In the next 5 minutes read, you will master yourself in formatting a WD My Passport safely and in a manner best suited for sharing your digital files between a macOS and Windows OS.
Thankfully, FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file systems to make your WD My Passport work with a Mac and a Windows PC simultaneously. A WD My Passport formatted with a Mac file system will be a dud on Windows and vice-versa. We know, Mac and Windows have their native file systems, such as the new APFS or HFS and the NTFS.
But despite the best of the best device specifications, there remains one small glitch to rectify.
The WD My Passport drive’s role is crucial since the individual will leverage the portable media to safely store their collection of pictures, videos, audio, and docs.
Usually, their arsenal includes a cutting-edge Windows 10 desktop, the latest and the magnificent MacBook Pro, DSLR & SD-Cards, of course, and the trusted & loved external drives, such as the WD My Passport. Therefore, it is better to take backup of your important photos and videos before sharing them between both the computers.Professional photographers and videographers have their hands laid upon various digital devices. 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.
In macOS / OS X Platform Western Digital My Passport Software For Mac Computers
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.
Just activate password protection and set your own personalized password. The My Passport for Mac drive’s built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with WD Security™ software helps keep your content private and safe. Designed to fit in the palm of your hand, there’s plenty of space to store a massive amount of photos, videos, music and documents. Compatible with USB-C and USB-A devices, My Passport for Mac comes equipped to connect with today's latest technology. My Passport™ for Mac is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your on-the-go lifestyle. And the whole thing takes only a few minutes to do. After that you can use your WD Passport on both Mac and PC. Next you format your WD My Passport drive to an ExFAT file system.
You format your WD My Passport to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. You plug in the WD My Passport Into Your Mac.