How To Format My Passport For Mac
Zina Stallins
How to use my passport for mac? This is a question often asked by Mac users only. Windows users don't need to do much other than plug in the WD Passport to use it, but for Mac, it's not as straightforward as that.
The difference in Mac and Windows' native format systems are to blame for this. But don't fret, because this article will show you simple ways to go about formatting your WD Passport so you can easily use it on both Mac and Windows.
My Passport is a hard drive that's trustworthy and portable enough to be given a 5-star rating on almost any website you check. Coupled with the WD Backup TM app and password protection feature, My Passport helps to keep your data safe. That being said, situations arise when you'll need to format or reformat the drive.
Granted, FAT32 is less efficient than NTFS in Windows, but it has inherent benefits too, like its compatibility. And to connect your NTFS-formatted My Passport to macOS, you'll need to utilize a formatting tool.
The simple step-by-step guide below will show you how to format your WD My Passport on your computer, so pay attention. The information you'll find here touches on formatting and reformatting WD's My Passport for your Mac.
This is the file system you will need if you want to be able to easily transfer files back and forth between your Mac and you're My Passport drive. The format is also what makes the drive compatible with Time Machine for backup on your Mac.
The tips and shortcuts below will give you the necessary info and tidbits you need to format WD elements for mac. The loss of data from your WD hard drive can be caused by numerous things: Accidental deletion, disk formatting, computer corruption or damage, etc.
Recoverit Data Recovery is a data recovery tool that's extremely capable of recovering data or any kind of file you lost from your drive. So, if you lost your data via formatting, accidental deletion, virus attacks, and more, Recoverit will get them all back.
As you know, macOS and Windows have their native file systems, such as APFS, NTFS, and HFS. A WD My Passport formatted with a Mac file system will fail on Windows and vice-versa. Thankfully, FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file systems to make your WD My Passport work properly with Mac and PC. Check out the screenshot below to see the compatibility of WD My Passport with macOS and Windows:
6. Hit the Erase button. The macOS will erase data on the drive and reformat it to APFS, FAT32, or ex-FAT format. Once formatting is done, you can use the drive on your Mac as a regular hard drive.
These all are File System formats available in Mac. A MacOS Extended is the file system used by macOS 10.12 or earlier, APFS is Apple File System is the default file system for macOS 10.13 or later, MacOS Extended (Journaled) is Hierarchical File System (HFS/HFS+), FAT/ExFAT are the file system compatible for Windows systems.
Thank you so much for your detailed post. This helped me imensly with formating my Passport as I have been struggling to transfer data from one to another without realising that the format is not compatible with the system.. Thank you!
We listed the comparison table for file system format. That is to say, only FAT32 and exFAT can work on both Mac and PC. If you want to share digital files between Mac and Windows system easily, you must format WD My Passport for Mac. Here are three ways to format a WD My Passport for Mac, follow any one of them to convert to FAT or exFAT.
It is a wise choice to format hard drive with a professional format tool. With the help of EaseUS Partition Master Free, you can perfectly bypass the format limitation of the Windows disk management tool and help you format WD My Passport to FAT32 or exFAT easily without any obstacles.
- Right-click the external drive or USB you intend to format and choose "Format".
- Set the Partition label, File system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3/EXT4/exFAT), and Cluster size, then click "OK".
- Click "Yes" to continue.
- Click the "Execute 1 Task(s)" button and click "Apply" to format the hard drive partition.
Windows limits FAT32 partitions to 32GB. It does not offer the ability to format a drive larger than 32GB to FAT32, the only available choices are NTFS or exFAT. If you want to format your WD My Passport to FAT32, you must make sure that the size is smaller than 32GB. If it is larger than 32GB, you can only format it to exFAT.
Tips: The instructions below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. Once the process begins, all the data on the drive will be lost! Ready to learn how to format my passport for Mac or how to reformat my passport for Mac.
Wait for the process to complete and let the macOS erase data on the drive and reformat it by FAT32 or ex-FAT format. Then, you can use the drive in macOS or OS X as a regular hard drive. If you lost data after formatting your WD HDD on Mac, you can run EaseUS Mac data recovery to get data back.
You can format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT format to conveniently transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system. According to the solutions above, the EaseUS partition tool stands out for its convenience and ease. It's always your best choice. You can contact us through Live Chat or email if you still have questions.
recover any information on it. In fact I think I've now wiped it. I'm not sure because it will not mount on my desktop - however, I can see it with Disk Utilities. I have tried to format it. I have tried to repair it. I have tried to erase it. I have tried everything I can think of.
Computer users use external hard drives such as the popular WD My Passport to expand disk space, transfer files between devices, back up important files, boot from the drive when MacBook won't turn on, etc. And sometimes, you may need to format WD My Passport for Mac, and this post is a detailed tutorial.
Given that Windows is still the most widely used operating system, some popular hard drive manufacturers such as Western Digital format the drives with NTFS(New Technology File System, a file system developed by Microsoft and applied to Windows operating system) when shipping out. That is to say, most WD My Passport external hard drives come with the NTFS, the default file system.
However, macOS gives limited support for NTFS format, you can read NTFS on Mac, but can't write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport on Mac, which is inconvenient for whom need to move to back and forward between Mac and Windows systems. Then reformatting WD My Passport for Mac is a quick resort to making the drive compatible with macOS. You can choose a macOS-supported file system, including FAT32, exFAT, Mac OS Extended, and APFS.
Besides, you may want to format WD My Passport for Mac to create a bootable installer for macOS, fix corrupted external hard drive on Mac, free up disk space, etc., then you can follow the steps below.
Hold on! Don't rush to format WD My Passport for Mac if the cause is cross-platform incompatibility, especially if you have used the drive for a while and store some important files on it. Due to that reformatting the external hard drive will remove all the contents from it and you will lose all your files.
Therefore, we recommend using an NTFS for Mac tool in the first place to solve the incompatibility issue instead of formatting WD My Passport for Mac. Such NTFS for Mac software helps you have full read and write access to NTFS drives on Mac without restrictions. Among these tools, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac stands out.
If performing a clean reformatting is exactly what you need, then you can find detailed steps in this part. We will show you how to format WD My Passport for Mac on different platforms, including macOS and Windows.
You can straightforwardly format WD My Passport for Mac with macOS built-in Disk Utility app. This app also enables you to erase AFPS volume, add APFS volume to install a different macOS version, delete APFS volume, run First Aid to check and repair disk, etc. Here's how to reformat WD My Passport on Mac with the Disk Utility application:
Rename the drive and select a format and scheme for the external hard drive. Choose Mac OS Extended for macOS 10.12 and earlier versions, and choose APFS for macOS 10.13 and later versions. In addition to macOS native file systems, if you want to use the external hard drive on both Mac and Windows systems, choose either FAT32 or exFAT which works on both operating systems.
Unfortunately, you have mistakenly formatted your WD My Passport where you have stored crucial files on the external hard drive and no backup available. The last resort to retrieving lost data is using professional data recovery software. You can try iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get lost data back.
If it is due to the NTFS compatibility issue that you want to format WD My Passport for Mac, you can try an NTFS for Mac tool to get the issue solved without data loss. For other reasons, you can easily format the external hard drive on Mac or Windows system and assign a format macOS supports such as APFS, Mac OS Extended, FAT32, and exFAT. By the way, you'd better back up the drive before formatting it in case you want to retrieve some files back.
Amanda is one of the main columnists at iBoysoft. She loves exploring new technologies, focusing on macOS, Windows OS, data recovery, data security, disk management, and other tech-related issues. She takes delight in providing technical and informative articles to help people out of problems and get the utmost out of their devices.
Jessica Shee is a senior tech editor at iBoysoft. Throughout her 3 years of experience, Jessica has written many informative and instructional articles in data recovery, data security, and disk management to help a lot of readers secure their important documents and take the best advantage of their devices.
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