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How to use a WD external hard drive with your computer. Do I back up data to a WD external hard drive? Drive on a Windows PC or Mac for directions on how to.
As of 2018, Western Digital offers no shortage of external drives for Mac computers – from the My Book Essential to the My Book Pro and the My Book Studio, nearly 30 WD drives play nicely with Apple’s macOS operating system, as does the My Passport Studio model. But with more than 262.5 million PCs shipped in 2017, according to data from Statista, there’s a good chance your Passport Studio will need to play nicely with a Windows computer, too.
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When it comes to cross-platform flexibility, you’ve got a few options for crossing the Mac and PC streams. About eFAT and FAT32 Here’s something your My Passport for Mac Quick Install Guide might not tell you: Hard drives usually come formatted in two different ways, one catering to Windows and one catering to Mac. NTFS-formatted drives work with Windows computers, and HFS+ drives work with Mac. However, by formatting your My Passport differently, you can ensure compatibility in a variety of different ways. Hard drives formatted to exFAT or FAT32 can read and write data on both Mac and PC operating systems, though FAT32 is limited to a 4-gigabyte-per-file size limit. Formatting your drive will erase all its data, so be sure to back it up before making the change.
External Drive for Mac to Windows 10 If you’ve got a WD external drive for Mac platforms and you want it to work on a Windows 10 PC, exFAT format is your best bet. To start formatting, connect your WD Passport to your Mac; then open “Mac HD” and click “Applications,” “Utilities” and “Disk Utility.” From the Disk Utility window, select the Passport hard drive. Here, you’ll usually see two listings of partitions available on the drive – select the listing that is furthest left. Click the Disk Utility’s “Erase” button; assign the drive a name in the “Name” field; then hit “Erase,” and click “Done” when the erasing process is complete. Now, click the “Partition” button at the top of the Disk Utility and click “Format.” Choose “exFAT” from the drop-down menu that appears and click “Apply” to format the drive, which will take a few minutes. Once the formatting is complete and you get a message that says “Operation successful,” click “Done.” To Windows 8 and Earlier The external drive for Mac to Windows 8 transition makes use of Window’s built-in Disk Management software rather than the macOS Disk Utility, but you’ll still want to format your WD Passport as an exFAT drive. To do so, connect the Passport to your PC, enter the Windows 8 Start menu and choose “Disk Management.” In the Disk Management app, right-click on the drive and select “New Simple Volume.” from the menu that appears.
This brings up the New Simple Volume Wizard. Click the “Next” button until you get to the “Format Partition” window and choose “exFAT” under “File System” (you can also change the name of the drive under “Volume label” if you wish). Make sure the “Perform a quick format” box is checked, and click “Next” when you’re ready. Click “Partition” and then “Finish” to format the drive to a cross-platform compatible exFAT mode.
Moving Files from a PC to a Mac Using an External Hard Drive In most cases, you’ll want to use an external hard drive to transfer files from a PC to a Mac. Fortunately, using an external hard drive to move files is easy. Just plug the external drive’s USB cable into your PC and copy your files to the drive.
After everything is copied, shut down Windows, unplug the hard drive’s data cable from the PC, and plug the cable into your Mac. The drive’s letter or name should appear on your Mac’s desktop. Double-click it. You can then copy everything to the Mac (make a folder for all the files first), or you can just copy the files you need and keep the rest on the external drive. Don’t have an external hard drive?
High-capacity external hard drives are very affordable these days. You can buy a 1TB (1-terabyte) drive for under $400. A terabyte equals a trillion bytes, or 1,000 gigabytes, or the equivalent of 700,000 floppy disks. You probably don’t need that much, but drives a quarter of that size (250MB) sell for under $100. Be sure to get an external drive that’s labeled “for Mac and PC.” These drives are usually formatted using Microsoft’s FAT32 format, which both Macs and PCs handle well. If your drive is formatted in Microsoft’s newer NTFS format, your Mac should be able to read it, but writing to it may be a problem.
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You can reformat the drive with OS X’s Disk Utility after you finish transferring your data.