Now you can take it to either Mac or PC to start writing to it. If you right click on the drive (in Mac OS X) then click ‘Get info’ the 'Sharing & Permissions’ caption states Under Format, choose MS-DOS (FAT), then hit Apply to format the drive.Īfter that the Passport drive is formatted and it is able to read and write from Mac and PC. Under Options, choose Master Boot Record and hit OK, When you use the WD drive only on a Mac, you can make a copy of everything that is on it now, then - with.

Select Partition, Under Volume Scheme choose 1 partition, You must back up all of the data to either your PC or MAC internal hard disk drive.įormatting the drive will erase all data.Īfter you have done backing up, connect the Passport drive to your Mac computer. If you allow Time Machine to configure the drive, all of your data will not be read or write from PC. Meaning if you try to copy a file size bigger than 4GB it will give you an error or not work. You can not use Time machine with the drive.

The down side: the files size is limited to less than 4GB each.

WD focuses their efforts here on a WD drive utilities tool that includes features like SMART data collector, drive diagnostics tools and sleep timer, which can power the drive down after a period of inactivity.

The up side: you can read and write to it from Mac and PC. The Mac software suite is a little more spartan, taking into account that the platform comes with Time Machine and other tools that the PC doesn’t always have.

If you are really, really want to do that you need to read these first:

Use wd for mac and pc