Format External Western Digital Drive to be used with only Mac

I recently ordered Western Digital My Passport Essential. I will get it by tomorrow evening.
It comes pre-formatted using NTFS file-type.
I need to format it, to be used with My MacBook Pro running Lion, and old White MacBook running Snow Leopard. One more thing, I will be using with OS X only. I don't have Windows/Linux system at my place, and I don't have any intention to be using with Windows/Linux in future.
Should I format it using HFS+ or HFS+ Journaled or something else? Why?

Like Niel said...
but also you might want to partition it rather than just erase the visible partition, i think some of these disks come with annoying hidden partitions and crappy backup software.
If you want to make sure you get the whole drive to yourself, instead of using the erase tab in Disk Utiliity, go to the partition tab, then select 1 partition (or which ever you want from the drop down.) and configure as you see fit. this will make sure that no hidden partitions remain.
You might also want to select GPT as the partition map incase you ever decide to use it to boot OS X from.

Similar Messages

Cannot Erase/Format External Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive

I have a brand new Western Digital "My Book" Hard Drive that I would like to use for SuperDuper clone backup. I am attempting to format the disk for Mac-OS Extended first.
When I connect the HD to my MBP via USB, an error message pops up saying "Disk Insertion - The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I then enter Disk Utility. The Western Digital HD is shown in the left pane as a 596.2 GB External Media. The Volume Format is shown as MS-DOS (FAT).
I attempted to erase/format for Mac-OS Extended (Journaled). Selecting the volume in the left pane and then clicking erase returns the error message "Disk Erase Failed with the error: File System Formatter Failed." Just for kicks I tried to erase/format for regular Mac-OS Extended, same result. It will let me erase/format for MS-DOS (FAT), but that's how it's already formatted and doesn't help me.
I tried to erase/format on my wife's MBP, exact same results. Am I doing something wrong or do I have a problem with the external hard drive?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Barry

Thanks for the feedback. Good computing and welcome to the Mac world. Since you're new, see these:
Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac,
Mac 101: Mac Essentials,
Anatomy of a Mac,
MacFixIt Tutorials,
MacTips, and
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition.
Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:
Quick Assist.
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides,
Take Control E-books, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

What size should external back-up drive be for use with Time Machine?

I am very new to Macs.
My iMac has a 500GB hard disc - not much on it yet.
I want to back the hard disc up daily and automatically to an external hard drive using Time Machine. So that I could restore everything if the iMac failed.
1. Does the external hard drive that I buy need to be larger than the iMac's hard disc, e.g 1Tb? Or is 500Gb enough in my case?
2. Should it be pre-formatted for Mac when I buy it? Or do I have to do this?
3. Should it use firewire or USB?
4. Presumably I need to leave the external drive plugged in all the time? Or will this stop the iMac from switching on and off?
I really want the easiest solution possible as I am not very techie and I want the minimum amount of fiddling with it. So I am confused between whether to choose a Western Digital My Book Office edition or Studio edition, 500Gb or 1TB, firewire or USB, or maybe a Lacie?
Would be grateful for advice.
Thanks very much.

Welcome to the Apple forums. If you have a 500G external disk, that will work fine for quite a while with hourly, daily and weekly backups, but sooner or later it will fill up, but then it begins to delete weekly backups. The same will happen with whichever size of external disk you buy: sooner or later. . . . Nonetheless, that disk will be fine for most purposes. I have 250G and use a 200G partition for my MacBook Pro and while that was fine, it tends to delete weekly backups so I have about 6 months of backups stored. (I also make other backups of all data).
It may be preformatted, but that is unlikely. Use Disk Utility (in Applications>Utilities) and use MacOS Extended, which is selected in the Partition tab (you do this even if you only use a single partition).
The system works with either Firewire or USB 2..
You do not need to leave it in all the time. If it is connected, it will make the backups, if not, nothing will happen and it will indicate that the next backup will occur when the disk is attached. To disconnect, you would highlight the disk in a Finder panel and press the Eject icon (not while TM is running of course) then disconnect the cable.
I am not able to suggest which disk is best, although my LaCie one has not missed a beat. Others may have a different idea. Try a Google search with the disk manufacturer's name and "problems" or somesuch. No disk is perfect of course.

2TB Western Digital Drive won't mount in my Mac Pro. Please Help

Hello, everyone. I have a Mac Pro (MacPro1,1) with an internal drive that won't mount. I bought it used last year with 12GB RAM and 1TB hard drive and SuperDrive. I have since upgraded storage with an internal 2TB drive from Seagate (no problem), and a 500GB drive (no problem) from Western Digital, and installed a second optical drive from an old Power Mac G5. I had an additional newer 2TB drive from WD that I bought as an external. I took it out of its case and put it in a carrier and then in Bay 4 of my Mac Pro. It's the only drive I've had problems with, and I don't know why. The drive is immediately rejected by OS X upon startup. The options include "Eject" and "Initialize..." but I've clicked initialize every time. Disk Utility opens and I can see the drive but for whatever reason, it will not mount. There is one partition on it, and I think when I bought it, I formatted it with GUID and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I haven't used it as a Time Machine drive, but I've backed up some files on it. I've restarted several times, and I'm not sure if I can hear it spinning inside my computer.
Should I pull it out and see if the partition is still on the disk? Wha

When DU launches or launch it yourself, that is the most useless "eject, ignore" and there is no real initialize command anyway anymore.... Click on raw drive WDxxxx and goto Partition tab, change the number of partitions to anything (another silly item) so you can go to the Advanced Options finally
WD MyBook drives are often not standard SATA drives with power and data connectors.
Does it look like one?
It should be GUID but make sure, you can also tell from the status below.
Might even change it to something else, erase, then set it back to GUID.
Apply. And only then does it matter what user partitions you create.
Jump through hoops for no reason.
If you have Windows or a PC, use WD Lifebuard. Great at testing any SATA drive.
Quick format with zeroes. Then Extended Test. Maybe even Full Format with zeroes to insure no bad sectors.
When and where, at what point in time, did you use it and write files to it?
By "carrier" I assume you mean the drive sled to go inside the Mac Pro.
Did you ever use it in an SATA external other than WD? some of their MyBooks are moled into and drive and case cannot be used separated.

What external harddrives do I need for use with new mac pro?

I just bought a mac pro late 2013 however I got the one with only 256 gigs of storage. I do a lot of video editing and was wondering if my firewire 800 owc hardrives work just as fast or should I upgrade to thunderbolt and usb 3.0 drives? My work flow is usually storing my footage on one drive and my project files on another drive. Would it really make that big of a difference to upgrade? It seems to me that when working in premiere..the actual mac pro is what really matters.

Would thunderbolt drives really make that big of a difference in terms of editing speed?
The model I use to think about this is bottleneck analysis. (A chain is as strong as its weakest link.)
ThunderBolt is really FAST. It is so much faster than the rotating drives that ...
...it does not get in the way at all (But it cannot speed anything up!)
Rotating drives can produce a single burst of data off the platters at about 125 MBytes/sec. FireWire800 is about that speed, so it will not provide much of a bottleneck. Gigabit Ethernet is a little slower, but in that neighborhood.
ThunderBolt-1 has enough bandwidth to support an eight drive enclosure with all drives working simultaneously. But it does not speed anything up.
If you transition to the fastest SSD drives in enclosures, all those numbers change. There, fastest transfer times are near 800 MBytes/sec, and Firewire800 and USB-3 get in your way.

Can i use exfat format for my external western digital harddrive so that i can use in both windows and mac?

can i use exfat format for my external western digital harddrive so that i can use in both windows and mac?
thanks in advance.
<Email Edited by Host>

Yes you can. OS X version 10.6.6 and later can read/write exFAT. Windows XP SP3 and later can read/write exFAT. As posted by Radiation Mac, you can do it from Windows or from OS X.
However, I've noticed Windows to be somewhat picky about drives formatted on a Mac. So, if Windows can't read it, try formatting it on the Windows machine, and see how it works on the Mac.
Posting your email on a public forum isn't a very good idea. It will likely be harvested by spambots and used as the reply-to address for spam it sends out.
Also, most people are not going to send an email to you for similar reasons. Nobody knows who you are, so sending an email to you could be giving a spammer a valid email address.
The forum is set up to automatically notify you when there are responses to your questions. When you get one, you would log back into this forum and check to see what the answer was.

Configuration problem with external Western Digital My Book 2 TB drive

How do I fix a configuration problem with my external Western Digital My Book 2 TB drive which used to both read and write. Something has happened so that the drive is now read only? There is 600 GB of data on the drive that I cannot lose, thus am very concerned about messing around with formatting the drive which is raid 1 and filled with data.

may not like to hear, but I'd skip on MyBook cases, nice looking as they are.
Get a 2nd drive case to recover to.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire
may need to play with the demo Data Rescue 3 from Prosoft
Backup/recover before repair is usually in order
never have one backup set. THREE sets of your data, minimum.
3rd party disk maintenance and repair should be a must and given rather than rely solely on Apple Disk Utility.
Data and system maintenance and recovery plan - should be like practice for sports, arts, military with practice and making sure you will know how and the tools you need - ahead of time
Resetting USB/FW ports, try another if one won't work. When 10.6 came out there was a lot of grinding teeth with external drives not working or mounting.

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories etc. I want to format it and use it on my IMAC for backup but I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

I have an external hard drive that was formatted by a PC and has files and directories copied to it etc. I want to use it on my IMAC for backup. I see it on my my IMAC . I can open files etc. But I can't seem to write to it nor can I delete current content. I don't care if I lose current content. How do I initialize it for use with the MAC?

You can't write to it because it's formatted as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you want to continue using the drive with both a PC and OS X you will need to download and install NTFS-3G so you can then write to it from your Mac. You can get NTFS-3G at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
If you want to use the drive exclusively with your Mac then move the data off it and reformat it in Disk Utility (Applications - Utilities - Disk Utilities) as Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)

Time machine backup fails; error creating folder. Western Digital drive requires password which is perhaps/likely the issue. I can't eliminate the password/encryption.

Time Machine backup fails on new WD external drive (My Passport Studio); error creating folder (after several hours of Time Machine apparently working).
Background: I purchased a Western Digital drive from an Apple Store to use for Time Machine backup. I followed the Western Digital instructions that came with the drive for Mac. I didn't get the Time Machine prompt which the instructions indicated I would receive--namely to select whether I want to encrypt my Time Macine backups. (I already have a Time Machine backup I use at another location, which is perhaps why I didn't receive a prompt.)
I decided to install the Western Digital utilities and security software that comes on the disk--with a view to potentially encrypting the disk (since I still wanted to have an encrypted backup since I was mobile). I forgot that (from experience 2-years previous) that I shouldn't install Western Digital software because it just makes life really complicated.
I tried several times to do a Time Machine backup with failures each time (error creating the backup folder). I tried to get help from WD but I don't think the technicians were following what my issue was. Potentially I was not helpful in explaining it. I deleted the WD applications from my system after the first contact with WD. However the problem persisted--I still had an encrypted hard drive. After three phone sessions with three different WD techs I still could not get a solution. (By the second call I was not at all interested in having an encrypted drive--I just wanted to format and restore the drive to an unencrypted state so that I could have SOME kind of Time Machine backup.)
I still don't have a solution--either to get Time Machine working with the WD encryption/password on the drive, or to remove the encryption so I can backup. Right now my options are to return the drive to the Apple Store -- or get a return authorization from WD. Seems crazy since the drive is fine and I have the working password.

Never install "helpful software" provided by WD and Seagate (or any HD mfg.)
All such stuff is fluff and nonsense that interferes with normal HD operation.
Always when you buy a new HD, format it for Mac and then use it to TM backup or clone a HD, or archive data.
Less is more on HD new out of box. A "blank brick", no fluff and cotton candy software

Mac Pro RAID Card and Western Digital drives

I'm having huge troubles with these items.
I first installed four WD7500AYYS (Raid Edition) to build a RAID 5 and install Leopard on it. At this point, one of the drives was probably DOA and didn't show up in the bay. I then reinstalled the Seagate that shipped with the machine, then proceeded to create another enhanced JBOD raid with one of the WD drives. After a couple of seconds, RAID utility reported an error (disk about to fail and such). I then tried with another one. The process ended with a kernel panic after two hours, while RAID utility was still marking the drive for enhanced JBOD. That disk never show up again, in any bay.
At this point, I'm left with two WD drives. I can't get past the creation of a RAID set with them, no matter what. Either RAID utility reports an error, or it says the disk has been ejected, or it keeps create the RAID for hours... The later usually ends with a "force quit", or a force shutdown. During these attemps, the RAID card went missing once, then it appeared again on the following reboot. The RAID battery, which was fully charged at first, is now being "repaired" (charging ?).
I then ran AHT to see whether there was something wrong. No errors reported.
Because all four drives were Raid Edition, I thought this could be the root of the problems. So I bought a Caviar SE16 (WD5000AAKS). To no avail. It fails too, in the very same way. And now it no longer appears in any bay.
The last step I took was to remove the RAID card (connecting the iPass connector to the motherboard). Out of the five WD drives, only two RE2 (the two that still show up with the RAID card) do appear in disk utility. But disk utility never ends "writing the partition map" or "preparing for initialization".
By now, I end up with five WD drives that appear to be just dead, as if they were killed by the RAID card trying to RAID them. The only drive that works, with or without the RAID card, in any bay, is the Seagate. I didn't try to fiddle with it though (I'm reluctant to format it just to see whether I can create an enhanced JBOD raid with it).
So the question is, are Western Digital drives compatible with this RAID card ? If they do, then how a RAID card can kill them in such a way while keeping the Seagate alive ?
I'm lost in conjectures. I don't even know if/how I can bring all the WD drives back to life. I'm not sure the RAID card is faulty, I've already lost a lot of time and money, I'm not willing to buy yet another drive to see it fail too, and my Mac Pro is kind of useless as I don't want to spend time on installing/configuring everything I need on a drive that is bound to be replaced by a larger RAID 5 array.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Someone yesterday or Friday, had a system with 4 x 1TB drives and Pro RAID, but in their case, it was determined later Saturday that drive bay #1 was not functioning.
Hopefully these fully retail drives, not OEMs, and I would think they are fine. They are what I would use (Sonnet Tempo only supports RE of the WD drives). Someone else, Danish?, had 3 out of 4 WD drives were DOA.
I've never had trouble buying over a dozen from OWC, so it does seem odd.
If you have SoftRAID 3.6.6 I would use that to zero the first and last 100 sectors, or you can begin to zero the whole drive and cancel at any time, just to check the health of the drive and that it can zero and not produce I/O errors.
There are two other methods for accessing and managing Mac Pro RAID, ARD and CLI
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
Originally, only Apple drives were supported. My understanding was that this changed. But the only article I found in KB dates back to Aug '07:
Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?
Answer: +Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.+
My understanding that 3rd party retail drives such as WD RE2 750GB, Seagate, Hitachi were supported as well since the article was written - and I can't find where I read that, but sure that I did, as this was discussed in the past.
I'd like to find an official article. Even my friend Google was helpless

I am new to a MAC. I have an external hard drive that I used with my Windows XP computer. Can I reformat it

I am new to MAC. I have an external hard drive that I used with my former computer running Windows XP. Can I reformat it to use with my new MAC? If so, how do I do it?

Yes you can. See the following:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

System is looking for a Western Digital drive

I've had a Spotlight indexing problem that seems to be partially fixed but I see something in console under the system log that may be preventing Spotlight from finishing it's indexing.
Here's the reference:
Sep 17 11:28:57 Macintosh-2 WDDriveManagerStatusMenu[167]: *** attempt to pop an unknown autorelease pool (0x843400)
This is a reference to a Western Digital Drive...the drive was put in a new case.
I keep getting this error message in Console in the system log...Spotlight gets to within 30 secs of indexing, then keeps delaying it's completion. Could this error message be preventing the completion?

People used to get that Console message before WDDriveManager was updated for Snow Leopard. Back in 2009-2010, it was not compatible with Snow Leopard.
Do you have the latest updates installed for WDDriveManager?
Secondly, my understanding is that the main purpose of WDDriveManager is to enable functionality of lights and buttons on the WD hard drive case. However if you moved the drive to a new case, perhaps such functionality is no longer relevant or perhaps there is a conflict there (software looking for a certain type of HD case but can't find it?). In that case, you might consider removing or uninstalling WDDriveManager as it might no longer work with this new case you have.
Are you using Snow Leopard? (I assume so because that's this forum, but your post indicates 10.4). Do you have the latest version of WD software? What are you using the WD software for? Is your HD case compatible with WD's software?

Can't format external USB hard drive

Hi Guys
I recently bought a Mac Pro, having decided to make the switch from PC, but am having trouble formatting an external 0.5 TB USB hard drive I used with the PC for use with the Mac. The drive was supplied formatted to Windows NTFS and when I first connected it to the Mac the blue LED indicator blinked off - presumably beacause OSX couldn't read the drive? Now, whenever I try to format the drive using disk utility I am presented with a message stating, "The underlying task reported failure on exit". If I try to partition the drive, I get a message stating, "Resource busy".
I am new to Macs and OSX, so imagine a lot of this problem is down to inexperience. I really need the external drive as I'm a musician, and store all my samples and projects on the drive.
Cheers, Dan

AFAIK, NTFS isn't a supported format for an ICBM (Intel-chip-based Mac). You need to remove any data files and reformat it MS-DOS or some such thing. Check Disk Utility's help files and http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220
Since you're a newcomer to the Mac, you should peruse these before you do anything:
Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac, and
MacTips Learning Centre.
Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:
Quick Assist.
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

How to attach an external Western Digital Hardrive

I have a G4 12 inch power book. I have about 554 mb of memory left on my hardrive. I just purchased an external western digital hardrive. I want to transfer some of the things from my mac hardrive to the external hardrive. The problem is there are no directions that come with the western digital hardrive to do this. I put in the disk that came with the hardrive but nothing remotely happens, just you're now able to see two files on the disk. When I plug in the hardrive, the mac recognizes it in the disk utility but I don't know what to do from there. Some of the options that I am getting are: partion hardrive, raid, etc. I know this is something simple and I am just not understanding this but I think I must mount the external drive to the computer? please help.....

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
It appears your post is being answered in this thread. Please avoid crossposting your question in the future unless asked to because of being in the wrong discussion board:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2639838#2639838

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

Format External Western Digital Drive to be used with only Mac

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