Purchasing the best hard drive is all about what you need out of it. The pocketsized 2tb hard drive comes with a user guide and a power cable. Wd 2tb external hard drive setup and driver download. Please see below on how to reformat your external hard drive on mac and windows. To make your western digital hard drive work on both mac and windows computers, you need to format the drive with the fat32 file system. Buy wd 5 tb my passport ultra for mac portable hard drive time machine ready with password protection at amazon uk. Sep 06, 2019 how to solve my wd hard drive not recognized in windows 10. Fat32 has several limitations, including a 4 gb perfile limit. How can i use my wd elements drive with my samsung hdtv. How to format a wd hard drive to exfat or fat32 file system. Can be reformatted for mac or other operating systems. Mac cant read wd elements external drives for mac wd. Wd elements drive will not format to mac os extended journaled. Buy wd 2 tb my passport for mac portable hard drive time machine ready with password protection at amazon uk.
Im wondering how i reformat the hard drive, which comes from the factory formatted for pcs. Wd elements is preconfigured for usage on a windows pc. A western digital external hard drive can be used on both windows and mac osx. All three sorts of files work when i connect the hd to my computer mac. There are many good tools on the market, but having a dependable hard drive on the receiving end as important, too. Dec 16, 2014 drive wont show up and making clicking sound. Western digital 2tb elements portable externals harddrive. How to reformat western digital portable hard drive. After some searching i found the latest disk utility from western digital, acronis true image wd edition. Wd elements portable hard drives offer reliable, high capacity storage, fast data transfer rates and universal connectivity with usb 3. The small, lightweight drive features up to 5tb of storage with wd quality and reliability. With its compact size, this wd elements portable hard drive fits conveniently in your briefcase or backpack. Buy wd elements 2tb portable external hard drive black online at low price in india on. For the hard drive to be able to be read and written to in both a pc and mac computer, it must be formatted to exfat or fat32 file format.
Wd 5 tb my passport ultra for mac portable hard drive. This is a file system limitation that affects both mac s and. Partition failed partion failed with the following error. You are able to format a 500gb, 1tb, 2tb wd elements external drive to fat32, thus making the drive readable and writable on mac.
My passport wont format external drives for mac wd community. Out of the both its not mac compatible, but you can format it for use. It has a large capacity of up to 2 tb and can be considered as reliable. The western digital 2tb elements portable external hard drive has the autobackup feature.
How to partition and format a wd drive on windows and macos. A 5tb hard drive can hold approximately 2000 netflix videos. Finally i decided that the information was not that critical and decided to reformat the disk. The drive was not recognized by my dell laptop running windows xp.
However, the mac os does not allow you to write data to the drive. Thankfully, msdos fat32 and exfat formats have survived to date, and these are the file system to make your wd my passport work with a mac and a windows pc simultaneously. Having attempted this now says erase process failed and has called the disk disk 2s1 and is all greyed out. Fix wd external hard drive not workingrecognizedshowing up. Aside from the 4tb, you can also buy a 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, or 5tb hard drive.
Reformatting required for mac os compatibility wd support. Jun 07, 2010 unboxing wd elements portable hard drive and reformatting for mac. This article demonstrates you how to solve wd hard drive like wd elements or wd my book being not recognized windows 10 in detail. This is useful if a drive is being used under both operating system osto. And the related question can you use your wd elements on a mac. I just went through some hoops when i got a 2tb mybook studio drive recently for christmas. Wd elements 2tb portable external hard drive black buy wd. Jan 03, 2018 new december 2017 wd elements drive will not format to mac os extended journaled. How to solve my wd hard drive not recognized in windows 10. I have found that this wd elements 2tb usb external hard drive is fully compatible with my windows 7 64bit laptop straight out of the box, even though the laptop has only got usb 2.
You may wonder how to reformat an external hard drive on mac. This formatting is also known as mac os extended journaled file system. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or instore pickup. How to format new portable hard disk for macos wd elements. How to format new portable hard disk for macos wd elements 2tb usb 3. I think it is necessary to reformat the wd portable hard drive and permanently erase my private data. Hello all, today i bought the 4tb my passport from best buy.
Naturally, this means im able to transfer files to it at the normal usb 2. Thankfully, msdos fat32 and exfat formats have survived to date, and these are the file system to make your wd my passport work with a mac and a windows pc. Compatible with usbc and usba, the my passport for mac drive comes equipped to connect with todays latest technology. Out of the both its not mac compatible, but you can format it for use with your mac in just a. How can you use your wd elements drive without reformatting. How to reformat a wd external hard drive it still works. Choose your wd elements external hard drive on your.
I came home to set it up and backup my computer a 2015 macbook pro running. While its convenient to purchase the hard drive that will work with your computer right out of the box, most external hard drives can also be reformatted so youre not limited to your initial choice. Hello all, im on my second elements 2tb drive that i cannot format using disk utility. But there are a couple of things you need to know and do to get it set up just fine. If disk utility is unable to repair the wd external drive, do not erase the content as doing so will reformat the entire volume but recover all data and. Yo just got a new external hard drive and want to use it on your mac. With a new, stylish design that fits in the palm of your hand, theres space to store, organize, and share all the photos. Follow the tutorial below, youll get everything covered. Please watch the video for the exact steps needed to reformat the drive so the apple operating system can recognize the drive and allow you to read and write files to it. You can get to know how to reformat wd hard drive for mac and pc from this post, if you need to use a western digital external hard drive, like wd elements both under mac and pc. Formatting wd elements for mac by quick workarounds. For a larger capacity, the hard drive becomes a fraction bigger in size and logically more expensive. Similarly to the elements, it comes in 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, and 4tb. I recently purchased a 4tb wd my passport external hard drive from costco.
Buy wd 2tb silver my passport for mac portable external hard drive usb 3. Wd 2tb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. You can also format it to exfat file systems if youll. Your disk utility program lives within a folder called utilities. Jan 29, 2012 failed wd elements external drive i hace a 1 tb wd elements hd connected to a mac mini. Wd 2 tb my passport for mac portable hard drive time. How to backup mac to an external hard drive 5 steps. Youll learn here the things you need to know about using your wd elements for mac. In such a case, its necessary to reformat wd hard drive to make it compatible with mac operating system. Just know that this is a file system that your mac uses for a time machine backup. The my passport for mac drive is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your onthego lifestyle.
External hard drives free delivery possible on eligible purchases. List of all wd firmware and software available for download. Unexpectedly as expected, when booting up the computer the drive came back with only part of the information. I m attaching the drive using the supplied usd cable and it appears on my desktop as an elements disk, but when i use disk utility to format the disk for mac os extended journaled it gives me the following message. Wd 1tb elements portable external hard drive usb 3. I show you how to format a western digital or any brandhard drive for use on any device be it a mac, pc, linux, ps3, xbox 360, etc. Tutorial on how to format a western digital elements harddrive for a mac. I know i am supposed to format it for mac via disk utility before i can use it, but this process also fails. Wd externe festplatte fur mac formatieren loschen youtube. Since i use a mac, i need to reformat the hard drive in order for it to be used. We reformat a hard drive if we are switching from one platform to another windows to mac and vice verse back to the main topic, below is a step by step instruction on how to format reformat a hard drive for mac os. A wd my passport formatted with mac file system will be a dud on the windows and viceversa. Unboxing wd elements portable hard drive and reformatting for mac.
Formatting and reformatting a drive erases everything. How to reformat western digital element 1 tb solved. Mac cant read wd elements external drive solved mac data. Need to reformat wd hard drive for mac if you connect your wd hard drive without reformatting, youll be unable to copy files to the disk as mac read only supports ntfs file system. How to format wd external drive for mac apple community.