Every journey needs a passport. The My Passport™ for Mac drive is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your on-the-go lifestyle. Compatible with USB-C™ and USB-A, the My Passport for Mac drive comes equipped to connect with today's latest technology. With a new, stylish design that fits in the palm of your hand, there’s space to store, organize, and share all the photos.
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Apr 12,2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
How do I make WD My Passport work on Mac?
“Okay, so I’ve been hearing about how great WD’s Passport is, so I grabbed one to find out for myself how true this is. But I hear to use it on Mac, I have to format it first. How do I do that, exactly? A little help, people.”
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.
Part 1 - Overview of WD My Passport File System
Technology has reached a point where it pretty much seeps into every aspect of our daily life. We’re always using our phones and computers to send messages, host meetings, shop online, etc.
Of course, there is much exchange of valuable data as these happen, and where you keep this data is extremely important; that’s where WD’s My Passport comes in.
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.
Default File System of WD my passport
Western Digital (WD) hard drives are formatted with NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) by default to make them more compatible with both operating systems.
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.
This is especially true if you regularly use your WD drive on both Windows and macOS. So always remember to check if the drive is formatted or not.
Why WD my Passport can’t be used on mac?
A significant number of users trust West Digital hard drives. Their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability are second to none.
But nothing is perfect, right? Sometimes when you connect the WD My Passport drive to your Mac, it’s grayed out in Disk Utility.
The drive’s external light can be on too but it still doesn't work. Worse still, it could become unreadable on your Mac. You know what that means, right? Your data can’t be accessible now.
What Are the Reasons for My Passport Not Showing Up on Mac?
More often than not, an external hard drive doesn't show up on Mac simply because your Mac's USB cable or USB port is bad. But the following factors may also contribute to WD not showing up.
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Part 2 - How to Format WD my Passport for Mac?
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.
Part 3 - Recover Accidentally Formatted WD Files
If you are unable to locate or access the data on your Western Digital (WD) external hard drive, it can be devastating, particularly when the lost data contains precious images and invaluable backups.
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.
But all that doesn’t mean you can’t get your data back. There are some great solutions you can utilize to recover deleted, corrupted or lost files and you’ll learn of them before the end of this post.
Why Formatted Data Can Be Recovered?It makes perfect sense for you to worry if you lose your data, but sometimes, formatting becomes necessary too, doesn’t it?
Then of course, you can’t rule out other possible causes like a virus, power failure, or hardware damage to your drive. They are all likely causes of data loss.
When it comes to Western Digital disk recovery, the first option that comes to mind is using third party data recovery applications. This is considerably better than the complicated and time-consuming manual data recovery options out there.
Restoring lost WD data takes only minutes, depending on the size of the drive and the amount of data to be recovered. The data recovery tool in question supports all Western Digital hard disk drives, such as My Book Pro, My Book, WD Elements, My Book Studio, etc.
Sometimes, there will be a need to learn how to reformat my passport for Mac, so once you’re acquainted with formatting, you should enlighten yourself on how to reformat WD my passport for Mac.
How to Recover Formatted WD Drive Files using Recoverit Data Recovery?
If you know anything about data recovery, then it’s very likely you’re familiar with Recoverit Data Recovery. If you aren’t, you’ve been missing out a lot!
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.
Recoverit’s data recovery steps are often very similar irrespective of which type of system you own; Windows or Mac. But since you’re dealing with Mac today, that will be the focus here. So, go on and follow the 3 steps below to get back data on a Mac.
Step 1: Select the WD Drive
Start Recoverit and look under the “External Devices” section. You’ll see some drives connected to your Mac. Select the WD drive and click on “Start”.
Step 2: Scan Your WD Drive
Recoverit will start scanning the drive. Look to the left of the software and you’ll see checkboxes that detail the types of files the software is finding. You can tick the checkboxes if you’re only looking for particular files; that will actually make the scan process faster, but it’s just an option.
Step 3: Preview and Recover Pen Drive Data
Once the scan ends, you’ll see the list of files Recoverit found. You can even preview them if you want. Recovering the files is pretty easy too.
Just tick the ones you want to recover or tick one checkbox that highlights everything. For the last step, click “Recover”.
All you have to do is wait for all your files to be recovered. See? Easy as pie. But here’s an important tip: Don’t save the files to the same WD drive they are being recovered from.
How to use WD my Passport on Mac?
Files and getting bigger and bigger, so you’ll need the best drive out there to capable of storing these files, right? There are countless hard drives you can choose from but the keyword here is the ‘best’, and WD is exactly that.
If you need a new backup solution for your photos or videos, the Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB drive can more than handle the job. It’s a compact external hard drive with 1 TB capacity coupled with high transmission speeds.
To use a WD my passport on Mac, you need to know how to reformat it. The same goes for using any kind of WD drive on Mac.
Benefits of WD my Passport
The simple fact is, you’ll be very happy with the shape, weight, look and even feel of the WD My Passport drive. This 1 TB size is wonderful and can comfortably store even the large Digital SLR data files for many years to come.
For those who really love music, all their favorite songs can be stored on this drive too. These large and powerful drives even find use in hospitals and educational facilities, among other places.
The WD Passport is also patronized by computer programmers, innovative artists and several other professionals in various business fields.
What makes this external hard drive so reliable and easily the best portable drive is the fact it was manufactured by the popular Western Digital Company. It’s a trusted company that has filled homes, offices, and institutions with hard drives for over 20 years; that’s over 20 years of experience and satisfied customers!
Because of how compact the drive is, it easily fits into your shirt or purse’s pocket. And the fact it weighs just about 0.44 pounds means it won’t feel uncomfortable or be obtrusive in any way.
This new device is excellent and doesn't need external power, eliminating the need for an extra power cord. It also works almost soundlessly, so no annoying grinding noises to distract you while you work.
If your WD drive is plugged into a USB 3.0 port, you can easily access and save files 3 times faster than what USB 2.0 port is capable of. To elaborate, you can upload a 2-hour HD video in just 5 minutes! But if it was USB 2.0, it will take at least 13 minutes or more. The difference is clear, isn’t it?
Tips on using WD my Passport for Mac
Final words
So, there you have it. A simple yet effective tutorial on making your WD drive work on Mac. Remember that the most important thing here is the safety of your files, so it is highly recommended you use a WD My Passport because it’s a drive that promises nothing but the highest quality.
And if anything does happen to your WD drive and you lose your files, there’s never a need to worry because Recoverit is ready and willing to get all those files back.
What's Wrong with Mac
How to properly Format/Reformat a hard drive for Mac OSA hard drive or hard disk can be used in any type of computer, whether for PC (Windows) or for Mac. Before you can use it though, you need to properly format or reformat a hard drive so that it will become compatible or readable with the Operating System that you are using. In this guide I will show you how you can properly format/reformat a hard drive for Mac OS. Formatting a hard drive for Windows will be discussed in another article.Formatting and Reformatting a hard drive or hard disk is an easy task (if you know how). But it is also dangerous as it can result in loosing data or corrupting the drive when it is not done properly.Before I proceed, I will be explaining some few things regarding formatting a hard drive. But if you want to know the instructions in formatting and reformatting a hard drive, just scroll down to the instructions below.First, why do we need to format and/or reformat a hard drive. I will name some reasons, common reasons why we need to do this.1.
Some hard drives are already pre-formatted for a certain platform or system, like when you buy it out of the box it’s already formatted for Mac or Windows. But when it is not, we need to format the drive.2. Hard drives are formatted so that a particular platform or operating system will be able to read and recognize the drive, whether it is an internal drive or external drive.3.
Hard drives are reformatted because sometimes we need to do clean up and we just want to wipe everything out that is written in the drive.4. Formatting/Reformatting a drive can also remove soft bad sectors. But not necessarily always. Sometimes when a drive has a physical bad sector, reformatting it could spread the damage.5. 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.Warning: FORMATTING and REFORMATTING A DRIVE ERASES EVERYTHING. Proceed with caution.
Do backup your files first. Formatting/Reformatting a hard drive for a Mac1.
Open Disk Utility by clicking Finder - Applications - Utilities and finally click Disk Utility.2. Choose the hard drive that you want to format or reformat. Make sure that it is the correct hard drive!3. Go to the Partition Tab4. Click the Current Volume Scheme drop down menu and choose One (1) partition.5.
Click Options, and from the Partition Scheme provided choose “GUID Partition Table” radio button or “Apple Partition Map” radio button.6. Then click OK. Then key-in in the other options like Volume Name, Format and Size.In this juncture, in the Format option, choose Mac OS for Mac OS X. Or MS-DOS File System otherwise.7. Click Apply and the Partition Disk screen will open.8. Click Partition. During this time the drive or volume will dismount and it will be partitioned and formatted.
DO NOT TURN OFF OR RESTART your computer during this time!Time Machine may pop up asking you to use the newly formatted drive for backups. Just cancel it to proceed.9. After that, just exit Disk Utility and your done!Hope this “format/reformat a hard drive for Mac” guide helped!Below are some recommended Internal Hard drive and External Hard Drives that you might like.
All of them are best sellers. Currently Best Selling Internal Hard Drives1. WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache – WD10EZEX2. WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache – WD30EFRX3. Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop 3.5″ Hard Drive4. Seagate Barracuda 3 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 7200 RPM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM0015.
Western Digital 4 TB WD Green SATA III 5400 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD40EZRX Currently Best Selling External Hard Drives1. WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup2. WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Storage3. WD My Passport Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.04.
WD My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.05. Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive.
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