How To Use My Passport For Storage On Mac

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The Western Digital Passport provides expanded storage space and backup features for Windows-based and Macintosh computers. Format your Passport so the drive is compatible with the backup tools available in Mac OS X and so it can perform the common task of transferring files between the external hard drive and your Mac's internal hard drive. This is a great external hard drive for your Mac if you are concerned about keeping your data safe and secure. Western Digital My Passport Ultra features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption. Here are the Mac WD My passport 2TB software download guidelines. In your web browser’s address bar, type any search engine’s web address such as yahoo.com or google.com and press Enter. Search for the WDC Support page, click on the search result with the domain name support.wdc.com and then click the ‘Downloads’ link at the bottom. The My Passport Ultra USB-C is an updated version of the My Passport Ultra (2017). The older version was only available with a USB 3.0 connection cable, which meant that users like me (with a USB-C MacBook computer) would have to use an adapter.

When I bought the WD My Passport Ultra drive, I was surprised to see that it didn’t support OS X out of the box. Yes, it had some software specifically made for OS X on it, but even that didn’t help. Turns out, it just wasn’t in the right format. These hard drives are customized to run well on Windows (as you’d expect), and they don’t run well with OS X.

So to get it running, what we’ll need to do is format it in Journaled format, which is OS X only format or MS-DOS (FAT), which means it will run with both OS X and Windows. If you’re only going to be using the hard drive on a Mac, I recommend you stick with Journaled.

Why You Need to Re-Format the External Hard Drive

When I first got the hard drive, I wasn’t able to copy anything over to it (but I was able to copy from it). Disk Utility showed that it was formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) but I’m pretty sure it would have been NTFS instead. If you experience the same issue, your only recourse is to reformat it in one of two formats.

If you’re only going to use the external hard drive with Macs or you want to use it for Time Machine backups, format it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you’re like me who also needs to use at least a part of the hard drive from Windows PCs, you’ll need to choose MS-DOS (FAT) format. But here you won’t get great support for Time Machine. Plus you can’t make partitions bigger than 2 TB or move files larger than 4 GB around.

How to Re-Format the External Hard Drive

First, connect the external hard drive, bring up Spotlight Search by using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Space and type in Disk Utility. Press Enter and Disk Utility will launch. You can also find it in Utilities folder in Applications.

Now, from the left column select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive name is), and click on the Erase tab.

From here, in Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a name if you want, and click Erase.

You’ll get a warning. Again, click Erase.

In a couple of seconds, you’ll have an OS X ready hard drive to go.

Related: Check out our Ultimate Guide to OS X Yosemite.

How to Create Partitions

I’m planning on using my hard drive for both Time Machine backups and to carry media files around. I might need to use the hard drive with Windows computers so I’m going to format one of the partitions as MS-DOS (FAT), fully aware of its limitations. The other one, for Time Machine backups, will be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

To create a partition, select the hard drive from the left column and click the Partition tab.

From the drop-down below Partition Layout, select the number of partitions you want. Don’t go overboard here.

Now, just below, you’ll see a visual representation of the partitions. You can use the breakpoint to change the size of the partitions by moving it up or down. You can also click on a partition, give it a name and select the format.

Once you’ve decided all the details, simply click the Apply button. From the pop-up, select Partition.

Disk Utility: Check out the two tips for using Disk Utility and 8 ways to free up space on your Mac.

What Do You Use It For?

What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Time Machine backups perhaps? Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section.


The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

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What Is Mac Recovery Mode and How To Use It

Hard drives are important in our daily activities because they help us store a lot of data such as documents, photos, and videos as well as ease the files transfer from one Mac to another. Amongst the variety of external hard drives, Western Digital My Passport is an example of a reliable trustworthy external hard drive. As the name entails, WD is designed to have the size of a passport in order to increase portability and is produced in different styles of color to fit user demands. WD is a good hard drive and has features such as;

  • Transferring files from My Passport to Mac and vice versa
  • Performing an auto backup
  • Can be encrypted to protect with a password
  • Easy to use
  • Outsmarts other hard drives with unique features such as the ability to connect to popular social media and cloud storage services permitting you to import your information to WD my passport

Part 1. How to Use WD My Passport on Mac

For efficient transfers, it is recommended to format your WD drive to a format compatible with Mac which will be covered further in this tutorial. Transferring files between WD My Passport and Mac is a simple process. In order to perform a file transfer,

1. Plug the USB cable from WD my Passport drive to a free functional USB port on your Mac.

2. Enter My Passport by clicking on the icon present on the desktop.

3. You can copy and paste any file from your Mac to your Passport and vice versa.

4.When the transfer process is complete, drag the 'My Passport' icon above the 'Trash' icon then release your mouse button. This enables you to safely eject your WD My Passport drive.

Part 2. Western Digital My Passport does not show on Mac

Normally, after plugging your WD drive, it automatically shows up on your Mac. Sometimes, it does not show up due to a number of reasons such as

  • 1. faulty cable: You may connect your WD to your Mac with a cable that is damaged and as a result of that, your device does not show up on your Mac as expected.
  • 2. damaged USB port: At times, the port of your Mac can be the issue and a simple change in the port can solve the issue.
  • 3. incorrect format of the drive: Some drives are formatted in such a way that they can only be used on windows, others can only be used on Mac and some can be used on both. To look for the format,
    • Go to the Apple logo on the toolbar menu.
    Proceed to “About This Mac”.
    Go to storage and from there you can check the drive information.
  • Easy to use
  • 4. System failure can also result to your WD My Passport not showing up.
  • 5. Malware infection: A malware problem such as a virus attack may be the cause of the problem.
  • 6. Corrupted WD My Passport: This happens when the system cannot finish writing data to a file and this can result to the drive not showing up.
  • 7. Motherboard Problems too can lead to the issue.

How to Fix Western Digital My Password Not Showing on Mac

If you have been wondering on how to make WD function on Mac, this section will let you know how to.

1. Show External Hard Drive icon on Desktop

Normally when a WD My Passport is connected to Mac, it automatically recognizes the device and My Passport gets mounted on the desktop immediately. This drive then appears on Finder in the left-hand column below devices. But as a result of problems such as corrupted files, the external hard drive doesn’t show up. In order to fix the external hard drive not showing,

1. Go to Finder and click on Preferences.

2. In the General tab, tick the External disks option to make sure WD My Passport shows up on the desktop.

3. Then go to the sidebar tab, tick External disks to ensure it shows up on Finder. You can equally choose the folders and devices which you want to be shown in the Finder Window’s left-hand column.

After doing this, the WD My Passport’s icon will appear on the desktop if it is properly connected to Mac through a working port.

2. Check out Western Digital My Password USB Cable Appears in Disk Utility or Not

After trying solution 1, if WD is not showing up on Finder still, you should check if it shows on Disk Utility. To ensure that WD My Passport is properly connected to Mac with a working cable and or port, you to have check if it appears in disk utility or it doesn’t(will be shown below). After checking, there are two different situations that may be at hand.

EITHER

Your WD My Passport has been detected but it is grayed out, that is it is not mounting.

OR

WD My Passport has been detected but is not recognized and is not showing up at all.

3. Perform a manual Mounting

Not every hard drive is automatically mounted in Disk Utility when detected. If you see your WD My Passport not mounting automatically, you can mount it manually in the following way;

1. Go to Application then proceed to Utilities.

2. Go to Disk Utility.

3. Click Show all devices in the view option.

4. Choose your WD my Passport drive and click on the Mount button located at the top of Disk. Utility Window or you can directly mount by clicking on the mount icon beside the drive.

4. Repair your WD My Passport drive using First Aid

If it your WD My Passport is detected but not recognized, it cannot be mounted and so it has to be repaired using First Aid which is a tool on Mac that analyzes and repairs basic problems of the hard drive. To perform a repair,

1. Proceed to Disk Utility and choose your WD My Passport.

2. Click on First Aid at the top of the Disk Utility window.

3. A message will pop up and click on Run to start the repair of an undetected external hard drive.

How To Open My Passport

4. Once the repairs are finished, click on Done.

My Passport For Mac Instructions

5. How to Format Western Digital My Passport to exFAT for Mac

Sometimes, First Aid won’t be able to repair grayed hard drives but this can be fixed by formatting WD My Passport to exFAT format for Mac. This is because, First Aid cannot fix a disk file system that has been damaged so formatting it to a new format makes a new file system which replaces the damaged file system. To format WD My Passport;

How

1. Go to Disk Utility.

2. Choose your WD My Passport in the left sidebar.

3. Click on Erase at the top of the Disk Utility Window.

4. A window will pop up requiring you to enter information concerning (new name, format (exFAT), and partition scheme).

My Passport For Mac Help

5. Once all information is entered, click on Erase.

Please note that this will erase everything found on your WD My Passport drive hence backing it up before performing the process is recommended.

Part 3. Western Digital My Passport for Mac Data Recovery

If you have already erased your WD My Passport drive and lost all your information, you don’t have to worry because there is still a possibility of recovering all your information using special software known as iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac. This is the best online data recovery solution. It is easy to use as no special training is required to use it. Also, it is very safe (Virus and risk-free) and effective for data recovery on Mac as it is compatible with many different types of files as well as with the different versions of Mac.

In order to recover data from your WD My Passport on Mac,

1.Download iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac

When the download is completed install the software on your Mac. It is virus-free so it is safe.

2. Choose the Files to Scan

By default, all the main file types will be chosen. If you want only a specific file type, you may unselect the others but if you want to recover everything, you should leave every file type selected and click on 'Start' to recover files from external hard drive on Mac.

3. Select your WD My Passport

How To Use My Passport For Storage On Mac Hard Drive

After clicking on the Start, all devices available on your Mac will be listed. From the list, choose your WD My Passport drive and click on 'Scan'. By default, it will start the normal scanning process.

4. Preview and recover your files

After the normal scanning which takes a few minutes, you will see file types arranged on the left side of the window and the file on the other side of the window. When you click on a category of files on the left, the corresponding recovered files will show up on the right. If you find your files, select them and click on 'Recover' so save them on the drive. If you do not find your files, you have the option to perform a deep scan which is located on the top left corner of the window. A deep scan is more effective although it takes more time than a normal scan.

This tutorial summarizes how WD works on Mac, how to use WD on Mac, and how to fix WD on Mac when it has issues.