By Mar 07,2018 17:02 pm External hard drives are handy tools in storing files, data and documents. There are various reasons why you might need to format external hard drives. If you purchase an external hard drive as an addition to expand the storage space of your computer, most likely you would need to format it. More often than not, a lot of external hard drives are impacted by incurable virus infection.
And with special tool, you even can permanently destroy all the data on your WD My Passport portable hard drive after formatting. TWO easy methods to format WD My Passport portable hard drive on Mac. Of course, there are more than two methods that can help you format a WD My Passport portable hard drive under Mac OS. May 12, 2017 - I recently purchased a My Passport 2TB back up drive. This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS.
A lot of people would format their hard drives as soon as it is infected to avoid more damage. If there are errors or system failure where the external hard drives are not accessible, this would prompt for the action of formatting as well. This article will teach you how to format external hard drive for Mac and PC. Part 1. How to Format External Hard Drive on Mac If you need to format your external hard drive, do not worry as you can do it as easy as the following steps: Step 1.
Launch Disk Utility After you have connected your external hard drive on you Mac, launch the 'Disk Utility' application which can be found under 'Applications'. Once the application is open, you would be able to see a list of available drives on the left side of the window. Identify and click the drive that you would like to format. Next, click the 'Erase' button on the top of the window.
It is located next to 'First Aid' button. Restore the Formatted Data After scanning process is completed, a list of files that can be retrieved will be available for your preview. Highlight the file name and you should be able to see the content in the preview window. Once you are satisfied on which files you want, choose the files that you would like to recover by clicking on the boxes on the left side of the file names. Click 'Recover' in order to retrieve them back and save it to your desired folder. Remember to save it locally in your Mac or in another removable drive, not in the newly formatted external hard drive. If needed, you can do this later.
This answer explains how to use the WD Quick Formatter to format a WD external drive in Windows (8, 7, Vista, or XP) and Mac OSX (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mt. Lion, or Mavericks).END Important:. 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.
The WD Quick Formatter is the recommended way to format WD external drives that use Advanced Format Drives (AFDs). 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! To reformat an external hard drive to the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) file system, please follow the instructions below:. Download, unzip, install, and run the if running Windows, or if running Mac OSX 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks). 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 for more information. 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. Click on Accept to accept the End User License Agreement. Next, the application will scan for WD external drives to be formatted. Depending on the size of the drive and the, 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 ), anti-virus, file downloading applications (BitTorrent clients, FTP clients, etc.), and remote access applications.
Do not disconnect power while the utility is running. The WD Quick Formatter will show the progress bar while the format is taking place. 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.