When I bought the 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.

• External Imac Hard Disk
• Wd External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

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. Much like my WD My Passport Ultra, most external hard drives out there are customized to work with Windows, not OS X.

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.

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. What Do You Use It For? What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Or just storing media?

Share with us in our forums section. Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018.

This answer explains how to use the WD Quick Formatter to format a WD external drive in Windows (8, 7, Vista, or XP) and Mac OSX (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mt. Lion, or Mavericks).END Important:.

The WD Quick Formatter is ONLY for external drives. Once the WD Quick Formatter is finished reformatting the drive, the drive will only have one partition.

This is necessary in order to optimize the performance of the drive. The WD Quick Formatter is the recommended way to format WD external drives that use Advanced Format Drives (AFDs).

The instructions in the articles below are designed to help users reformat and repartition an external drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! To reformat an external hard drive to the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) file system, please follow the instructions below:.

Download, unzip, install, and run the if running Windows, or if running Mac OSX 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks). Note: WD Quick Formatter for Mac is not supported on macOS Yosemite, El Capitan, or Sierra.

It's best to use Disk Utility. Please see for more information. When the application is started, the WD Quick Formatter's welcome screen will appear displaying the following warning message. After reading the warning, click Continue to move to the next screen. Click on Accept to accept the End User License Agreement. Next, the application will scan for WD external drives to be formatted.

Depending on the size of the drive and the, one of two screens will appear. If the system is running Mac OSX, follow the instructions under the first choice below. If running Windows, however, follow the instructions based on the drive size:. When the scanning process comes to an end, there will be a drop down menu listing a WD external drive under Drive to format. This is the screen displayed when the drive is 2TB in size or less.

Click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive. On a Windows system and if the drive is greater than 2TB, the screen below will be displayed.

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Decide if the drive is to be used with a computer running Windows XP. If it might be used on Windows XP, then select XP Compatible.If the drive is not to be used with Windows XP, then select Factory Default. Once this selection is made, click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive. Important:.

XP Compatible configuration option is not available on Windows 8 and 10 Important:. If an error is received stating that the drive cannot be unmounted, this means that another application, service, or program is actively using the drive. Proceed to determine what is interacting with the drive and close that application or process prior to formatting the drive. Common programs that may be using the drive are automatic backup programs (such as ), anti-virus, file downloading applications (BitTorrent clients, FTP clients, etc.), and remote access applications. Do not disconnect power while the utility is running.

Wd External Hard Drive For Mac And Pc

The WD Quick Formatter will show the progress bar while the format is taking place. Once the Format is completed, click on the Format Another Drive button to select another WD external drive to format, or click on the Exit button to exit the program.