How To Format My Passport External Hard Drive For Mac

• How To Format Wd Passport
• How To Format My Passport External Hard Drive For Mac Catalina
• How To Format My Passport External Hard Drive For Macbook Air
• Passport External Hard Drive 2tb

Go to Spotlight Search, type in Disk Utility, and click the first option. This will open the Disk Utility app, where you will find all the internal and external drives that are connected to your Mac. Then click View in the top-left corner of the window and select Show All Devices. Click the external hard drive you want to format. Go to the Erase tab. Click 'Erase,' and pull down the Format menu. Enter a hard drive name, if desired. The external drive for Mac to Windows 8 transition makes use of Window's built-in Disk Management software rather than the macOS Disk Utility, but you'll still want to format your WD Passport. Dec 29, 2015 The instructions below are for Windows 10, but other versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up can also format an external drive as exFAT for use with Mac as well. Connect the drive to your.

Apr 09,2020 • Filed to: Hard Drive Recovery • Proven solutions

If you were to look at the most popular external hard disks on the market, WD My Passport will surely make it in the top three spots. They have gained much fanfare due to their portable size and high capacities.

American roulette layout. Everything about WD My Passport is great except one, reparability. The small form factor means that WD My Passport repair is not the easiest one to do. And hard disk errors can happen from both the hardware and software side of things. So before you jump into conclusions, you need to understand the root of the problem. Hence, the first part of that process is to identify the errors that your WD My Passport is showing in the first place. Let go over some of them.

Part 1: Signs of Western Digital Hard Drive Errors

All hard drives show some specific signs before they go out altogether. For the user, this is a great thing because you will get some time to find a solution or move your files to another storage unit. Spotting these signs will help you a great deal in doing preventive maintenance.

1. Clicking or scratching noises: The WD My passport runs very silent and in normal use, you won't even know that it's working. However, if you hear strange clicking noises or scratching noises from the hard drive, it signifies a hardware problem, most commonly it is observed to be faulty bearings.


2. Frequent crashes: Nowadays, hard drives are very well made and they rarely crash. If your hard drive experience crashes with a frequency like once in a month or two, it is fine. However, when the crashes occur multiple times every single day, then you must look for western digital hard drive repair solutions.


3. Frequent disconnections and error message: If the hard drive causes disconnections even when you are not using the hard drive, there might be a problem with the controller. This sign is very easy to spot as you will be seeing the hard drive repeatedly connecting and disconnecting on its own even when it is firmly plugged into the computer.


4. Very long response time: Response time is the measure of time that it takes the hard drive to respond to a read or write request. Hence, you would want this time to be as low as possible. However, faulty hard drives can show a severe delay between a request and an actual response.


5. Data loss: The data that you have copied over to the WD My Password seems to be not there the next time you look for it. This happens when the drive is no longer able to hold the data that is being written on it.


6. Broken files: Files that perfectly worked on your internal hard drive seems to be broken if you move it over to the external hard drive. This arises from the inability of the hard disk to save a file or properly read a saved file.

Part 2: How to Fix My WD Passport Not Recognized/Working Issue?

Thankfully, there are ways in which you can resolve many of the hard disk errors without having to take them apart. These fixes are aimed at optimizing your WD My Passport so that they run better. We have listed some of the most common and easy fixes below that you can try out when experiencing errors with your drive.

Fix 1. Check the USB port: The USB port is the hardware interface between the hard drive and your computer. If there is a problem with the interface, then it affects the communication between the connected devices. The frequent disconnections of your hard drive maybe because of a loose connection or a faulty hard drive rather than a problem with the hard drive. Check the USB port and or try plug in the hard drive into another USB port to see if it would solve the issue.

Fix 2. Try another PC: The best way to determine whether the fault is with the hard drive or your computer is to plug the hard drive in a different computer. This will narrow your search for the cause of the problem by a great deal.

Fix 3. Change WD hard drive letter and path: Hard drive letter is an alphabet assigned to a drive for easy recognition. Crazy vegas mobile. If your computer is having trouble registering the hard drive, try renaming the hard drive and see how it works.

Fix 4. Update WD hard disk device driver: Drivers are the software suite that facilitates different hardware components to talk to each other. Without drivers, the different hardware will not send data to each other. Outdated drivers mean that the device doesn't have the latest optimizations made for it by Western Digital. The update WD hard disk device driver to ensure that your device has the latest software on it.

Fix 5. Update the USB controller driver: The USB controller is the driver present on your computer that facilitates all the connections made through the computer's USB ports. A faulty or outdated USB controller can cause a disruption in communication between the connected devices.

Part 3: How to Extend the Life of Your WD Hard Drive

With a bit of care and concern, you can definitely improve the lifespan of your WD My Passport hard drive. Best practices in drive management ensure that your hard drive is working in top shape for years. Some of the ways in which you can extend the life of your WD hard drive are:

1. Keep it safe from physical shocks: Physical shocks are sudden impacts that are inflicted on the hard drive in the form of vibrations, movement, fall from a height, etc. Such occurrences can tamper with the disks that are working inside the hard drive.


2. Defragment drive occasionally: Defragmentation is the process of grouping together similar data. This process is an important part of hard drive maintenance because your computer may often break up data into smaller pieces and store them in parts based on the availability of storage. Fragmentation improves drive speed and overall longevity of the drive.


3. Keep it within optimum conditions: Every device has a range of optimum conditions where it performs the best. Keep your hard drive working in the right temperature and humidity so that the external conditions do not affect its internals.


4. Install an antivirus on your computer: Viruses and malware are harmful programs that can affect not just software, but also your hardware. They can exert unnecessary stress on the hard drive, causing it to wear out faster. Keep your files and devices safe by installing a reliable antivirus program.


5. Keep your drivers up-to-date: As we discussed earlier, drivers play a major role in helping devices communicate with each other. Make sure that the drivers installed on your computer are up-to-date and working properly.

Conclusion

WD My Password is an impressive piece of tech that makes data transfer easy and efficient. Keep your drive safe from errors and damages by following some simple steps mentioned in this guide. With just the right amount of care, you can have your hard drive working for years without a hassle!

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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.

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

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.

How To Format Wd Passport

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.

How To Format My Passport External Hard Drive For Mac Catalina

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

How To Format My Passport External Hard Drive For Macbook Air

Conclusion

Passport External Hard Drive 2tb

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.