western digital my passport for mac on windows

Western Digital My Passport On Windows Manual About The
Western Digital My Passport On Windows Software Rather Than

But with more than 262.5 million PCs shipped in 2017, according to data from Statista, theres a good chance your Passport Studio will need to play nicely with a Windows computer, too.

When it comes to cross-platform flexibility, youve got a few options for crossing the Mac and PC streams.

About eFAT and FAT32 Heres 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.

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 youve 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.

From the Disk Utility window, select the Passport hard drive.

Here, youll usually see two listings of partitions available on the drive select the listing that is furthest left.

Click the Disk Utilitys 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.

Western Digital My Passport On Windows Software Rather Than

To Windows 8 and Earlier The external drive for Mac to Windows 8 transition makes use of Windows built-in Disk Management software rather than the macOS Disk Utility, but youll 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.

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 youre ready.

Click Partition and then Finish to format the drive to a cross-platform compatible exFAT mode.

Western Digital My Passport On Windows Manual About The

References Statista: Total Unit Shipments of Personal Computers (PCs) Worldwide from 2006 to 2017 (in Millions of Units) Western Digital: My Passport for Mac: User Manual About the Author As the co-founder of an LLC, the owner of a small business and a partner at an S-corporation (all working in media), Dan is no stranger to small business.

As a business writer, hes contributed to publications including Chron.com, AZCentral, Fortune, GlobalPost, MSN Money, GoBankingRates, Zacks.com, The Motley Fool and more.

Western Digital My Passport For Mac On Windows