- Wd My Passport Mac Format
- How To Reformat My Passport For Mac
- How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac Os X
- Wd My Passport For Mac Software
Want to reformat my WD Passport so I can use it on a PC instead of Apple only. Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.3. Answered by a verified Mac Support Specialist. How to erase My Passport and reformat. You may only want to erase, but not format, because formatting will delete everything,including the WD files that came on the disk; maybe even a WD a back up program you will want to use. You are best to erase/delete just the folders and files you put on the disk. You delete these just as you have been doing all along.
So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Image editing software for mac free. Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Wd My Passport Mac Format
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
![How to reformat wd my passport for mac os x How to reformat wd my passport for mac os x](https://cmeimg-a.akamaihd.net/640/cpcd/upload/image/D4/A1/031A8640-6731-4A2E-A37D-D6748A48A1D4/031A8640-6731-4A2E-A37D-D6748A48A1D4.jpg)
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.
Summary: The WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder nor in Disk Utility? WD external hard drives won't work on Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover data from not showing up/not working WD HDD without data loss.
West Digital external hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements Portable, or WD Easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and music files, etc. What's more, they are widely known thanks to their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability compared with other external HDD.
However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport drive won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD external hard drive light is on but not work. Even worth, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.
If the WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Finder, Disk Utility or on the desktop after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If your WD My Passport isn't showing files, how to access data? You'll get answers here.
- Table of contents
- 1. Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
- 2. Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
- 3. How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
- 4. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?
- 5. Bonus tips
Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder on Mac is just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD external hard drive not showing up or not working.
- Recent macOS update issue
- System failure
- Virus infection
- Motherboard issue
- WD My Passport drive damage or corruption
Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up on Mac. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.
1. Safely remove the WD My Passport external hard drive and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.
2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other external hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.
3. Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not. How to defragment for mac.
4. Connect the WD My Passport external hard drive to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport external hard drive undetectable.
How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
If the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac still does not work or not show up in Finder/Disk Utility after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.
Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences
If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow your external hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.
Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.
Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.
Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.
Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD Passport hard drive for Mac in Finder.
Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility
If the My Passport for Mac external hard drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.
When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:
Case 1: Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.
Case 2: Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.
Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.
Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually
Sometimes, external hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the external hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the external hard drive.
Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.
Step 3: Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.
Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.
Method 2: Repair My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid
If you can't mount the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.
Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive.
Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.
Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.
Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac
If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.
The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover data from the WD My Passport portable drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Recover data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.
Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
Step 3: Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.
Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility
After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport external hard drive with no fuss.
Mysql for mac os. Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive in the left sidebar.
Step 3: Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.
How To Reformat My Passport For Mac
Step 4: Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.
What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?
How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac Os X
If Disk Utility can't show up My Passport for Mac external hard drive at all, it means the WD My Passport drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some physical problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.
Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport external drives for Mac
Apparently, most external hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport portable drive in good condition, you should pay attention to:
Wd My Passport For Mac Software
- 1. Make sure that your WD My Passport portable hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
- 2. Always safely and properly unmount the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
- 3. Don't just unplug the USB cable, on the contrary, unmount your drive by right-clicking (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.