For the hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a pc and mac computer, it must be formatted to exfat or fat32 file format. Here are two ways offered and you can choose on based on your own situation. I initially attempted to perform the erase through disk utility, by selecting my passport, however fat32 was not an option, i only had msdos fat, which did not work, and exfat, along with other mac os extended options. Sep 12, 2010 the mac support guy i spoke to thought that if i could get the drive formatted into fat32 it should be able to be reformatted by my mac. How to get external hard drive to work with mac os x. Top level view of formatting wd elements for a mac and a pc. Out of the both its not mac compatible, but you can format it for use with your mac in just a few minutes. Unboxing wd elements portable hard drive and reformatting. Apr 10, 2009 hi, i have a 500gb external harddrive, and i need to reformat it back into fat32 format. Jul 26, 2019 partition wd my passport for mac the information and recommendations here are focused on the version of operating system for the mac called mac os sierra. Then yes you need to put the wd elements drive in a format your mac can read and write to. Prior releases operate in a similar way although the screen displays may vary in the detail of their look.
Maxone 500gb ultra slim portable external hard drive hdd usb 3. Users can either use the disk utility app on their mac or download the wd drive utilities software. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. The secret to reformatting a western digital wd 1tb my book. West digital hard drives, such as wd my passport for mac, wd elements, or wd easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and. Formatting and reformatting a drive erases everything. Create a name and choose mac os extended journaled assuming you have a current vision of osx. Now, the erase dialogue window appears, here select the volume format dropdown list and choose msdos fat or exfat file system.
Unexpectedly as expected, when booting up the computer the drive came back with only part of the information. I recently purchased a 4tb wd my passport external hard drive from costco. Formatting an external hard drive would erase everything on it. If you want to use your wd elements drive without any special software on your mac. If your product is not listed above, please visit the product page. Wd 750gb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. Western digital 750 gb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Wd 2tb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. Download this wd portable hard drive reformatting software here. Wd elements is preconfigured for usage on a windows pc. Unboxing wd elements portable hard drive and reformatting for mac. When you buy a western digital wd 1 tb my book external hard drive, they usually come formatted for windows using fat32.
Free download western digital fat32 formatting tool for. The small, lightweight drive features up to 5tb of storage with wd quality and reliability. From here, in format, select mac os extended journaled, give it a name. I have a wd my passport edge for mac 500gb external drive. Youll find below the ten quick steps, using words and pictures. Then, you can restart computer to see whether the wd hard drive is recognized by windows 10. Want to reformat my wd passport so i can use it on a pc instead of apple only. Im not very computer savvy, so if someone could run me through this step by step it would be much appreciated.
Formatting failed external drives for mac wd community. All is set, then you can go ahead to format the drive on your mac. Find and expand disk drivers, portable devices, universal serial usb controllers or other devices to see if wd device is shown as unknown device. Fix and repair wd my passport ultra not detectedshowing up.
How do i make my wd passport work on both windows and mac. The internal drive was a wd100emaz sata 6gbs white label drive made in thailand on 03 sep 2019, which is detected and works perfectly in the synology nas. On sunday, i tried connecting it to a windows 10 device, and it did not appear although it did recognize it was being connected. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided. The exfat file system is a better option when it comes to formatting wd my passport on mac. Fix wd my passport for mac not showing upnot working on mac. How to reformat western digital hard drive for mac. The western digital wdbuzg5000abk elements 500gb external hard drive is a high capacity portable storage drive on which you can save a substantial amount of digital data. External drive like wd elements, my book and my passport can be formatted to fat32 via this tool. Connect it, power it up, go to disk utility in applicationsutilities, select the wd disk on the left, go to the erase tab, and choose mac os. The easiest way is to drag it from one drive to another. Partition failed partion failed with the following error. If it is, right click wd hard drive, choose properties and click update driver under driver tab or click on uninstall.
Transfer a fulllength hd movie in a fraction of the time it takes with usb 2. If you want to write to ntfs formatted hard drives in mac os x, youre going to need the help. Wd elements is a high capacity compact hard disk portable device. Partition wd my passport for mac, teach yourself in 10 steps. Aug 29, 2015 now, from the left column select 1 tb wd my passport or whatever your hard drive name is, and click on the erase tab. The drive was not recognized by my dell laptop running windows xp. Hi i have a wd my passport edge for mac 500gb external drive that i have been using for years on a macbook air, without glitches.
Im wondering how i reformat the hard drive, which comes from the factory formatted for pcs. Formatting wd elements for mac by quick workarounds. Its the most proficient hard drive recovery software that takes three steps to help wd users find all data they want. Jan 03, 2018 new december 2017 wd elements drive will not format to mac os extended journaled. Rightclick on the windows icon at the left corner and select device manager. Wd 500gb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. Jan 29, 2012 failed wd elements external drive i hace a 1 tb wd elements hd connected to a mac mini.
Tutorial on how to format a western digital elements harddrive for a mac. Disk utility wont format my wd eleme apple community. The wd my passport for mac is not showing up in finder nor in disk utility. 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. How to solve my wd hard drive not recognized in windows 10. Finally i decided that the information was not that critical and decided to reformat the disk.
I then found the instructions to format it to mac but now whenever i connect it to a pc, it wont work. Wd my passport format problem high sierr apple community. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Whether you need to know how to format wd my passport for your mac. Buy wd elements portable hard drive black, 3tb online on amazon. And the best way to access data in a wd external hard drive which can hardly open is to let easeus data recovery wizard help. Feb 08, 2020 how to partition an external hard drive on mac. There is a video after that you can watch as extra help. The wd element is the standard version whereas the wd my passport has several other versions. Then, ill introduce you to workable and easy ways to format wd passport external hard drive, wd elements external hard drive and other external hard drives. Step 5 thereafter, click on the erase button and let the system erase everything on the drive and reformat wd elements for mac by exfat or fat32 format. How can i use my wd elements drive with my samsung hdtv. Apr 30, 2020 you will get a prompt that erasing wd elements will delete all data stored on it and cannot be undone. Wd external hard drive slow transfer rate and unresponsive.
This formatting is also known as mac os extended journaled file system. Wd portable hard drive reformatting software for windows mac. Wd elements portable external hard drive 500 gb, black. Wd my passport portable hard drive external hdd manual set up guide for macbook pro, imac, mac mini, mac pro, macbook air. Oct 11, 2018 want to reformat my wd passport so i can use it on a pc instead of apple only. First to format your wd elements external drive to mac os extended journaled file system. How to partition and format a wd drive on windows 8, 7, vista, xp and mac osx. Fast and free shipping free returns cash on delivery available on eligible purchase.
We reformat a hard drive if we are switching from one platform to another windows to mac and vice verse back to the main topic, below is a step by step instruction on how to format reformat a hard drive for mac os. You are able to format a 500gb, 1tb, 2tb wd elements external drive to fat32, thus making the drive readable and writable on mac. Failed wd elements external drive i hace a 1 tb wd elements hd connected to a mac mini. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community. What you should know that formatting will erase all data on the drive. I m attaching the drive using the supplied usd cable and it appears on my desktop as an elements disk, but when i use disk utility to format the disk for mac os extended journaled it gives me the following message. Steps on how to format the drive are provided on the following link. Now, click the erase, button and wait a few minutes and let the macos. How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac.
We would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. And yes if you want to use your wd elements drive for a time machine backup. Quick workarounds to formatting wd elements for mac. Since i use a mac, i need to reformat the hard drive in order for it to be used. Having attempted this now says erase process failed and has called the disk disk 2s1 and is all greyed out.
I just went through some hoops when i got a 2tb mybook studio drive recently for christmas. After some searching i found the latest disk utility from western digital, acronis true image wd edition. Sep 06, 2019 click disk drives and check if there is a yellow exclamation mark with wd hard drive disk device. You have in your macs operating system a piece of software called.
I just recently purchased the 1tb passport and i am trying to reformat it for my macbook. Wd external hard drive set up guide how to use on mac youtube. Im using windows vista 32 bit ive heard that vista and xp have 32gb limitations, but is there a program. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. I want to use this new disk as a time machine backup disk. Format external hard drive for mac with disk utility.
All three sorts of files work when i connect the hd to my computer mac. Wd my passport external hard drive set up guide for mac. 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. When you suffer from wd external drive format failed on mac, you must be wondering whether there are workarounds to formatting wd elements for mac. 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. You can also format it to exfat file systems if youll want to use it interchangeably between windows and mac. Need to reformat a 500gb western digital drive to fat32. Includes a free trial of wd smartware pro automatic backup software. Wd elements, wd my book western digital, my passport wd, we my cloud,wd my passport ultra, how to installuse 100gb 200gb 300gb 400gb 500gb. Find efficient methods of wd external drive format for mac here. During the last several years, ive used a few external drives, including a 500gb wd my passport, 32gb lexar flash drive, and a few others. Hence, you must backup your important files before reformatting the drive if you want to save them.
Wd 2tb my passport for mac portable external hard drive blue, usbcusba wdba2d0020bblwesn wd 2tb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. Wd 500gb elements external hard drive black, wdbuzg5000abk. With 500 gb of storage, the wd portable hard drive can hold up to 125,000 photos or songs, meaning you can free up space on your laptop and improve its performance. Wd elements drive will not format to mac os extended journaled. How to reformat western digital portable hard drive. Connecting the wd elements drive to a computer running windows operating system, you will get quick workarounds to formatting wd elements for mac. How to reformat western digital element 1 tb solved ccm. I recently purchased a 500gb western digital my passport elite external hard drive for my macbook pro. Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover lost data from not showing upnot working wd hdd without data loss. Format wd elements for mac and pc have your drive for both. Out of the both its not mac compatible, but you can format it for use. Wd my passport format problem high sierra im having some trouble formatting my wd my passport in high sierra. Want to reformat my wd passport so i can use it on a pc.
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