Apr 16,2020 • Filed to: Hard Drive Recovery • Proven solutions
Professional videographers and photographers use several digital devices. Generally, it includes Windows 10 desktop, MacBook Pro, SD card, DSLR and external drives, for instance, WD My Passport. The WD My Passport drive is imperative because the individual will use the portable media to store their collection of videos, photos, docs, and audio safely. Even though the superlative device specifications, there is still one small hitch to rectify, which is the reason you need to format WD My Passport.
Best browser for mac pro. Most of us know that Windows and Macs have their own native file systems, for instance, NTFS and new APFS/HFS respectively. A WD My Passport formatted with the Windows file system will be useless on the Mac and vice-versa.
But, the good news is that MS-DOS exFAT and FAT32 formats come quite in handy in such cases. These file systems can help you to make your WD My Passport work with a Windows PC and Mac at the same time. In this post, we’re going to help you learn how to format WD Passport for Mac and Windows safely so that you can share your digital files between a Windows OS and macOS with ease.
If it was already set up so that the external drive would appear on the desktop then continue to follow the steps below. 2: Check the cable. The first port of call is always to check that it's. Easiest: Format the drive as exFAT (Requires Windows 7 or later, or appropriately updated Windows Vista SP2 or Windows XP with KB955704). Windows Centric: Format as NTFS.
Before you learn how to format a WD My Passport, it’s good to know about what is My Passport WD. So, let’s start.
WD My Passport External Hard Drive Data Recovery for Mac As long as lost files on your WD My Passport drive haven't been overwritten by new data and you drive can still be recognized as a drive by your Mac, you’re likely to restore all lost data with the help of a WD My Passport data recovery program such as Recoverit (IS) for Mac. Hi I purchased a new computer with Windows 10. My Passport Ultra works fine on old computer with Windows 7. On the new one it spins and the activation light blinks. I can see the drive on My computer and I can open it and see the files but There is no WD icon to click on to see drive settings. I have updated drives on computer and all connection seem fine.
My Passport is a sequence of portable external hard drives by Western Digital. Currently, there are six series, which include
My Passport drives by WD are designed to give look and feel like a passport. There is no drive in the passport series that needed a power socket, even though the “elite editions” comes with a docking system.
At present, WD My Passport hard drives have become popular thanks to its portable feature. In fact, WD My Passport is the most trusted and well-known name on the market and all credit goes to a wide range of features, which include several memory variants, durable structure and many more. If you’re planning to add to your system’s storage or backup your important data without another costly hard drive in it, then the WD My Passport external hard drives are the best options.
To format Western Digital My Passport for Mac or Windows, you can rely on in-built applications of your system to format your WD My Passport in exFAT or FAT32 format.
Before proceeding further, it is recommended to take a backup of your important files. As formatting will going to erase everything on your drive and that’s why avoid formatting your drive without a backup.
Mac systems feature Disk Utility that can help you format your WD My Passport easily and safely. So, follow the steps mentioned below on your system -
Step 1 To start the process, connect your WD My Passport drive to your Mac system. Once the system detects your connected drive and mounts it for use, you’ll see a new hard drive icon on the desktop.
Step 2 On Dock, choose “Finder” to open the Finder interface. Next, from the menu bar, select “Go”>” Utilities”. Thereafter, select the “Disk Utility” from the Utilities folder.
Step 3 Once the Disk Utility opens, select your Western Digital hard drive from the sidebar.
Step 4 After that, click on the “Erase” from the file menu of the Disk Utility. Now, you’ll see the Erase dialogue windows and here, choose the “Volume Format” drop-down list to select the exFAT or FAT file system.
Note: The exFAT file system is a better option when it comes to formatting WD My Passport on Mac.
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.
Step 6 Once formatting completes, you can then use your drive in Mac as a usual hard drive.
Just like Disk Utility on Mac, there is an in-built tool known as Disk Management in Windows. With Disk Management, you can easily erase your Western Digital My Passport drive without the need for any third-party application. So, let’s learn how to do so -
Step 1 To begin with, connect your WD My Passport hard drive to your Windows system through the digital cable. Wait for your system to detect your connected drive.
Step 2 After that, click the “Start” button and choose “This PC”. House of fun slots app. You’ll see a list of detected drives along with their drive letters on the left side.
Step 3 Next, right-click on the connected drive icon and click on the “Format” option in the pop-menu.
Step 4 Now, choose the “File System” from the list and select either “FAT32” or “exFAT”. Then, enter a name in the field named “Volume Label”.
Step 5 After that, choose a “Quick Format” option, and click on the “Start” option. Wait for your system to reformat the drive with the FAT32 format so that you can reuse it.
That’s how to format WD My Passport. As you can see that there is no need for any third-party software to get the job done, be it for Mac or Windows PC. Once the formatting process completes, you can read and write data on it as you do on any other external hard drive.
A WD My Passport hard drive can be one of the great assets for your system in terms of storage space for your important files. If you want to use your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive for many next years to come, following the below tips can help you do so.
There are numerous factors that can reduce the lifespan of your Western Digital My Passport drive. But, keeping the things mentioned above can make a difference.
Tips:
Recover Data from Both Windows and Mac System
No one can specify the possibilities of human errors that result in the accidental formatting of the Western Digital My Passport drive. Your silly mistake can permanently delete all of the contained videos, photos, docs, etc from your WD My Passport. That’s why it is recommended to create a backup of your drive before you reformat WD My Passport for Windows or Mac.
But, what if you have already found yourself in the data loss situation? The best thing you can do is to use professional data recovery software like iSkysoft that can help you get back your important files from Windows and Mac. Takea break bingo. Using Recoverit, you can rescue your data in no time.
Here are its key features -
That’s all on how to format WD hard drive for Mac and PC. As you can see that formatting or reformatting the Western Digital My Passport drive is easy, be it on Windows or Mac systems. All thanks go to their built-in formatting tool. If you lost your important files in the process, there is no need to panic as Recoverit can help recover them without much hassle.
Summary: This guide introduces three common scenarios in which you might find your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac. If the WD My Passport read-only on Mac problem is caused by the NTFS file system, installing iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to edit, rename, delete the saved files and transfer files to the read-only WD My passport hard drive.
Western Digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. Its product line covers WD My Passport, WD My Passport Ultra, WD My Book, WD Elements, WD My Passport for Mac and more. Among those external hard drive categories, WD My Passport external hard drives are the most widely used ones. However, many users complain their WD My Passport is read-only on Mac like the user below in WD community.
'I have a WD My Passport 320GB external hard drive that I am trying to hook up to my iMac for the first time. I'm running macOS 10.13. I'm extremely frustrated because this drive is in a read-only mode, and I can't figure out how to change it! Any suggestion to fix this?'
Please continue reading and look for solutions for solving read-only WD My Passport on Mac problem.
Sometimes, the WD external hard drive is read-only on Mac when you just got a brand new WD external hard drive. In other times, it suddenly became read-only after you have been using it for a while. The most common reasons for a read-only WD external hard drive, like WD My Passport, are listed below:
If you are not sure which reason has caused your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac, check the scenarios one by one. If you know the reason already, you can jump to the scenario that best describes your situation.
For WD My Passport Ultra and WD Elements, check if the hard drive is formatted with NTFS file system. By default, macOS can mount a Windows NTFS volume or drive in read-only mode. You can view the files saved on the NTFS-formatted partition or drive but can't make any changes to them. In addition, the WD My Passport hard drive won't let you add any files to it. To check if your WD My Passport is NTFS formatted, follow the steps:
https://coollup934.weebly.com/blog/online-slots-with-free-spins. Note: You can also right-click the disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info' to check the file system information.
After having confirmed that the WD My Passport is formatted with NTFS, many people will choose to convert NTFS to APFS (for macOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra) or reformat the WD My Passport hard drive to make the WD external hard drive compatible with Mac. But as you know, directly formatting WD Elements or My Passport on Mac causes data loss.
In fact, installing an NTFS for Mac driver is a much easier way.
The NTFS drivers for macOS - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can help you read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drives on Mac.
iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more
iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is an NTFS disk management tool. It can manage NTFS drives with NTFS write support. It can easily and effectively mount NTFS drive on Mac automatically in read-write mode. It works with macOS 11/10.15/10.14/10.13.
Three simple steps to read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive easily.
Besides an NTFS mounter, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can also open, unmount, eject, erase and repair NTFS volumes. It can list all attached external disks including USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks, external hard drives and so on. You can open them with one click. Moreover, you can reformat them to NTFS with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac if you need.
If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not formatted with NTFS but you have no write permission to it, it is probably because you have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport. Since your WD external hard drive is write-protected, all your write access is denied.
To know your permission to the WD My Passport, follow the steps below:
If you can see the message 'You can only read', then you will understand why you can't write to your WD My Passport drive.
Follow the instruction below to change permission on Mac so that you can access the WD My Passport again:
By now, you have regained the read and write access to the WD My Passport.
If you are sure that the read-only WD My Passport is not caused by NTFS file system nor read-only permission, another possible cause might be the disk corruption. When an external drive is corrupted, people suddenly have trouble reading or/and writing to the disk. Then you will have to fix the corrupted WD My Passport external hard drive to make it writable again. We will introduce two solutions here:
This solution might help you solve the read-only external hard drive problem without formatting. You will utilize a built-in tool on Mac called Disk Utility. It is used to manage internal and external disks on Mac. There is a function called First Aid in Disk Utility that can be used to check for and repair errors on the selected disk or volume.
Here is how to fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility:
If First Aid fails to repair the WD external hard drive, your disk might be seriously corrupted. You will have to reformat the WD My passport to make it not read-only.
Reformatting the corrupted WD My Passport drive is the ultimate solution for fixing the read only file system on Mac. Follow the steps below to know how to make the WD My Passport compatible with Mac and PC.
You can reconnect the WD external hard drive to Mac again to see if it is writable now.
The external hard drive read-only on Mac problem doesn't happen to WD external hard drives only. Any external hard drive could be write-protected on Mac. It is quite common to see other notable external hard drive brand get the same complaint like Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, etc. When you come across the read-only disk problem on Mac, the post is always helpful.
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