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.
Toast titanium 11 cracked for mac free. download full version. 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.
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.
My Passport for Mac includes USB-C and USB-A cables for universal compatibility with Mac computers of yesterday and today. Password Protection with Hardware Encryption The My Passport for Mac drive’s password protection and built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with WD Security software helps keep your content private and safe. How to Setup My Cloud 2TB Hard Drive for Mac? Proceed with the following instructions to set up My Cloud 2TB hard drive for Mac. First, plug the My Cloud power adapter into the wall. Next, get the Ethernet cable that came along the package and connect it back to the My.
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.
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.
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
As long as you are using macOS to manage the drive then yes the WD drive is compatible. If you are using the WD software, then you need to contact WD to see if their software is compatible as I'm sure the WD website may contain misleading information.
FYI, it is much safer to just have macOS manage the WD drive. To do so just move everything on the WD drive to another drive temporarily. Then use the WD software to disable any security features on the WD drive. Then uninstall the WD software by following the manufacturer's instructions. Now use Disk Utility to erase the WD drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled) if you are only using it on a Mac or as GUID partition and ExFAT if you will share it with a Windows computer. Now move all your files back to the WD drive.
Once everything is working you can upgrade to Catalina. Just make sure to have good verified working bootable backups before upgrading in case something goes wrong or you decide you don't like Catalina and want to revert back to the current macOS.
Nov 9, 2019 5:25 PM
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