How To Reformat Wd My Passport For Mac

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  1. Formatting Wd Passport For Mac
  2. How To Format Wd My Passport Ultra For Mac
  3. Wd My Passport Mac Format
  1. How do I reformat MY Passport (for PC) for use with both Mac and PC? WD External Drives. External Drives for PC. Jimbo11 2012-08-23 18:18:40 UTC #1. I recently purchased an Apple MacBook Air and also have a Dell laptop. My Passport is serial number WXM1C5294201. Can I use a passport with both a PC and a Mac?
  2. After Disk Utility loads select the drive (out-dented entry with 1TB WD Passport.) from the side list. Click on the Erase tab in the Disk Utility toolbar. A panel should drop down. In the drop down panel set the partition scheme to GUID. Set the Format type to APFS (SSDs only) or Mac OS Extended (Journaled.).
  3. How do I reformat MY Passport (for PC) for use with both Mac and PC? WD External Drives. External Drives for PC. Jimbo11 2012-08-23 18:18:40 UTC #1. I recently purchased an Apple MacBook Air and also have a Dell laptop. My Passport is serial number WXM1C5294201. Can I use a passport with both a PC and a Mac?

'WD My Passport Essential reformat on a MAC', My external hard drive for my MAC (my passport essential 3200bmv) was stolen and later recovered by the police. The criminal erased all of my data and used it on his own computer for his files on a PC (which the police erased before giving it back to me). Hi there, JoeySmyth, just wanted to let you know that I first tried to delete the data that was on the WD My Passport. It was very stubborn and I resorted to formatting the drive. I set it up for my Quicken backups and so far have had no problems. I was using a 7.5 GB thumb drive for the backups and it was full(!).


Important:
  1. The WD Quick Formatter is ONLY for external drives. Once the WD Quick Formatter is finished reformatting the drive, the drive will only have one partition. This is necessary in order to optimize the performance of the drive.
  2. The WD Quick Formatter is the recommended way to format WD external drives that use Advanced Format Drives (AFDs).
  3. The instructions in the articles below are designed to help users reformat and repartition an external drive. This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST!
  4. WD Quick Formatter will only format a single partition.

To reformat an external hard drive to the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) file system, please follow the instructions below:

  1. Download, unzip, install, and run the WD Quick Formatter for Windows ( if running Windows, or WD Quick Formatter for Mac if running macOS 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks).
  2. Note:
    WD Quick Formatter for Mac is not supported on macOS Yosemite, El Capitan, or Sierra. It's best to use Disk Utility. Please see Answer ID 8200: How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on Windows and macOS for more information.

  3. When the application is started, the WD Quick Formatter's welcome screen will appear displaying the following warning message. After reading the warning, click Continue to move to the next screen.
  4. Click on Accept to accept the End User License Agreement.
  5. Next, the application will scan for WD external drives to be formatted.
  6. Depending on the size of the drive and the Operating System (OS), one of two screens will appear. If the system is running Mac OSX, follow the instructions under the first choice below. If running Windows, however, follow the instructions based on the drive size:
    • When the scanning process comes to an end, there will be a drop down menu listing a WD external drive under Drive to format. This is the screen displayed when the drive is 2TB in size or less. Click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive.
    • On a Windows system and if the drive is greater than 2TB, the screen below will be displayed. Decide if the drive is to be used with a computer running Windows XP. If it might be used on Windows XP, then select XP Compatible.If the drive is not to be used with Windows XP, then select Factory Default. Once this selection is made, click on the drop down menu to view and/or select different external drives from the list, should there be additional drives connected to the system. When ready, click on Format Drive.
      Important:
      • XP Compatible configuration option is not available on Windows 8 and 10

    Important:
    • If an error is received stating that the drive cannot be unmounted, this means that another application, service, or program is actively using the drive. Proceed to determine what is interacting with the drive and close that application or process prior to formatting the drive. Common programs that may be using the drive are automatic backup programs (such as WD SmartWare), anti-virus, file downloading applications (BitTorrent clients, FTP clients, etc.), and remote access applications.
    • Do not disconnect power while the utility is running.

  7. The WD Quick Formatter will show the progress bar while the format is taking place.
  8. Once the Format is completed, click on the Format Another Drive button to select another WD external drive to format, or click on the Exit button to exit the program.


Note:
When WD Quick Formatter is finished, the drive will have one partition. This is necessary in order to optimize the performance of the drive.

Passport

Summary: The WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder nor in Disk Utility? WD external hard drives won't work on Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover data from not showing up/not working WD HDD without data loss.

West Digital external hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements Portable, or WD Easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and music files, etc. What's more, they are widely known thanks to their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability compared with other external HDD.

However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport drive won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD external hard drive light is on but not work. Even worth, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

If the WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Finder, Disk Utility or on the desktop after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If your WD My Passport isn't showing files, how to access data? You'll get answers here.

Table of contents
1. Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
2. Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
3. How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
4. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?
5. Bonus tips

Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?

Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder on Mac is just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD external hard drive not showing up or not working.

  • Recent macOS update issue
  • System failure
  • Virus infection
  • Motherboard issue
  • WD My Passport drive damage or corruption

Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue

As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up on Mac. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport external hard drive and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.

2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other external hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.

Firewall for mac. 3. Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.

4. Connect the WD My Passport external hard drive to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport external hard drive undetectable.

How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?

If the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac still does not work or not show up in Finder/Disk Utility after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow your external hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.

Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.

Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.

Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD Passport hard drive for Mac in Finder.

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the My Passport for Mac external hard drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:

Case 1: Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.

Case 2: Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.

Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually

Sometimes, external hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the external hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the external hard drive.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 2: Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.

Step 3: Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.

Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.

Formatting Wd Passport For Mac

Method 2: Repair My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid

If you can't mount the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive.

Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.

Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac

If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.

The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover data from the WD My Passport portable drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Recover data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.

Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

Step 3: Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.

Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.

Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport external hard drive with no fuss.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive in the left sidebar.

Step 3: Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.

What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?

If Disk Utility can't show up My Passport for Mac external hard drive at all, it means the WD My Passport drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some physical problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.

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Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport external drives for Mac

How To Format Wd My Passport Ultra For Mac

Apparently, most external hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport portable drive in good condition, you should pay attention to:

Wd My Passport Mac Format

  • 1. Make sure that your WD My Passport portable hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
  • 2. Always safely and properly unmount the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
  • 3. Don't just unplug the USB cable, on the contrary, unmount your drive by right-clicking (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.