It comes with WD SmartWare preinstalled so you can use that for backups. The drive can be used for regular OS backups as well as for backups with third-party programs.
From here, in Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a name. The drive cannot be read outside of the enclosure due to the encryption as well as due to the soldered USB port on the drive PCB so I wouldn't remove it from the enclosure (plus this voids the warranty. Now, from the left column select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive name is), and click on the Erase tab. This offers great security to the drive and won't take time to encrypt it of you decide to For the best result, select the disk (the highest option in the external tree). You can find this on the left-hand side of the screen under External Hard Drives. Click the external hard drive you want to format.
Compatible with USB-C and USB-A, the My Passport for Mac external hard drive comes equipped to connect with todays latest technology. Then click View in the top-left corner of the window and select Show All Devices. In the next 5 minutes read, you will master yourself in formatting a WD My Passport. 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. The drive features Hardware Encryption which encrypts every piece of data on the drive, regardless if you have set a password on it or not and cannot be turned off. The My Passport for Mac drive is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your on-the-go lifestyle. A WD My Passport formatted with a Mac file system will be a dud on Windows and vice-versa.
Choose the startup disk that you want to use (It’s usually labeled as Macintosh HD). Select Disk Utility from the Utilities window. You’ll need to format the drive to be able to drag and drop files. Or copy new documents onto the drive using your Mac.
But you can’t update any of the documents on the drive.
Hold the Command and R keys down for a few seconds until the Utilities window appears. Do I need to format my new WD Passport Your Mac can read a WD My Passport drive in NTFS format. The drive can be formatted, partitioned and so on from the disk management freely.Ī couple of notes from me specifically on the WD My Passport Ultra: Going back, to reformat your MacBook Pro, Restart your computer. As Anusha explained pretty well, you are free to use external drives such as the WD My Passport Ultra the same way you would use an internal drive in an external enclosure.