How To Format Wd Passport For Mac

Disk Drive Format Your My Passport for Mac drive is formatted as a single HSF+J partition for compatibility with Mac OS X operating systems. If you want to use the drive with a Windows computer, see Reformatting the Drive and Troubleshooting. About Your WD Drive My Passport for Mac User Manual 2. The Western Digital Passport provides expanded storage space and backup features for Windows-based and Macintosh computers. Format your Passport so the drive is compatible with the backup tools available in Mac OS X and so it can perform the common task of transferring files between the external hard drive and your Mac's internal hard drive.

1. Wd My Passport Ultra Formatting
2. Wd My Passport Mac Format

External storages are extremely important, especially when you have limited storage capacity with your computer. With an external HDD, you will be able to store your files and access them pretty easily. And whenever it comes to the external hard disk drives WD my passport for mac and PC is one of the most preferred options.

In case if you are looking ahead to buy my passport hard drive, then let me just help you with a WD my passport review. This will help you to understand why you should or should not purchase my passport external hard drive.

Method 1: format WD My Passport portable hard drive on Mac with disk utility. Disk utility is a Mac application, you can run it on your Mac. It will list all the hard drives and devices on your Mac computer. You just need to select the WD My Passport portable hard drive and erase it. A WD My Passport formatted with the Windows file system will be useless on the Mac and vice-versa. These file systems can help you to make your WD My Passport work with a Windows PC and Mac at the same time. Format A Passport Drive How To Format WD. In this post, were going to help you learn how to format WD Passport for Mac and Windows safely.

So here we go:

Contents on this page

• WD My Passport For Mac Review
• WD My Passport For Mac Features

WD My Passport For Mac Review

WD My Passport is one of the most popular external hard disk drives. It comes with some of the nicest features and has competitive pricing. Although it is not as fast as SSDs, but this HDD is a good option for quick storage and backup needs.

Talking about the specifications, this portable hard drive for Mac and PC comes in different storage options like 1TB, 2TB, 4TV, and 5TB. Plus, all of these options are backed by 3 years of warranty. However, the company has not talked about the performance of the HDD. But it is believed that it can hit up to 120 to 140 Mbps pretty easily.

The good part is that the HDD comes formatted in NTFS for Windows. However, if you are using Mac, then you must grab my passport for mac which is preformatted to be used with MacBook's. Furthermore, the HDD is also said to be working fine in temperatures between 5 to 25 degrees Celsius.

What's more? You will also get an 18-inch USB A To Micro USB B cable with this HDD. The cable is not too short or long.

Pros:

• Comes with a compact design.
• It comes with hardware encryption.
• Available in multiple storage options.
• Competitive price.
• Solid software suite.
• 3 Years of warranty.

Cons:

• There is no USB C connection.

WD My Passport For Mac Features

Slim Style

One of the best parts of the mypassport harddrive is that it comes with a slim style. It is extremely portable and can be carried anywhere pretty easily. Also, it comes with a bunch of vibrant colors. So you can choose your style.

Use As A Backup Option

The wd external hard drives for mac 1tb is an ideal choice for all your backup needs. With this HDD, you can easily take a backup of your photos, videos, music, and documents. Also, the best part is that it comes with the WD Backup software, which automatically takes backup of your system at the scheduled time. All, you have to do is set up the backup frequency time, and it will take a backup of your computer from time to time.

Encryption Supported

One of the best parts of the wd passport for mac 2tb is that it supports encryption. You will be able to protect your files using the built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption. All you have to do is activate password protection and create a password for the hard disk drive, and you are all done.

Super Easy:

Getting started with my passport external hard drive is extremely easy. There is no complicated installation steps need to be followed. If you are using Windows, you can simply connect the external drive to your computer, and you ready to go. For Mac, make sure to buy the Mac version only, which comes preformatted for Mac and does not require any sort of installation procedure.

Cloud Storage Supported

Another best part of this HDD is that it supports popular social media and cloud storage services. As a result, you can connect the Hard Disk Drive to sites like DropBox, Google Drive, Facebook others. And you can easily import, organize, and share your photos, video, and docs.

There is a possible chance that My Passport is incorrectly formatted, and as a result, Mac isn't able to recognize it. In this case, try connecting the My Passport HDD to a Windows computer and format it with ExFat. Also, do sure to take a backup before formatting.

There is not a huge difference between Mypassport for mac and Pc version. The PC version is formatted for Windows use while the Mac version is formatted for Mac use. However, you can always format the disk later according to your requirements.

To get My Passport work with Mac, you will need to format it with exFAT. For this, you can connect the drive to a Windows computer, then right-click on the drive and select format.

Final Words:

So that was all for the WD My Passport for Mac and PC review. There is no doubt that this is one of the best external hard disk drives one can buy. Also, it supports quite a lot of devices such as gaming consoles, smartphones, Linux machines, and more.

Anyway, if there is anything you would like to ask, then do feel free to comment below, and I will surely help you out with your query.

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.

Why is the WD My Passport read-only?

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:

• 1. Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted
• 2. You have read-only permission to access WD My Passport hard drive
• 3. Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted

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.

Scenario 1: Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted

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:

• 1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities.
• 2. Click the WD My Passport (you may have changed its name) at the left sidebar. The file system information will be displayed on the right.

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.

Solution: Install an NTFS for Mac driver to make WD My Passport writable

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.

How to find the mac address on my alexa. Three simple steps to read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive easily.

• 1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your Mac. Then, restart your Mac.
• 2. Connect the NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive to Mac.
• 3. Write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive after the drive has been mounted successfully.

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.

Scenario 2: You have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport hard drive

Hp digital filing setup wizard mac. 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:

• 1. Right-click the WD My Passport disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info'.
• 2. Check the information at the bottom under the Sharing & Permissions tab.

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.

Solution: Change read-only permission on the WD My Passport drive

Follow the instruction below to change permission on Mac so that you can access the WD My Passport again:

• 1. Click on the lock icon at the right corner in the Get Info window.
• 2. Enter password if asked.
• 3. Check the 'Ignore ownership on this volume'.
• 4. Click on the gear button and choose 'Apply to enclosed items…'.
• 5. Click 'OK' when you are asked to confirm the operation.
• 6. Click the 'Read Only' in Privilege column and select 'Read & Write'.

By now, you have regained the read and write access to the WD My Passport.

Scenario 3: Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted

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:

• Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac
• Reformat the WD My Passport on Mac

Solution 1: Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac

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:

• 1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
• 2. Select the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.
• 3. Click on First Aid and click on 'Run' to repair the WD My Passport drive.
• 4. Click 'Done' after the operation completes.

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.

Solution 2: Reformat the WD My Passport for Mac

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.

• 1. Make sure you have a copy of your important files on WD My Passport hard drive, or recover lost data from the external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
• 2. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
• 3. Click on the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.
• 4. Check Click 'Erase' on the top of the Disk Utility window.
• 5. Input a name.
• 6. Choose FAT or exFAT as format for convenience because either of them is compatible with both Windows and macOS. Then, how to format the WD My Passport for Mac exclusive use? Simply choose APFS or Mac OS Extend format in Disk Utility, which also works if you want to format WD Elements for Mac.
• 7. Choose 'GUID Partition Map' as Scheme.
• 8. Click on 'Erase' button.

You can reconnect the WD external hard drive to Mac again to see if it is writable now.

Wd My Passport Ultra Formatting

Conclusion

Wd My Passport Mac Format

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.