Western Digital/ Mac
Got a new WD My Passport drive? Not sure how to set it up on your Mac or maybe you are thinking about buying one and want to know whether it would work on your Mac.
The answer is yes! Don’t worry in 10 quick steps I’ll tell you how to format WD My Passport for Mac. One of the first things to note is that there are two main versions available of this external hard drive.
The first is preformatted and is called simply WD My Passport. Incidentally it is the cheaper version to buy. NTFS as a disk format (also referred to as a file system) is designed to plug into a Windows PC. NTFS version The drive in this format is readable by a Mac but cannot be written to by a Mac. But don’t worry this default file system is easy to change with a little bit of know how, a few clicks of your mouse and of course this article.
The second version the WD My Passport comes in is a ‘for Mac’ version. This means it is preformatted at the factory to HFS (Hierarchical File System) version It is worth bearing in mind that HFS and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system are one and the same. It is just that Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system is how the file system is referred to on the Mac within its menus. It is designed to be ‘plug and play’. Plug into your Mac and just use the disk. You do pay extra for this preformatting and in my experience I have occasionally found that you end up reformatting anyway because – Well a Mac is just a Mac and sometimes they just want the disks on them they have formatted themselves You need to format the NTFS version of WD My Passport for a Mac and the second you ‘may’ need to format depending on how your Mac feels, so why not save yourself some dollars and go for the cheaper NTFS formatted version? Table of Contents.
What do you plan to use the WD My Passport Drive For? It is worth taking a few minutes before you go ahead and format your shiny new drive, thinking about your planned use. For example are you thinking of. Storage of files.
Using the drive as your Time Machine backup disk?. Do you plan to share files and inter connect Mac and a PC? Storage of files You can drag and drop, copy and paste files from your hard disk to your WD My Passport Drive. Remember though if your intension is to free up space on your Mac and the only copy of your files now live on the My Passport drive what will you do if something happens to that drive? You still should have a backup so seriously think about getting a second external hard drive to keep extra copies on. Just in case.
My Passport as a Mac Time Machine Backup Drive Using your WD My Passport for Time Machine is perfectly fine. Format it correctly. Then tell Time Machine on your Mac to use the drive to back up to. You will need the whole hard drive or a partition of the hard drive allocated to Time Machine.
Drives can be split up into different sections – like sharing candy where you give each piece to a particular person. Hard drives can be virtually split up and each section can be given over to do a particular job. The hard drive or partition given over to Time Machine must be at least as big as the amount of data you are using or backing up on your hard drive. Ideally twice as big to give you room to grow into.
Or you can take the total amount of internal disk you have let us say you have a 500 GB internal drive and get a WD My Passport twice as big. A 1 TB drive or a 1 TB partition allocated to Time Machine. WD My Passport Compatible with Mac and PC? This requirement will be in addition to what you’re going to need for Time Machine and you will need additional hard drive space for that.
An Example You want some space to copy and paste your photos to. You need 400 GB for that. You want to do regular backups and your internal drive is 1TB in size so you’re going to need 2TB for that. You want an area to swap files between your Mac and a Windows PC you have and you need 500 GB for that.
In this example you would go ahead and purchase a 3TB as a minimum; Probably two so that you can have one as a copy of the other in case of a disaster and one drive failed. One other thing formatting uses up space on a hard drive so if my total figures were really close to the hard drive capacity I was thinking of, I would purchase the next size drive up.
That way I would make sure I had the room I needed. Format WD My Passport for Mac 10 Quick Steps These instructions are for the release of Mac OS Sierra. For earlier releases of the Mac OS the instructions are the same except the screens may look slightly different. One thing before I take you through the steps of how to format your WD My Passport for Mac. Formatting the WD My Passport will erase any existing data on the hard drive. In fact on the Mac, you choose the Erase button to do it, so that’s clear. It is destructive process and if there are any files on there you want to keep.
For example, there is software on the WD My Passport drive, NTFS version that is designed for and works on a Windows PC. If you plan on using those files, copy off onto a Windows PC first before you format the drive. If you have files already stored on there from a Windows PC copy them off onto a Windows PC Before you format, or you will be in a world of trouble trying to get them back again, and you may not. Let me show you how in ten quick steps using words and pictures. There is a video at the end you can watch as an additional resource.
First physically connect your WD My Passport drive to your Mac? Power up your Mac, log in and connect up the WD My Passport drive. The drive will appear as an icon on your desktop. Internal and External Drives List Clicking the arrow under the headings will expand or contract the list. The My Passport drive should now appear under the external heading in this list. If it hasn’t, it may well be that your Mac’s USB port has gotten confused. A shutdown, restart and reconnect of the drive should sort that out.
Select the the external hard drive list. Be sure you are selecting the external drive – important. Also select the drive at the top level of the hierarchy. You can experience problems formatting the drive if it is not selected at the right level.
Double check. Format Window Popup First give your drive a name. I suggest you give a name to reflect the use you are going to put the hard drive to. The up and down arrows to the right hand side of the format option allows you to choose a format for the whole disk. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you plan to use the hard drive with Time Machine, or for copying and pasting files to. Choose format if you plan to share this drive between a Mac and a PC and you want the files to be visible and read and writeable by both.
File System Formats Don’t select. That file system is slow, old and has file size restrictions.
These days it is really not a practical solution for sharing files between a Mac and a PC. The exception to this is some TV’s and Media players that ask for this format.
If that is the case then you are better setting up a partition for sharing those files, rather than formatting the entire disk in this format. –.
Once you have entered a name and selected a format, click on Erase and the formatting of the My Passport external hard drive will start. It may only take a few seconds or a minute or two depending on the hard drive size.
Once done dismiss the Disk Utility Screen. The formatted WD My Passport drive icon should now appear on your desktop ready for you to use. Right Click to Eject External Drive And there you have it, the format WD My Passport for Mac in 10 quick steps.
YouTube Video Covering the Format of WD My Passport for Mac This video from Acquevara shows the formatting of an external hard drive on a Mac using Mac OS Sierra. I copy it here so that if you would like to watch the video along side using my notes above you have a quick and easy link to get to it.
WD My Passport External Hard-drive Set Up Guide for Mac Images and Video Credit: Acquevara Frequently Asked Questions. How can I format my Hard Drive for Resale? Be aware that the formatting procedure above will not prevent someone using specialized data recovery software to recover data from the My Passport hard drive.
If you are planning on reselling your hard drive you’ll need to do a bit more than the formatting I’ve detailed above. Instead; Once you have entered Disk Utility and selected the erase option, click on the security button.
Western Digital Mac Compatible
Format Security Options Button Select one of the security options and format your drive using one of them. It could take several hours for the drive to be written over and erased to remove as much of your data as possible. But at least that way you can rest easier that it will take way more effort to recover anything from your sold external hard drive. Setting up encryption and a password to secure your My Passport hard drive. WD My Passport has 256-bit AES hardware encryption and password protection for the drive. The hardware encryption is controlled and managed via the WD Security software.
The My Passport drive non Mac version does not come with a Mac version of the software however this can be downloaded direct from the Western Digital site. I personally prefer to use the facilities provided by Mac OS for encrypting my hard drive data and adding a password. Because, without the WD Security software installed and accessible by your Mac, you will not be able to access the data on the My Passport drive.
If you are sharing the hard drive between Mac’s the software has to be loaded on that Mac as well. What if your Mac has failed and the backup you need to restore it with is on the My Passport drive. To get to it you need the WD Security software.
But your Mac is wiped. You need your Mac restored to get to it. You see the problem? You are then in an almighty bind. It has happened to users. Mac OS will always recognize its own encryption and password methods. You can encrypt your data and set a password by selecting Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) file system.
Time Machine Auto Backup Check Time Machine auto backup is selected off. Uncheck the check box and try again.
Often simply retrying the formatting clears the problem. I am having problems formatting an external hard drive since upgrading to High Sierra.
There have been quite a lot of discussions on various forums where users are having problems formatting hard drives since upgrading to Mac OS High Sierra. I am sure Apple will produce a fix soon but in the mean time to format WD My Passport for Mac try these. If the icon doesn’t appear on the desktop when you plug in to format, go to Disk Utility and expand the external hard drive list there (step 4 above). If it shows up there go ahead and format.
Use a Windows PC to format the WD My Passport drive first to ExFAT then try again on the Mac. Use a Mac with an older release of Mac OS to format the drive. Download the WD Discovery software for Mac from the Western Digital site. This software allows you to check the disk health and you can format to HFS using that software. There are other options which are more complex if the above have not worked for you. Check out my resources section below to see the discussion threads.
Table of Contents. WD My Passport Which One?
There two products under the WD My Passport title. One is WD My Passport and is designed to be plugged into and work straight away with a Windows PC. The other is called WD My Passport for Mac and is designed to be plugged into a Mac and work straight away. Regardless of which one you have you can use both on a Mac. So why pay the extra dollars for the one sold and branded for Mac when they both will work?
Getting started Go ahead unbox. Inside you’ll find your WD My Passport external drive, USB cable and quick start guide.
If you haven’t purchased the WD My Passport drive yet and are thinking about your options, make sure you purchase a drive that is large enough for your needs. I won’t go into the ins and outs of that here. Take a look at Still thinking about which to choose? Take a look a Or take Connecting up the WD Passport Drive on Mac Turn on and log into your Mac then you’ll be ready to connect up the My Passport drive. Understand what connections you have on your Mac The WD My Passport hard drive is powered from your Macs. One end of the cable is USB 3.0 (and USB 2.0) compatible and that is the end you connect to your Mac.
And assuming your Mac has a USB 3.0 or 2.0 port you can plug straight in. Macbook 3.0 USB Ports The other end of the WD cable has a Micro USB B port and plugs into the My Passport drive.
Should your Mac be of the latest variety then it will have USB 3.1 ports also referred to as USB C or Thunderbolt They are physically different as you can see but backwards compatible with the right USB cable. You will need to get yourself an adaptor cable that will plug into your Thunderbolt port at one end and the Micro USB B port at the other. Don’t panic, they are available on Amazon and my favorite ones are; 1. The My Passport drive won’t run as fast as a Thunderbolt drive – but then you pay a lot more for those drives. The My Passport drive will run just fine on the Thunderbolt port of your newer Mac at the USB 3.0 speed specifications.
Once Plugged In There is an LED light on the front of the WD My Passport drive, it blinks slow and steady when the drive is on standby, fast flashing when the drive is being read or written to by your Mac a steady light when the drive is not doing anything LED Off, when the drive is off. Your Mac should recognize the drive is plugged in and you’ll see a icon appear on your desktop representing the hard drive.
External Drive Icon On Desktop Now you are ready to set up and use your My Passport drive. Decide what you would like to use the My Passport on your Mac for And then set it up that way. What do I mean by that?. For copy or pasting files of specific types of e.g. Music or Photos. Transfer files from one Mac to another, perhaps taking your My Passport to another location. as a Backup destination for Time Machine.
Share files between a Mac and a PC You can have your Passport drive specific to one thing. Say backups or split up or partitioned for several roles. How do I Start to use WD My Passport for Mac? To start, particularly if you have a WD My Passport no Mac in the title, you will need to format your external hard drive. I have a specific article to for Mac use the link to find out how. Then you may want to partition your WD My Passport drive.
Again I have an article covering ‘How to Partition WD My Passport for Mac’ Why Partition? Partitioning allows you to take advantage of the cheaper cost per terabyte of larger hard drives. Divide your drive into sections and use the drive for different things. Depending on what you plan to use your WD My Passport drive for I have 5 ways – how to use WD My Passport for Mac. Way 1: Creating Folders on your WD My Passport Drive With your Passport drive connected you double click on the desktop icon for the hard drive. Important Note If the copy of the files on the WD My Passport hard drive is the only copy of the files you have, then you are in a vulnerable position should anything happen to the My Passport drive.
Do make sure you have a copy of the entire drive or copies of the files elsewhere just in case the drive should fail. Should you have files on the WD My Passport drive you want to copy across or move to your internal hard drive, you follow the same procedure.
Open up a finder window on your My Passport hard drive and a separate window on your internal drive. Select and Copy the files from where they are to where you want them to be on your internal drive. Create first a folder on your internal drive if you want the files collected together in a particular place. Be sure to eject the My Passport drive safely when you are done using it. Right click on the drive icon on your desktop and select Eject. Right Click to Eject External Drive YouTube Video Showing How to Use For Mac Acquevara’s YouTube video shows how to Use WD My Passport for Mac.
I give you a link to it here as an additional resource should you appreciate watching a video. WD My Passport External Hard-drive Set Up Guide for Mac Video Credit: Acquevara I have set the video to start where he shows how to use the external hard drive on a Mac. Hope you find the video useful. Way 3: Using a WD My Passport Partition Once partitions are set up it is easy to use them. When the My Passport drive is connected to your Mac and it has partitions those partitions will appear on your desktop similar to when you have multiple hard drives connected. Partition desktop icons Each icon represents a partition. You can,.
Double click on each partition icon to open up a finder window looking into that partition. Copy and paste or drag and drop to it as I have described in the copy and paste section above. To use the partition as a place for storing your files. Way 4: WD My Passport How to Share with a Mac and a PC?. Plug the USB cable for the WD My Passport drive into your Mac.
Double click on the desktop icon for your partition. You can copy and paste or drag and drop as I have described above to put your files in a partition you have set up for sharing between a Mac and a PC. Want to find out how to between a Mac and a PC? Follow this Link. Eject the drive by right clicking on the drive or partition icon and then you can connect the USB cable into your Windows PC and view and use the files there. Want to use a partition and allocate it to Time Machine for backup?
The following section tells you how. Way 5: How to Set Up WD My Passport to work with Time Machine? Rest assured this is really easy to do. The first thing to do is to ensure your entire disk – if you are using the whole disk for Time Machine is formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File System. Or you have a partition of a sufficient size formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File System. If you haven’t already done that, l for mac via this link to my article Now you are ready to tell Time Machine on your Mac to use your WD My Passport hard drive. Open up System Preferences.
You can do that by going to spotlight search at the top of your Mac desktop window. Time Machine Available Drives.
Click on Use Disk. If you want an encrypted backup, you can also select the check box to encrypt backups here. You’ll see the option at the bottom left corner of the Time Machine screen.
If it is the first time you are setting up Time Machine and the check box isn’t already selected. On the next screen check the box to ‘Show Time Machine in menu bar’. You can also check the box to ‘Back Up Automatically’ if you would like your Mac to kick off a backup when your WD My Passport backup drive is connected to your Mac. You can kick off a Time Machine backup straight away, when your My Passport drive is connected to your Mac, by heading to the top of your desktop and selecting the Time Machine Symbol. Right Click to Eject External Drive Ejecting The WD My Passport hard drive and Ejecting a partition To ensure you do not corrupt the data held on your WD My Passport drive always, always right click on the drive or on all the partition icons to eject the drive partitions before removing the USB Cable.
Frequently Asked Questions. If I use Time Machine Do I only have access to the drive from the one Computer? There are a few parts to this question and answers. Firstly because the drive is connected to your Mac via a physical cable, a USB cable. The My Passport drive can only be connected onto one Mac at a time. The second part of the answer really depends on the intension for having the drive connected to more than one Mac.
There is absolutely no reason why a My Passport drive that is large enough can’t be split into two partitions. One partition acting as the backup partition for one Mac when it is plugged into that Mac.
And the other partition as the backup to the second Mac when it is plugged in there. In addition Time Machine can be used to backup one Mac and restore onto another. This is particularly useful when you have upgraded your Mac and want to restore your files to your new Mac. By telling Time Machine what drive and/or partition to backup to and restore from you have full flexibility. Can I use My Passport for Mac with a PC? Yes, but to do that you need to create a partition that the PC can read.
Copy off any files that are on the hard drive that you still want to use. Then format and create one partition for your Mac to use formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Create another partition formatted to. Both your Mac and a PC can see the ExFAT partition. Of course if you want the whole drive shareable between a Mac and PC you can format the entire hard drive to ExFAT and then both can read and write to the complete hard drive. Last Words I trust that I have helped you stay nice and calm as you learnt how to use WD My Passport for Mac. And I have put your mind at rest that not only can you use WD My Passport on a Mac, it works really well on a Mac.
Don’t be shy I invite you to check out my other articles here on the site.