To make your Western Digital hard drive work on both Mac and Windows computers, you need to format the drive with the FAT32 file system. Although both operating systems can format your drive with the FAT32 system, Windows 7 limits the partition size to just 32GB, but you can format up to 1TB drives through the Windows Command Prompt. Macs don't limit these partition sizes, so if you have access to both operating systems, format the drive using a Mac.
Connect your Western Digital hard drive to your Windows computer. If you see an AutoPlay window, close it, but note the drive letter associated with the newly attached drive. You can also find this drive letter by holding the "Windows" key, pressing "E" to launch Windows Explorer and looking for the drive in the list of storage devices.
Wd External Hard Drive Mac
If the WD My Passport is not showing up on the Mac desktop, Finder, or Disk Utility after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If you can't see files from WD external hard drive on Mac, how to access data? You'll get answers here.
If a message like: "You must run the WD Drive Unlock application from the WD Drive Unlock CD associated with the drive, you want to unlock" pops up and you can't open or unlock your WD passport drive:
If you have used WD Utilities or have created a secure password to keep others from accessing the files on the drive, you have to type the password to unlock the drive (unless you enable auto-unlock for this computer) each time:
If unfortunately, you can't remember the password, you can only reformat the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive to make it work again, but at the expense of data loss. So, recover your data with iBoysoft data recovery software in advance.
2. Safely remove the WD My Passport and reconnect it to the USB port. As sometimes an older Mac is not able anymore to transfer all the power a new generation drive needs to run it properly, you can also try a USB hub with its independent power supply to feed the energy the drives need.
3. Check whether the USB cable and USB port are not working by connecting other hard drives to this USB port or USB cable and see if that makes a difference. You can make a test with a flash drive or a known working hard drive to check the cable integrity for example.
4. Reboot your Mac computer. In some cases the software (drivers, firmware) that sits in the USB port can be hung, after the reboot check again if your WD My Passport drive now is showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not. Try also to shut down the Mac completely, wait 10 seconds, and then power on, sometimes the system just needs to start fresh from all background activities.
5. Use the Disk Utility to check the setup from your hard drive. Check if it's identified as USB External Physical Disk and GUID Partition Map. Then check if the WD passport drive is formatted to APFS (APFS partitions can't be recognized on macOS 10.12 or earlier versions), EXT4, or NTFS. Sometimes, the incompatible file system of the drive makes this WD My Passport not detected.
If the WD Passport not showing up in Finder and desktop, the configuration of the Finder Preferences may prevent your WD My Passport drive from being seen. In other words, you didn't allow the connected external hard drives to show up in the Finder or on the desktop.
If the WD Passport light blinking but not working on Mac is the situation you're confronted with, chances are that your WD drive may have some software problem. Anyway, you can check it by seeing if your WD My Passport or WD My Passport Ultra is showing up in macOS Disk Utility.
Sometimes, hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the hard drive. Under this situation, you may see the drive is greyed out. So if you find the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting and greyed out in Disk Utility, try to manually mount it to fix the issue.
If you can't mount the WD My Passport for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this WD drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in Disk Utility, which can analyze and repair basic hard drive errors, especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, and volume bit maps.
If the WD drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility, you can check if the Mac has detected and recognized its hardware information in System Information: Go to Applications > Utilities > System Information > USB. And then check the external hard drive information.
If your Mac runs macOS 10.12 or earlier but the WD drive as APFS (Apple File System) formatted, this could result in WD My Passport not working on Mac. You are advised to update your macOS. Then, your Mac can work with the latest file systems, software, and some firmware relating to USB peripherals and devices.
If First Aid was unable to repair the errors in the WD My Passport, it means that the file system of the WD drive has been damaged severely. Common, to fix the WD My Passport not showing up on Mac, you have to reformat it.
If My Passport for Mac hard drive is not showing up on Mac after trying the above solutions, it means that the WD hard drive is not recognized by Mac. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac has some hardware problems. To check it, you can use Apple Diagnostics to help you.
Note: Apple Diagnostics is a set of diagnostic tools used by technicians to find Mac hardware faults. Before starting Apple Diagnostics, it is advised to disconnect all the external devices except the keyboard, mouse, and your WD passport drive.
Sometimes, an external hard drive does not show up on Mac due to simple issues such as a faulty USB cable or port. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD My Passport not working or showing on Mac.
Just like any other external hard drive, My Passport for Mac hard drives may not show up after connecting to a Mac. This article offers guidance to help you fix the WD drive not showing up the issue in many different situations.
This article offers a full guide to help you fix the WD Passport not showing up issue in different situations. It's worth mentioning again that once this issue happens, rescue files from your WD Passport hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac first, or you'll face permanent data loss.
Normally, if you have incorrect settings in Mac Finder preferences, you can't see My Passport in Finder or Mac Desktop. Or, the WD drive itself has some software or hardware problems. An older macOS may also cause this problem.
To fix WD Passport not showing up on Mac, try to install the latest WD drive unlock application, change Finder preferences settings, and repair it with Disk Utility. If necessary, you can format the WD drive on the condition that you've used a data recovery app to recover all your important files first.
This article has been approved by Henrique Vieira, a hard disk engineer with 13 years of experience in the data recovery industry. He has extensive knowledge of common file types and their recovery techniques including modern software data recovery tools and hardware repairing equipment.
6. Hit the Erase button. The macOS will erase data on the drive and reformat it to APFS, FAT32, or ex-FAT format. Once formatting is done, you can use the drive on your Mac as a regular hard drive.
A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and macOS. This is useful if a drive is being used under both Operating System (OS) to move files between the two environments. Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (macOS) format.
For a hard drive to be able to be read from and written to on both a Windows and macOS computer, it must be formatted to ExFAT or FAT32 file format. FAT32 has several limitations, including a 4 GB per-file limit. This is a file system limitation that affects both macOS's and Window's, and the only workaround is to format the drive to exFAT. For more information about what these limitations are please see Answer ID 20778: FAT32 File System and Partition Size Limits for Windows & macOS.
The easiest way to format the drive to FAT32 or ExFAT is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility for FAT32, or both macOS and Windows' built-in tools, Disk Utility or Disk Management respectively for exFAT.
There are two easy ways to format a drive to use ExFAT is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility; using Erase (Step 4) or Partition (Step 7). For instructions on how to do this, please see the instructions below:
Western Digital technical support only provides jumper configuration (for internal hard drive) and physical installation support for hard drives used in systems running the Linux/Unix operating systems. For setup questions beyond physical installation of your Western Digital hard drive, please contact your Linux/Unix vendor. You may also wish to post on our Community Forums for assistance from other users of our products who may be able to assist you with your issue.
Acronis True Image WD Edition can format any capacity internal single drive unit made by Western Digital. Please see the following article on how to format a drive to FAT32 using Acronis True Image WD Edition: Answer ID 23035: Steps to Partition and Format a Drive with Acronis True Image for Western Digital.
As Windows is unable to format a drive over 32 GB in FAT32, the use of third-party software is required. Western Digital cannot assist in acquiring or using third-party software to format a drive as FAT32. There are many different applications (many of them free) that can accomplish this. We recommend doing a search on Google or Bing by Microsoft for more information. Should a Mac computer be available, we are able to provide support for formatting the drive as FAT32 under that OS. Another option is to ask on our Community Forums for community assistance in finding or using a FAT32 formatting application. 2ff7e9595c
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