OWC customers have reported experiencing a situation where their new SSD will not show up in Disk Utility in High Sierra. Although Disk Utility should always be tried first, a Mac’s Terminal can be used to format the drive in these cases.
Professional Photographers and videographers have their hands laid upon various digital devices. Usually, their arsenal includes a cutting-edge Windows 10 desktop, the latest and the magnificent MacBook Pro, DSLR & SD-Cards of-course and the trusted & loved external drives such as the WD My Passport. The role of the WD My Passport drive is crucial since the individual will leverage the portable media to safely store their collection of pictures, videos, audio, and docs. But despite the best of the best device specifications; there remains one small glitch to rectify.
We know, Macs and Windows have their native file systems such as the new APFS or HFS and the NTFS. A WD My Passport formatted with Mac file system will be a dud on the Windows and vice-versa. Thankfully, MS-DOS FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file system to make your WD My Passport work with a Mac and a Windows PC simultaneously. 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.
To format a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive in ex-FAT or FAT32 format, you can bank on built-in applications of Mac & PC. However, while doing this, there are things you have to keep in mind and follow the correct steps. Here you will get to know about the process to format your “My passport” portable drive in FAT32 and ex-FAT file system in both Windows and Mac platforms.
In Windows Platform:
1. Connect your Western Digital My Passport hard drive to your Windows PC through the USB cable. Wait till the Windows detects the external hard drive and configure it as an expansion drive automatically.
2. Now, click the Start button and select ‘This PC’. A new Windows Explorer window opens, on the left side of the screen; you will see a list of installed drives and their drive letters.
3. Locate the icon assigned to Western Digital My Passport drive and Right-click the connected drive icon and click ‘Format’ in the pop-up menu.
4. Select the ‘File System’ from the drop-down list, which is available in the format expansion and choose either ‘ex-FAT’ or ‘FAT32’.
5. Enter a relevant name in the ‘Volume Label’ field. This name will represent your drive when you connect it with Windows Explorer or Mac and will be mentioned above the drive letter for the My Passport drive. Therefore, enter a descriptive name.
6. Now, again select a ‘Quick Format’ option, then click ‘Start’ option, wait for a few minutes to get your drive reformatted with the FAT32 file system, so that you can use it. After successful formatting, you can directly save or move files to it like any other external hard drive.
In macOS / OS X Platform
Connect your Western Digital My Passport drive to Mac computer, and let the OS detect and mount the drive for use. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the desktop.
On macOS Dock, select Finder. When the Finder window opens, on the menu bar, select ‘Go’ and then ‘Utilities.’ After that, you will be able to see /Applications/Utilities folder in Finder. From the Utilities folder window, select ‘Disk Utility’ application.
When the Disk Utility opens, choose the Western Digital hard drive icon from the sidebar.
Click ‘Erase’ on the Disk Utility file menu. Now, the Erase dialogue window appears, here select the ‘Volume Format’ drop-down list and choose ‘MS-DOS (FAT)’ or ex-FAT File System.’ Note: ex-FAT is a better choice for formatting WD My Passport on Mac.
Now, click the ‘Erase,’ button and wait a few minutes and let the macOS erase data on the drive and reformat it by FAT32 or ex-FAT format.
Once formatting is done, you can use the drive in macOS or OS X as a regular hard drive.
Window’s Disk Management and Mac’s Disk Utility applications are secure platforms to erase your WD My Passport easily. You don’t require any third-party software to format your WD My Passport with FAT or ex-FAT.
Caution: Avoid Formatting your WD My Passport without Backup
We can’t rule out the possibilities of human errors resulting in the accidental formatting of the WD My Passport external drive. A silly man-made mistake will permanently remove all of the contained pictures, videos, audio files, and docs instantly from the WD My Passport. Hence, fasten your seat-belts and backup your WD My Passport before erasing. If you have already joined the data loss club unwillingly, then try running D-I-Y applications to recover data from Mac and Windows.
Tips for Effective Formatting
Format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or ex-FAT format so to transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system conveniently.
There are specific third-party systems, like Digital Camcorders, and Sony PlayStation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either FAT32 or ex-FAT format to perform read from and write operation. Check it before selecting a file format.
Due to some limitations FAT32 format is not useful for every type of user, and also affects both Mac’s and PC’s performances. Therefore, it is better to choose ex-FAT instead.
Ex-FAT supports maximum volume size up to 128 PiB, and its supported maximum file size is 128 PiB.
Like FAT32, ex-FAT is not a very commonly used file system, due to which its support may vary among third-party devices.
The corruption chances of the external drive increases, if it is used on both Mac and PC systems regularly. Therefore, it is better to take backup of your important photos and videos before sharing them between both the computers.
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Jun 08, 2020 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
External drives are portable hard drives which can be used for storing data which you want to keep on hand during your travels. Most of the external drives especially the WD ones available in the market are either formatted in NTFS or HFS+ format. The NTFS format is for Windows while HFS+ is for Macs. However, the new Macs are shipped with the latest Mac OS version, macOS High Sierra which supports the Apple File System or APFS. If your WD external drive isn’t in this new format, you won’t be able to use it if your Mac has been updated to macOS High Sierra. In such cases, you need to simply convert your WD external drive to APFS format.
How to Convert External Drive to APFS format
How To Format My Passport For Mac High Sierra Vista
If you want to format your external drive from its existing file format to the new Apple file format, APFS or Apple File System then you should follow these simple steps.
On the macOS 10.13 High Sierra, navigate to the disk utility and open it.
Locate the USB port of your computer and then connect your WD external drive into it.
In the Disk Utility window, find the option Show All Devices and click it.
In the window pane located on the left, find the drive volume and select it after which click on the option labeled Partition.
Check that the scheme listed under Device Information has been set to GUID Partition Map. Then pick Mac OS Extended Journaled from the drop down menu for the Format under the Partition Information.
After taking the required steps, hit the Apply button.
Hit the button labeled Partition
Select the partition of the external drive either labeled No Name or My Passport and then right-click on it.
In the drop-down menu that appears, click the option labeled Convert to APFS.
It will take a little time for the conversion process to complete, so be patient. You will see a tick-mark appear once the conversion has been successfully completed. When this tick-mark appears, click the ‘Done’ button.
To ensure that the file format of the drive has been converted, go to desktop and right-click on the My Passport drive.
In the drop-down menu that appears, click on the option labeled Get Info.
Check that the Format option under general has been changed to APFS.
Video Tutorial on How to Format an External Hard Drive
What is APFS?
APFS is the short form of Apple File System. It was introduced by Apple in the year 2006 and is now the default file system of the latest Mac operating system, macOS High Sierra. This new file system replaces the previous file system, Mac OS Extended or HFS+, which was used by all the Mac OS versions which came before it. It offers a number of advantages over its predecessors and is automatically applied to your hard drive upon the installation of macOS High Sierra. APFS has been optimized for SSDs and flash drives but can be used for external and hybrid drives as well. However, it is best suited for flash and solid state drives.
One thing to keep in mind about APFS is that it only works on macOS High Sierra. So, if you don’t have this Mac OS installed on your Mac, you won’t be able to open any drives using the APFS format.
Advantages of Converting to APFS
APFS offers a ton of benefits which you don’t find in HFS+. Moreover, it is also the recommended file system for SSDs and flash drives. The following are some of the advantages that you can avail by converting to APFS.
Fast Duplication and Copying: APFS is a lot faster than HFS+. It can copy and duplicate files and folders within seconds. The process is almost instantaneous and will be over in the blink of an eye. You won’t have to wait for an eternity to see the files being copied one Megabyte at a time. The reason why APFS is able to do that is because it makes use of metadata. This allows it to complete the copying and cloning process much more quickly than HFS+ ever could.
Reliability: Aside from fast performance, APFS is also the most reliable file system around. Apple has worked on the reliability of this file system and has ensured that it does not crash as much as HFS+ used to do. This means that you would have to face less instances of file corruption than before if your drive is using the APFS format.
Efficient Partition Management: APFS does a great job of managing the partitions that you have created on your drive. It stores the information on the partitions in such a manner that files don’t get fragmented and need to be pieced together later. This efficient use of the available drive space ensures that you don’t run out of storage space anytime soon.
Encryption: Privacy is a very big issue for people and if you have some sensitive data on a file or in a folder then you would definitely want to keep it private. With APFS, you get the chance to encrypt individual files and folders on your drive in addition to encrypting the entire hard drive. This offers you an added layer of security which HFS+ couldn’t provide.
If you have bought a new WD external drive which isn’t formatted in the APFS format then you would have difficulty in opening it on a Mac running macOS High Sierra. Moreover, you won’t be able to enjoy the numerous benefits that this new file format has to offer you. In order to make sure that your WD external drive takes advantage of the APFS format, you need to convert it from HFS+ to APFS. You need to follow a simple set of procedures to ensure that your WD external drive is converted to the APFS format. These steps are easier to follow and the whole process wouldn’t take much time to complete.