how to format my passport ultra for mac and windows

How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows how to#
How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows mac os#
How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows Pc#
How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows windows#

You can find this on the left-hand side of the screen under External Hard Drives.

Click the external hard drive you want to format.

Then click View in the top-left corner of the window and select Show All Devices.

This will open the Disk Utility app, where you will find all the internal and external drives that are connected to your Mac.

Go to Spotlight Search, type in Disk Utility, and click the first option.

Some external hard drives need to be plugged into an outlet to work.

Connect an external hard drive to your Mac.

Formatting your drive will wipe out all the data in it. Note : If you already used your external hard drive on a PC, be sure to back up any files on it.

How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows how to#

Here’s how to do that: How to Format a Hard Drive for Mac So if you’re trying to connect an external hard drive to a Mac, you might have to format the drive before you can use it.

How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows windows#

Therefore, it is better to take backup of your important photos and videos before sharing them between both the computers.Most external hard drives are designed to work for Windows computers.

How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows Pc#

The corruption chances of the external drive increases, if it is used on both Mac and PC systems regularly.

Like FAT32, ex-FAT is not a very commonly used file system, due to which its support may vary among third-party devices.

Ex-FAT supports maximum volume size up to 128 PiB, and its supported maximum file size is 128 PiB.

Therefore, it is better to choose ex-FAT instead.

Due to some limitations FAT32 format is not useful for every type of user, and also affects both Mac’s and PC’s performances.

There are specific third-party systems, like Digital Camcorders, and Sony PlayStation 3, which need the drives to be formatted in either FAT32 or ex-FAT format to perform read from and write operation.

Format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or ex-FAT format so to transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system conveniently.

Once formatting is done, you can use the drive in macOS or OS X as a regular hard drive.

Now, click the ‘Erase,’ button and wait a few minutes and let the macOS erase data on the drive and reformat it by FAT32 or ex-FAT format.

Now, the Erase dialogue window appears, here select the ‘Volume Format’ drop-down list and choose ‘MS-DOS (FAT)’ or ex-FAT File System.’ Note: ex-FAT is a better choice for formatting WD My Passport on Mac.

Click ‘Erase’ on the Disk Utility file menu.

When the Disk Utility opens, choose the Western Digital hard drive icon from the sidebar.

From the Utilities folder window, select ‘Disk Utility’ application. When the Finder window opens, on the menu bar, select ‘Go’ and then ‘Utilities.’ After that, you will be able to see /Applications/Utilities folder in Finder. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the desktop.

Connect your Western Digital My Passport drive to Mac computer, and let the OS detect and mount the drive for use.

After successful formatting, you can directly save or move files to it like any other external hard drive. Now, again select a ‘Quick Format’ option, then click ‘Start’ option, wait for a few minutes to get your drive reformatted with the FAT32 file system, so that you can use it. Physical Description As shown in figure 2, the My Passport Ultra for Mac drive has.Ħ. If you want to use the drive with a Windows computer, see Reformatting the Drive and Troubleshooting. Up to7%cash back Disk Drive Format Your My Passport Ultra for Mac drive is formatted as a single HSF+J partition for compatibility with macOS X operating systems. What do I need to know to be able to plug in my new My Passport Ultra.

Hullo! I see that instructions for formatting a drive for various macOS are available here, but that Sierra is not listed.

How to format my passport ultra for mac and windows mac os#

If he switches his WD drive between Windows OS and Mac OS frequently like dual boot OS on a PC, he needs to format the drive to a file system which works well in both operating systems. Therefore, some user needs Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility because he wants to connect his NTFS-formatted My Passport Ultra to Mac OS. Open Windows File Explorer, locate and right-click on WD My Passport that you need to format, select 'Format'. If it is larger than 32GB, you can only format it to exFAT. If you want to format your WD My Passport to FAT32, you must make sure that the size is smaller than 32GB. Physical Description As shown in figure 2, the My Passport Ultra drive has: A USB 3.1 interface port. If you want to use the drive with a Mac computer, see Reformatting the Drive and Troubleshooting. Up to7%cash back Disk Drive Format Your My Passport Ultra drive is formatted as a single NTFS partition for compatibility with all updated Windows operating systems.