How to format external drives using WD Quick Formatter in Windows or Mac. Answer ID 3868. 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. The WD Quick Formatter is ONLY for external drives. A partition is especially useful if you want to use the drive for 2 purposes, such as having a section for TM backups and a section that allows you to write to it from both Windows and OS X. That's how I have my 2 GB WD My Passport drive set up, 1.5 GB for TM and the rest is in ExFAT for being able to write to it from Win 7 and OS X.
When I bought the 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. Much like my WD My Passport Ultra, most external hard drives out there are customized to work with Windows, not OS X. 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. 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.
What Do You Use It For? What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive?
Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section.
Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018.
Deborah, if you plan to use drive for Quicken Backup only, the drive needs no special formatting. It’s data can go on any drive. What is important is if you are using a PC you use a PC formatted drive, but if you are using a Mac you should use a pre-formatted for Mac drive, it will make your life easier. WD sells both types. If you have not yet embarked on this project, consider this: The price of hard drives has really come down since you got the one you have.
You can get a new one with twice the capacity at around half the price today. For a PC, you can find a nice portable drive of 1TB capacity on sale for around $60-70. A Mac HD version will cost more, because manufacturers know Mac users are used to paying more for computer stuff (seriously!).
Also, you likely do not need to erase everything on your current HD to make room for the Quicken backup. You likely need to remove a few gigabytes of data to make room for Quicken data so you can use your present drive without a massive erasing procedure. Hi there, JoeySmyth, just wanted to let you know that I first tried to delete the data that was on the WD My Passport. It was very stubborn and I resorted to formatting the drive.
I set it up for my Quicken backups and so far have had no problems. I was using a 7.5 GB thumb drive for the backups and it was full(!). I keep tax return copies and the Quicken backups because I’m such a nervous Nellie I was using the 200 GB Passport for all other backups until I bought a 3 TB My Book because now I have so much stuff!
I want to thank you and Mike27Oct, for answering my questions and making me feel welcome to the forum. Good for you, Deb. (You can just call me Mike; the second part of my username is my b-day as you may have guessed – it’s to differentiate me from all the other Mike’s in the world! And there are a variety of reasons a drive can be stubborn to allow deletion of certain files and folders, many of which would just likely bore you anyway to hear about them.
Glad we made you feel welcome here. Being nice goes a long way. Joey and I are regulars here, and we usually get things more right than wrong, although Joey does like to jab me with a “gotcha” once in a while if I got it wrong.