Download Now WD ELEMENTS SE 2TB NTFS DRIVER It includes 2tb elements external hard drive, user manual, usb 3.0 cable, and a 2-year warranty card in its box. Simple, fast and portable reliable, easy to use high-capacity storage to go. With the help of the WD Discovery software, download the NTFS driver for the Mac operating system so that reformatting is not required. Guide: Western Digital 2TB External Hard Drive Wifi The Western Digital 2TB external hard drive is designed with a massive capacity to connect 8 different devices and store the data at the same time.
With WD Discovery™ software, you can also work across both Mac and PC. We provide a downloadable HFS+ driver for Windows® 10, 8.1 or 7 to enable you to read and write to your My Passport Ultra for Mac drive without reformatting. Most Mac users will be better off formatting external drives with exFAT, ensuring they work well on both Windows and Mac OS X without any extra work. If you must write to an NTFS drive, one of the paid, third-party drivers will be the easiest option with the best performance and least risk of file corruption. Western Digital (WD) hard drives are formatted with NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) by default to make them more compatible with both operating systems. Granted, FAT32 is less efficient than NTFS in Windows, but it has inherent benefits too, like its compatibility.
HomeBusinessHow To Make An External Drive Compatible With Mac And PC?
“I got a WD My Passport hard drive from my friend as my birthday present. I was so happy to try it on my MacBook Air, only to find I could not save any files to it. I always use an external drive to share files between my MacBook Air and Windows computer in my office. This is the first time that I encountered such a problem. Does anybody know why and how to make the hard drive compatible with Mac and PC?”
Does it sound familiar to you?
Windows and macOS use completely different logics to store and manage files, so some file systems might work well in Windows platform but not necessarily in macOS platform and vice versa. Windows don’t support Apple’s HFS, HFS+ and latest APFS file system at all, while macOS only has read support to Windows NTFS file system.
For cross-platform users who need to share files between PCs and Macs using a portable drive, it is extremely inconvenient with a drive not fully supported by both operating systems.
I will introduce two methods to solve the incompatibility problem.
- Format the external drive to exFAT.
- Use a third-party NTFS for Mac driver to enable NTFS write support for macOS.
How to format an external drive to exFAT?
exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system is the optimization of FAT32 file system. It offers better compatibility than NTFS file system and eliminates the 4GB file size limit of FAT32 file system. It is a great choice for sharing an external drive between Mac and PC.
Note: Before you proceed with the instructions, remember to back up your data first if you have important files on the drive. That’s because, formatting a disk will write a new file system on your disk and prepare your disk for new data to write on. Your pen drives, SD cards or external hard drives will turn blank and all your files will be gone after formatting. Therefore, back all files up before formatting. If you do not care about data, however, go ahead to format it to exFAT.
You can format the external drive to exFAT both on a PC or a Mac. The instructions below are conducted on a Mac running macOS Mojave.
Step 1: Connect the external drive to the Mac.
Step 2: Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 3: Select the external drive at the left sidebar.
Step 4: Choose Erase at the top tool bar.
Step 5: Give the drive a name.
Step 6: Choose exFAT as Format.
Step 7: Choose GUID Partition Map as Scheme.
Step 8: Click on Erase button.
After the formatting process is completed, click on “Done” and you will have a drive with exFAT file system. The drive will work seamlessly with Macs and PCs without any third-party software.
How to enable NTFS write support on Mac with a third-party NTFS driver?
If you came cross the problem because you are using a Microsoft NTFS drive, a third-party NTFS mounter can make your NTFS drives compatible with macOS without formatting.
There are free and paid NTFS drivers for Mac available. Free NTFS drivers include FUSE for macOS, NTFS-3G, Mounty and SL-NTFS.
You have to be very familiar with command lines to use free NTFS drivers for Mac. They are less compatible and less secure as well. I recommend to use a paid NTFS driver for Mac, which is easier, more compatible, and more reliable.
Let’s take iBoysoft Drive Manager as an example here to explain how to enable NTFS write support on Mac natively using an NTFS driver for macOS.
iBoysoft Drive Manager is a paid NTFS driver for macOS. It can mount NTFS drives in read-write mode on Mac. NTFS-formatted pen drives, SD cards, and external hard drives will be opened with NTFS write support in the Finder automatically. The write and file transferring speed to NTFS drives is noticeably fast.
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Drive Manager on your Mac.
After the utility is completely installed, you will see an icon at the top right menu bar.
Step 2: Connect the NTFS drive to the Mac.
You will get a notification that your NTFS drive is successfully mounted.
Step 3: Read-write to the NTFS drive.
The NTFS drive will be opened automatically in read-write mode. You can make any changes to the existing files and save new files to it freely, which are not supported efore.
iBoysoft Drive Manager is far more than an NTFS mounter. As a drive management tool, it can manage multiple USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks and external hard drives with one click. It also supports adding network drives manually by providing server address, user names and password and map them as local drives. You can connect and network drives with one click too.
Conclusion
When you are using a removable drive for file sharing between Macs and PCs, you should take file system compatibility into account. You can either choose to format the drive or use third-party software to help you.
However, formatting a disk doesn’t sound as easy as you may expect. Think about the time and other work you must do when you back up a lot of data, reformat several external drives and restore data to them.
In conclusion, third-party drivers will be the easier way to make external drives compatible with Macs and PCs.
Can I Use WD Hard Drive on Mac and PC
Before you get the answer, you must figure out what kind of file system can work well on both the macOS and the Windows system. macOS supports a handful of common file systems - HFS+, FAT32, and exFAT, with read-only support for NTFS. While Windows employs two major file systems: NTFS and FAT. FAT was inherited from old DOS and has exFAT as its later extension. In addition, the ReFS file system was developed as a new generation file system for server computers starting from Windows Server 2012.
That is to say, only FAT32 and exFAT can work on both Mac and PC. If you want to share digital files between Mac and Windows system easily, you must convert WD My Passport to FAT or exFAT. Here are three ways to format a WD My Passport, follow any one of them to convert to FAT.
- Solution 1. Format WD HDD with Software (FREE)
How to Format WD My Passport in Windows Platform (Free)
You can format a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to ex-FAT or FAT32 format using a free ex-FAT or FAT32 converter - EaseUS Partition Master or use built-in applications Windows.
Solution 1. Format WD My Passport Using Software (Free)
It is a wise choice to use a professional format tool. With the help of EaseUS Partition Master Free, you can perfectly bypass the format limitation of the Windows disk management tool and help you format WD My Passport to FAT32 or exFAT easily without any obstacles. What's more, this Windows partition software helps you create, resize, clone, move, and merge partitions without difficulty. Follow the details below to convert WD My Passport to FAT32 or exFAT.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
Solution 2. Format WD My Passport Using File Explorer
Windows limits FAT32 partitions to 32GB. It does not offer the ability to format a drive larger than 32GB to FAT32, the only available choices are NTFS or exFAT. If you want to format your WD My Passport to FAT32, you must make sure that the size is smaller than 32GB. If it is larger than 32GB, you can only format it to exFAT.
Step 1. Open Windows File Explorer, locate and right-click on WD My Passport that you need to format, select 'Format'.
Step 2. Rename the drive, reset its file system to FAT32 or exFAT.
Step 3. Click 'Start' to begin the formatting.
How to Format WD My Passport in macOS/OS X Platform
The easiest way to format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility for FAT32 or exFAT.
Tips: The instructions below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. Once the process begins, all the data on the drive will be lost!
Step 1. Connect WD My Passport to your Mac.
Step 2. Once that's done, double left-click on the Mac HD, the internal Mac hard drive visible on the top-right corner of the desktop screen.Select 'Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility'.
Step 3. Select your WD My Passport on the sidebar, choose 'Erase'.
Step 4. Rename the drive, select the 'Volume Format' drop-down list and choose 'MS-DOS (FAT)' or 'ex-FAT File System'. Then click 'Erase'.
Wait for the process to complete and let the macOS erase data on the drive and reformat it by FAT32 or ex-FAT format. Then, you can use the drive in macOS or OS X as a regular hard drive.
Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS
FAT is known as the File Allocation Table. The successive major versions of the FAT format are named after the number of table element bits: FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32. FAT32 is the oldest of the three file systems available to Windows. Individual files on a FAT32 drive can’t be over 4 GB in size. A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB, which admittedly is less of a limitation unless you’re using super-high-capacity drives.
exFAT, Extended File Allocation Table, is optimized for flash drives. It was added to older versions of Windows with updates to Windows XP and Windows Vista. This file system doesn't have the limitations of FAT32. You can use it when you need a bigger file size and partition limits than FAT32 offers.
NTFS, NT File System, is the modern file system Windows likes to use by default. It is packed with modern features not available to FAT32 and exFAT. However, it only works with all versions of Windows, but read-only with Mac by default.
If you want to use WD My Passport or any other hard drive on Mac and PC, you need to format a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive in exFAT or FAT32 format.
Tips to Avoid Formatting WD My Passport Without Backup
Just as I have mentioned above, once the process begins, all the data on the drive will be lost. To avoid unnecessary data loss issues, we highly recommended all users extract or back up important data to another device or partition in advance. You can copy files one by one to a new disk or drive. If you have quite a lot of data to be transferred, professional backup software shall be your best choice. Here we recommend you try EaseUS Todo Backup which allows you to directly back up target data with simple steps.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Todo Backup software and then choose 'File Backup', 'Disk/partition Backup' or 'System Backup' for different backup purpose.
Step 2: Choose the system, disk partition, files or apps that you want to back up. Then select a destination where you want to store the backup file.
Step 3: Click 'Proceed' to start the data backup process.
Hot Topics - People Also Ask These Questions
What is the difference between NTFS, fat32, and exFAT?
![Toshiba ntfs driver for mac Toshiba ntfs driver for mac](/uploads/1/1/9/3/119387610/221642212.png)
NTFS is the commonly used file system for Windows internal drives. Windows OS can only be installed on an NTFS partition. FAT32 is an older file system used for external drives due to its great compatibility. exFAT is a replacement for FAT32, which is not as compatible as FAT32 but without the limitations of FAT32.
Can I use WD hard drive on Mac and PC?
Yes. If you want to use WD My Passport or any other hard drive on Mac and PC, you need to format a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive in exFAT or FAT32 format.
Can I convert exFAT to NTFS without losing data?
You are unable to directly convert exFAT to NTFS without losing data, as there is no such utility that can help you perform the exFAT to NTFS conversion. You can back up exFAT partition data to another drive and then format the exFAT partition to NTFS with EaseUS Partition Master Free.
How do I format my WD Passport?
Mac Ntfs For Mac
Step 1. Run EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the hard drive partition you intend to format and choose Format.
Step 2. In the new window, set the Partition label, File system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3/exFAT), and Cluster size for the partition to be formatted, then click OK.
Step 3. Click OK in it to continue.
Step 4. Click the Execute Operation button on the top-left corner to review the changes, then click Apply.
Conclusion
Ntfs Driver For Mac Seagate
You can format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or exFAT format to transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system conveniently. According to the solutions above, the EaseUS partition tool stands out for its convenience and easiness. It's always your best choice.