Got a new WD My Passport drive? Not sure how to set it up on your Mac or maybe you are thinking about buying one and want to know whether it would work on your Mac.

The answer is yes! Don’t worry in 10 quick steps I’ll tell you how to format WD My Passport for Mac.

One of the first things to note is that there are two main versions available of this external hard drive. The first is preformatted and is called simply WD My Passport. Incidentally it is the cheaper version to buy. NTFS as a disk format (also referred to as a file system) is designed to plug into a Windows PC. NTFS version The drive in this format is readable by a Mac but cannot be written to by a Mac. But don’t worry this default file system is easy to change with a little bit of know how, a few clicks of your mouse and of course this article.

The second version the WD My Passport comes in is a ‘for Mac’ version. This means it is preformatted at the factory to HFS (Hierarchical File System) version It is worth bearing in mind that HFS and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system are one and the same. It is just that Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system is how the file system is referred to on the Mac within its menus. It is designed to be ‘plug and play’. Plug into your Mac and just use the disk.

You do pay extra for this preformatting and in my experience I have occasionally found that you end up reformatting anyway because – Well a Mac is just a Mac and sometimes they just want the disks on them they have formatted themselves You need to format the NTFS version of WD My Passport for a Mac and the second you ‘may’ need to format depending on how your Mac feels, so why not save yourself some dollars and go for the cheaper NTFS formatted version? Table of Contents. What do you plan to use the WD My Passport Drive For? It is worth taking a few minutes before you go ahead and format your shiny new drive, thinking about your planned use. For example are you thinking of. Storage of files.

Using the drive as your Time Machine backup disk?. Do you plan to share files and inter connect Mac and a PC? Storage of files You can drag and drop, copy and paste files from your hard disk to your WD My Passport Drive. Remember though if your intension is to free up space on your Mac and the only copy of your files now live on the My Passport drive what will you do if something happens to that drive? You still should have a backup so seriously think about getting a second external hard drive to keep extra copies on.

Just in case. My Passport as a Mac Time Machine Backup Drive Using your WD My Passport for Time Machine is perfectly fine. Format it correctly. Then tell Time Machine on your Mac to use the drive to back up to. You will need the whole hard drive or a partition of the hard drive allocated to Time Machine.

Drives can be split up into different sections – like sharing candy where you give each piece to a particular person. Hard drives can be virtually split up and each section can be given over to do a particular job.

The hard drive or partition given over to Time Machine must be at least as big as the amount of data you are using or backing up on your hard drive. Ideally twice as big to give you room to grow into. Or you can take the total amount of internal disk you have let us say you have a 500 GB internal drive and get a WD My Passport twice as big. A 1 TB drive or a 1 TB partition allocated to Time Machine. WD My Passport Compatible with Mac and PC? This requirement will be in addition to what you’re going to need for Time Machine and you will need additional hard drive space for that.

An Example You want some space to copy and paste your photos to. You need 400 GB for that. You want to do regular backups and your internal drive is 1TB in size so you’re going to need 2TB for that.

You want an area to swap files between your Mac and a Windows PC you have and you need 500 GB for that. In this example you would go ahead and purchase a 3TB as a minimum; Probably two so that you can have one as a copy of the other in case of a disaster and one drive failed. One other thing formatting uses up space on a hard drive so if my total figures were really close to the hard drive capacity I was thinking of, I would purchase the next size drive up. That way I would make sure I had the room I needed. Format WD My Passport for Mac 10 Quick Steps These instructions are for the release of Mac OS Sierra. For earlier releases of the Mac OS the instructions are the same except the screens may look slightly different.

One thing before I take you through the steps of how to format your WD My Passport for Mac. Formatting the WD My Passport will erase any existing data on the hard drive. In fact on the Mac, you choose the Erase button to do it, so that’s clear. It is destructive process and if there are any files on there you want to keep. For example, there is software on the WD My Passport drive, NTFS version that is designed for and works on a Windows PC. If you plan on using those files, copy off onto a Windows PC first before you format the drive.

If you have files already stored on there from a Windows PC copy them off onto a Windows PC Before you format, or you will be in a world of trouble trying to get them back again, and you may not. Let me show you how in ten quick steps using words and pictures. Berdosa: logo maker for mac.

There is a video at the end you can watch as an additional resource. First physically connect your WD My Passport drive to your Mac? Power up your Mac, log in and connect up the WD My Passport drive. The drive will appear as an icon on your desktop. Internal and External Drives List Clicking the arrow under the headings will expand or contract the list. The My Passport drive should now appear under the external heading in this list.

If it hasn’t, it may well be that your Mac’s USB port has gotten confused. A shutdown, restart and reconnect of the drive should sort that out. Select the the external hard drive list. Be sure you are selecting the external drive – important. Also select the drive at the top level of the hierarchy.

You can experience problems formatting the drive if it is not selected at the right level. Double check. Format Window Popup First give your drive a name. I suggest you give a name to reflect the use you are going to put the hard drive to. The up and down arrows to the right hand side of the format option allows you to choose a format for the whole disk. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you plan to use the hard drive with Time Machine, or for copying and pasting files to.

Choose format if you plan to share this drive between a Mac and a PC and you want the files to be visible and read and writeable by both. File System Formats Don’t select. That file system is slow, old and has file size restrictions. These days it is really not a practical solution for sharing files between a Mac and a PC.

The exception to this is some TV’s and Media players that ask for this format. If that is the case then you are better setting up a partition for sharing those files, rather than formatting the entire disk in this format. –.

Once you have entered a name and selected a format, click on Erase and the formatting of the My Passport external hard drive will start. It may only take a few seconds or a minute or two depending on the hard drive size. Once done dismiss the Disk Utility Screen. The formatted WD My Passport drive icon should now appear on your desktop ready for you to use.

Right Click to Eject External Drive And there you have it, the format WD My Passport for Mac in 10 quick steps. YouTube Video Covering the Format of WD My Passport for Mac This video from Acquevara shows the formatting of an external hard drive on a Mac using Mac OS Sierra.

I copy it here so that if you would like to watch the video along side using my notes above you have a quick and easy link to get to it. WD My Passport External Hard-drive Set Up Guide for Mac Images and Video Credit: Acquevara Frequently Asked Questions. How can I format my Hard Drive for Resale? Be aware that the formatting procedure above will not prevent someone using specialized data recovery software to recover data from the My Passport hard drive. If you are planning on reselling your hard drive you’ll need to do a bit more than the formatting I’ve detailed above.

Instead; Once you have entered Disk Utility and selected the erase option, click on the security button. Format Security Options Button Select one of the security options and format your drive using one of them. It could take several hours for the drive to be written over and erased to remove as much of your data as possible. But at least that way you can rest easier that it will take way more effort to recover anything from your sold external hard drive. Setting up encryption and a password to secure your My Passport hard drive.

Wd Disque Dur Externe 4 To My Passport For Mac Free

WD My Passport has 256-bit AES hardware encryption and password protection for the drive. The hardware encryption is controlled and managed via the WD Security software.

The My Passport drive non Mac version does not come with a Mac version of the software however this can be downloaded direct from the Western Digital site. I personally prefer to use the facilities provided by Mac OS for encrypting my hard drive data and adding a password. Because, without the WD Security software installed and accessible by your Mac, you will not be able to access the data on the My Passport drive. If you are sharing the hard drive between Mac’s the software has to be loaded on that Mac as well. What if your Mac has failed and the backup you need to restore it with is on the My Passport drive. To get to it you need the WD Security software.

But your Mac is wiped. You need your Mac restored to get to it. You see the problem? You are then in an almighty bind.

It has happened to users. Mac OS will always recognize its own encryption and password methods. You can encrypt your data and set a password by selecting Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) file system. Time Machine Auto Backup Check Time Machine auto backup is selected off. Uncheck the check box and try again. Often simply retrying the formatting clears the problem.

I am having problems formatting an external hard drive since upgrading to High Sierra. There have been quite a lot of discussions on various forums where users are having problems formatting hard drives since upgrading to Mac OS High Sierra. I am sure Apple will produce a fix soon but in the mean time to format WD My Passport for Mac try these. If the icon doesn’t appear on the desktop when you plug in to format, go to Disk Utility and expand the external hard drive list there (step 4 above). If it shows up there go ahead and format. Use a Windows PC to format the WD My Passport drive first to ExFAT then try again on the Mac. Use a Mac with an older release of Mac OS to format the drive.

Download the WD Discovery software for Mac from the Western Digital site. This software allows you to check the disk health and you can format to HFS using that software. There are other options which are more complex if the above have not worked for you. Check out my resources section below to see the discussion threads.

Search Wirecutter For: Search Reviews for the real world Browse Close. Browse Close. If the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, is a great and dependable alternative. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: In our tests, its average write speed was 7.7 MB/s slower, and it took about 5 seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error. At this writing, it costs only 46¢ more per terabyte, but prices fluctuate; if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy.

This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty. If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever.

Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: Read our advice and that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both on-site and ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as Internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider.

A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk. You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time. According to, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years. About 5 percent of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months.

At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At four years, the failure rate is 20 percent. Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years. If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive.

But if you frequently move between locations, a is the better choice. They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure). How we picked.

A great external desktop hard drive, like the three we found, should be reliable, fast, and inexpensive. Photo: Rozette Rago Ideally, an external hard drive is something you don’t notice much. It should sit on your desk, quietly spinning away, storing and backing up your data without a lot of setup or ongoing maintenance. These are the features you should look for in a desktop hard drive, in rough order of importance:. Reliability: Although reliability is the most important factor for any storage device, solid information on drive reliability can be hard to come.

Only three companies still manufacture hard drives—Western Digital (which also makes HGST drives), Seagate, and Toshiba—and all of them make reliable drives. But all hard drives die. The vast majority of drives from these major manufacturers will be fine, but it’s still possible to buy a bad egg that will die too soon.

Speed: Most of the drives we’ve tested in 2018 are about the same speed, and we haven’t seen major speed increases in desktop hard drives over the past few years. This round, we considered only those drives with USB 3.0 connections. Anything faster isn’t necessary for hard drives, because they’re limited by disk speed, not the USB interface.

Price: We found that most people buy 4 TB and 8 TB drives by looking at Amazon reviews for our top picks. Although a higher-capacity drive is more cost-effective per terabyte, 8 TB external desktop hard drives are nearly twice as expensive as 4 TB drives, for more storage than most people need. Since many desktop drives nowadays offer similar performance, the less expensive they are, the better.

Capacity: We focused on 4 TB hard drives because of their balance of value and total cost. We also have an 8 TB pick for people who need more storage.

Warranty and customer service: A good warranty is important in case you get a lemon. Most of the external hard drives we tested have two-year warranties, but some have three-year warranties. Responsive customer service is important too, in case you have trouble backing up your data.

Useful software: Backup software is a nice perk, but you can find lots of free alternatives and other great options for online backup services. If you don’t need the extra features such software provides, setting it up on every computer you use isn’t worth the time and effort. Dragging and dropping files works just fine for manual backups, and your OS’s built-in backup utility suffices for automatic ones. We also made note of drive noise and extra USB ports as we tested the external desktop hard drives. These factors aren’t dealbreakers, but they are good to keep in mind. How we tested.

After narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested four 4 TB desktop hard drives and three 8 TB models. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests transfer speeds and access time across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the. We also timed the file transfer of a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups. Finally, we timed how long each external hard drive took to back up with on a 2016 MacBook Pro.

To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and we counted the number of reported drive failures. This method has shortcomings: For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. About half the drives we tested for this update are new, so they didn’t have many Amazon reviews. But this approach is the best we have for now. We also looked at Backblaze’s, which are based on more than 90,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers.

Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk: Bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat, whereas drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector, and the USB-to-SATA logic board. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read. Our pick: WD My Book (4 TB). Is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it’s reliable and it offers the best balance of speed and price.

It was about as fast as the competition in all of our tests, it’s the least expensive drive we tested at this writing, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders. Although no hard drive is immune from failure, the WD My Book has proven reliable. We found just 21 reported failures out of 358 Amazon reviews of the 4 TB model, or 6 percent.

Notes that WD’s 4 TB drives had a low, 2.2 percent annualized failure rate. Neither of these research methods is a perfect indicator of the My Book’s reliability, but they are the best we have.

We tested how fast our 4 TB and 5 TB desktop hard drive contenders could transfer a Blu-ray movie. They all performed similarly, although the Toshiba Canvio was a bit faster than the competition. Shorter bars indicate better performance. Most of the drives we tested performed similarly, with the 4 TB WD My Book having a slight edge in most of our tests. In our Blu-ray transfer test, all of the 4 TB drives we tested were within the margin of error of one another, but the 5 TB Toshiba Canvio was about 30 seconds faster than the competition. (That drive, however, costs considerably more.).

The 4 TB WD My Book was the fastest drive we tested at creating a backup with Time Machine, although all of the drives we tested were pretty quick. Shorter bars indicate better performance.

In HD Tune testing, the 4 TB WD My Book had a read speed of 143.8 megabytes per second and a write speed of 138.4 MB/s, operating a little faster than most of the competition. And it had the fastest Time Machine backup score of all the 4 TB drives we tested. Most of the drives performed similarly in these tests, except for the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, which was notably slower. The 4 TB My Book is the most cost-effective drive we found at the time of our research and writing. Although prices on hard drives fluctuate frequently, our pick was the least expensive in its competitive field: At the time, it cost around $96, or $24 per terabyte, while the majority of the drives we tested cost more than $100. Because all of the drives we tested are good, though, we recommend you buy the cheapest option available if prices change. WD backs the 4 TB My Book with a three-year warranty, longer coverage than the competition offers.

The drive did not get hot during our testing, and although this My Book occasionally made a low humming noise while we moved files around, we don’t think that’s cause for concern; all of the drives we tested make some noise. Using the included WD Discovery app, you can import your data from a cloud storage or social media account to your drive. You can also use WD Drive Utilities to check for potential drive failures, major performance problems, and bad sectors on the My Book.

(In addition, you can use it to permanently erase all the data on your drive.) You can activate 256-AES encryption by downloading WD’s Security software, enabling it, and setting a password. Wirecutter staffers have used the WD My Book (in varying capacities) with no issue. Senior editor Nathan Edwards has owned the 6 TB version of the drive for about a year: “It’s quieter than my old backup drive and relatively good-looking,” he said. “I don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother me, and my computer is backed up, so that seems good.” Runner-up: WD Elements (4 TB). If the 4 TB My Book is unavailable, or if its price goes up, desktop drive is a great second choice. It’s a reliable drive, although it isn’t quite as fast as our top pick.

The difference in transfer time wasn’t substantial in any of our tests, though, and it costs about the same as the My Book per terabyte. It has the same software as our top pick too, but its warranty is only two years—one year less than the My Book’s coverage. The Elements is about as reliable as the 4 TB My Book. We found just five reported failures out of 168 Amazon reviews for the Elements 4 TB option, giving this external hard drive a 3 percent failure rate. That’s a lower failure rate than our top pick has, but the Elements has roughly half as many reviews at this writing, so the reported failure rate may not be comparable.

In our testing, the Elements was about as quick as the 4 TB My Book, falling behind in our Blu-ray transfer test by only 5 seconds. In HD Tune tests, the Elements had a slightly slower write speed compared with our top pick, but the two models’ read speeds were even. And when we backed up to the Elements with Time Machine, it was the second-fastest drive we tested, falling just behind our top pick. The WD Elements has a two-year warranty, one year less than our top pick, and it doesn’t come with any backup software. But that omission isn’t a dealbreaker because dragging and dropping files or using some other free backup program is an equally good option.

Like our top pick, this drive did not get hot during testing, although it did make a little humming noise from time to time. If you need more storage: WD My Book (8 TB). If you want more space—say, you have a ton of large photos or videos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future— is the best option.

Like our top pick, the higher-capacity WD My Book has a low, 6 percent reported failure rate (judging from Amazon reviews), and it performed the best of the three 8 TB options we tested. It’s also less expensive than the other 8 TB drives we tested, and it has the longest warranty. Currently the 8 TB My Book costs about $70 more than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage. (We recommend the similarly performing if it’s the same price as—or cheaper than—the 8 TB My Book.

Because the Easystore is usually more expensive, we think the My Book is the better 8 TB choice for most people’s needs.) While reading through 326 Amazon reviews of the 8 TB My Book, we found only 20 reviews—or 6 percent—that mentioned drive failure. This result was better than that for the 8 TB Seagate we tested, which had an 11 percent reported failure rate, or 62 noted failures out of 570 reviews on Amazon. The 8 TB Easystore had a mere 1.25 percent reported failure rate on Best Buy’s site—34 noted failures out of 2,708 reviews—but these results aren’t directly comparable because they’re from different retailers with different demographics and customer review systems. The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than the 8 TB WD My Book in the HD Tune tests—but not by much. Longer bars indicate better performance. The 8 TB My Book performed well in our HD Tune read and write tests, with results of 134 MB/s and 139.9 MB/s, respectively. It was significantly faster than the Seagate model in this test, but a little slower than the WD Easystore, falling short by 12.3 MB/s on reads and 5 MB/s on writes.

The My Book also landed in the middle of the pack when backing up via Time Machine, storing 37.8 GB in 25 minutes, 49 seconds. The Easystore was about 2 minutes faster in this test. The 8 TB WD My Book was about as fast as the 8 TB Seagate in our Time Machine backup test. The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than both models by about 2 minutes. Shorter bars indicate better performance. The 8 TB My Book is cheaper, as of this writing, and available at more retailers than the 8 TB. If you see the price on the Easystore come down, though, it’s worth buying.

The 8 TB My Book includes the same backup software as our top pick. It also comes with a longer warranty than the other 8 TB options we tested, three years of coverage.

The competition. We considered seven external desktop drives for our 2018 round of testing.

(Not pictured: WD Easystore.) Photo: Rozette Rago Every hard drive we tested is adequate for the task of backing up your computer; only minor differences in speed, price, warranty, and included software differentiate them. The WD Easystore is available in both and capacities; it’s also available only at Best Buy. While the 4 TB version’s price is often double that of our top picks (around $200), the 8 TB model’s price appears to fluctuate: The 8 TB Easystore cost around $140 while we were researching for this guide, but it costs $300 as of this writing. If you can find it for less than our current 8 TB pick, we encourage you to buy it; this model was the fastest 8 TB external hard drive in our HD Tune tests and Time Machine testing. If not, the small speed difference isn’t worth spending $15 to $130 more than what you would for the 8 TB My Book.

Although is a great desktop hard drive, it’s quite expensive. It outperformed the WD My Book in most of our tests, but it costs nearly $20 more as of this writing. We don’t think the jump in speed is worth spending that much more money for most people, because it didn’t offer a noticeable improvement. Seagate discontinued our previous top pick, the, in favor of the new Backup Plus Hub. Fell behind our top pick in HD Tune testing by 15.8 MB/s on reads and 7 MB/s on writes. Although other external hard drives we tested (such as our runner-up pick) were similarly slow when writing files, none of them were as slow as the Seagate at reading them. The Seagate fell behind our top pick by 3 minutes in our Time Machine testing, and it was around 2.5 minutes slower than our runner-up in that regard.

This model is a fine external drive, but because it costs about the same as our main pick and runner-up for slower performance, our picks are a better value. The faced problems similar to those of the 4 TB model. It performed well in Blu-ray testing against our other 8 TB options and did fine in Time Machine tests, but it was notably slow during the HD Tune test. Compared with our 8 TB pick, it was 17.4 MB/s slower in the HD Tune read test, and 31.2 MB/s slower in the write test. At the time of our research, the was around $30 more expensive than the regular Seagate Backup Plus Hub we tested (and $40 more than our top pick).

Because the two drives appeared to be the same otherwise, we dismissed them. The was significantly slower than our top picks when we tested it in late 2016. It also has a shorter, one-year warranty and lacks backup software.

Other drives from, and were too expensive, ranging from $170 to $420 for 4 TB models—1.7 to 4.3 times as much as our top pick. Many suffered from limited availability, too.