- How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac And Windows
- How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac Os
- My Passport For Mac Not Working
Published on October 20th, 2013
Connect WD My Passport to your Mac. Once that's done, double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner. Select your WD My Passport on the sidebar, choose 'Erase'. Rename the drive, select the 'Volume Format' drop-down. My Passport, My Book, & WD External USB Drive FAQ. Reformatting Required for Mac OS Compatibility. This article explains reformatting is required for macOS.
How to properly Format/Reformat a hard drive for Mac OS
A 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 Mac
![How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/6/126631663/377734231.jpg)
1. 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 Tab
4. 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.
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 Drives
1. WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache – WD10EZEX
2. WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache – WD30EFRX
3. Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop 3.5″ Hard Drive
4. Seagate Barracuda 3 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 7200 RPM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM001
5. Western Digital 4 TB WD Green SATA III 5400 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD40EZRX
Currently Best Selling External Hard Drives
1. WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup
2. WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Storage
3. WD My Passport Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0
4. WD My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0
5. Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
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Hello, I have a 500GB WD My Passport external hard drive which I use on my MacBook Air. Since a few months ago the drive just stopped showing off in Finder. When I opened Disk Utility I could see the drive there as greyed out. But nothing happened when pressing “Mount”. I wish not to lose the information on my drive since there is backups from years back. Please help me with a solution to my problem.
In general, when a stable WD My Passport gets plugged into Mac, the drive will be readily available on the Desktop, Finder, and Disk Utility. Then it is possible to has full read-write access to the WD My Passport. However, there are times when yourMy Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder or greyed out in Disk Utility. Why does this happen? It's most likely that the WD My Passport is logically corrupted and the operating system fails to mount it.
WD external hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but won't mount? Don't be upset, this article will throw some light on WD My Passport greyed out in Disk Utility issue. Also, recovering files from unmountable WD My Passport on Mac is also talked about in this blog.
How to fix WD My Passport greyed out in Disk Utility?
The good news is that your WD My Passport or otherexternal hard drives greyed out in Disk Utility indicates that the drive isn't physically damaged but has some issues with the partition table or some other corruption at the file system level. Thus, Mac built-in utilities are enough to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting issue.
Fix 1: Run First Aid to repair the unmounted WD My Passport
Disk Utility's First Aid is a drive diagnostic which can be used to test for defects or problems on a mac.
Step 1: Go to Disk Utility (found in the Applications > Utilities folder).
Step 2: Select the unmounted WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility.
Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the window.
Step 4: Click Done when the repair finished.
Fix 2: Reformat to fix WD My Passport greyed out in Disk Utility
How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac And Windows
Sometimes,First Aid failed on the WD external hard drive since it has serious logical errors. In this case, reformatting is the most effective solution to bring back the WD My Passport to a normal working state. But this process will erase all data stored on the drive. If the drive contains important files, you should recover lost data from unmountable WD My Passport firstly.
Step 1: Recover lost data from unmountable WD My Passport
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is free Mac data recovery software which helps you recover documents, pictures, audios, videos, emails from the unmountable, unreadable, formatted, corrupted external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. It is compatible withmacOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 and OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Tutorial to recover lost data from unmountable WD My Passport:
1. Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
2. Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac Os
3. Select the unmounted WD My Passport and click 'Next' button to scan all lost data.
4. Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Step 2: reformat to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting
Afterwards, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport.
My Passport For Mac Not Working
• How to erase external hard drive on Mac?