When I bought the WD My Passport Ultra 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.

The easiest solution would be to purchase another WD Passport drive for use with your Mac and format it accordingly. A WD 500 GB drive is often sale-priced at $60. Some of the hard drive manufacturers market a 'Mac version' of their PC drive, but it costs a little more. According to Western Digital, the new 5TB My Passport for Mac is the world's slimmest portable hard drive at its capacity. The drive is 19.15mm thick — about 3/4 of an inch.

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.

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 Ultimate Guide to OS X Yosemite.

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 the two tips for using Disk Utility and 8 ways to free up space on your Mac.

What Do You Use It For?

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What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Time Machine backups perhaps? Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section.

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic. Wd my passport driver mac

Also See#backup #hard disk

Did You Know

DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc.

Top 4 Ways to Fix Mac Desktop Icons Missing or Not Showing

Summary: WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix WD My Passport not working issue and recover data from unrecognized WD My Passport.

Everything has flaws. At times, WD My Passport won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD hard drive's light is on but not working. Even worse, it may become unreadable on your Mac. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

If the WD My Passport is not showing up on 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.

Table of contents: 1. Troubleshoot WD My Passport not showing up on Mac issue; 2. How to fix My Passport not showing up on Mac issue?; 3. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?; 4. Understanding why My Passport drive not showing up on Mac; 5. Bonus tips

Troubleshoot WD My Passport not showing up on Mac issue

As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.

2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.

3. Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.

4. Connect the WD My Passport to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport undetectable.

How to fix WD My Passport not showing up on Mac issue?

If the WD My Passport for Mac still does not work or not show up on Mac after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow the connected hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.

Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.

Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD My Passport for Mac on the desktop.

Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD My Passport for Mac in Finder.

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the WD My Passport for Mac drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:

Case 1: Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.

Case 2: Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.

Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually

Sometimes, hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the hard drive.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility

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