[Easy] Use Your WD My Passport For Mac And Windows – 7 Steps

Whether it’s because you’ve a Windows PC you use at work.

And when you’re home it’s easier for you to continue your work on your Mac.

The question you’re asking yourself is:

Can I use my WD Passport For Mac and Windows PC?

The answer is Yes.

And in this article you find inspiration to do just that.

Follow the text and pictures. And learn the few steps it takes to set up your WD My Passport for Mac and Windows.

High Level View Of The Steps To Make WD Passport Work With Mac And Windows

1. You plug in the WD My Passport Into Your Mac
2. You format your My Passport to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system.
3. Next you format your drive to an ExFAT file system.
4. After that you can use your WD Passport on both Mac and PC.

And the whole thing takes only a few minutes to do.

Plugging In Your WD My Passport Into Your Mac And Windows PC

Before you start, you’ll need to connect your drive.

You’ll either find this super easy and straight forward. Or you may need a cable or adaptor depending on the Mac and PC you have.

Your Western Digital My Passport drive uses an external hard drive standard called USB 3.0.

You don’t need to understand the ins and outs of this standard. It’s enough to know that the different USB standards define the speed the drive works at.

And the plugs used to connect the hard drive to your Mac or your Windows PC. The connection types are also known as ports.

Your WD My Passport portable drive has a USB B micro port.

Its cable comes with a connection for the USB B Micro port for the hard drive. And at the other end, the end that connects to a computer has a USB A connection.

That end looks like this.

What If You Bought A WD My Passport For Mac?

The cable supplied with the ‘For Mac’ version of this hard drive is different. It still has the Micro B connection for the WD drive. But on the other end it has a USB C port.

Check The USB Port You Have On Your Mac And On Your Windows PC

You may have a USB A port. Or on the newer Macs and Windows PCs you may have a USB C port. And find you’ll need an adaptor cable or device.

The USB standard is thankfully backwards compatible. So as long as you have the right cable or adaptor you’ll be fine.

How To Make WD Passport Work On Mac And Windows

You’ll use your Mac to format your WD external drive to use on Mac and Windows.

You’ll find it’s better to format your drive on Mac.

Because Macs can be choosy about their formatting.

And throw up issues when you format on a Windows PC. And then you use the drive on your Mac.

Setting up your WD My Passport drive on your Mac moves any of these issues out of the picture.

Side Note:

If you’ve documents, and files already on your Western Digital My Passport drive.

Copy them off before you start.

1. Turn On Your Mac And Log In.

Plug in your WD My Passport’s USB cable into its Micro USB B port. Then plug the other end into a USB port on your Mac.

The WD My Passport gets its power from the Mac and the drive’s LED light will start flashing as it powers up.

2. Look For The External Hard Drive Icon On Your Desktop.

Or your Mac may give you a message asking whether you would like to format the WD My Passport drive.

If your Mac has asked that question select Yes.

If it hasn’t you’ll see an icon on your desktop like this.

Your WD My Passport drive not showing up on the desktop?

Open a finder window. And click on Preferences.

Check the box ‘External Disks’. It’s under the General tab.

Now you open up a piece of software on your Mac called Disk Utility.

You’ll use Disk Utility to format your WD My Passport drive.

You find Disk Utility in the Applications folder on your Mac.

Inside the Application folder you’ll see the Utilities folder. Double click on that.

Then double click on Disk Utility.

Your other way is to search for Disk Utility via the spotlight search.

You can find Spotlight search at the top of your desktop.

Click on spotlight search and type in ‘Disk Utility’.

Double click on Disk Utility to open it up.

3. Choose Your Western Digital My Passport External Drive.

You click where I’ve circled on the above picture. You click at the ‘top level’ – where you see the WD My Passport drive first listed.

A small arrow head to the left of your My Passport external drive shows the levels.

If the drive levels are not showing, click on Disk Utility > View.

Pick the option to show all devices.

Then your drive and the volume will appear.

Then you’ll be fine to select your drive at the top level. Pick it where the red arrow show.

Now take a look at the top of the Disk Utility screen and click on the Erase option.

4. Give Your External Passport Drive A Name.

On the next screen of Disk Utility you will be able to enter a new name for your WD My Passport drive. Why not choose a name that reflects is use on both Mac and Windows PC?

For the drive format select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

And the Scheme is GUID Partition Map.

In a few moments you’ve formatted your WD Passport drive.

You’ll format your WD My Passport drive twice.

Once as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. The second time as ExFAT.

This is because to format your drive as ExFAT from NTFS. It has to be formatted as Mac OS Extended first.

And then you’ll have your WD My Passport hard drive compatible with Mac and Windows PC.

5. Pick Your My Passport Drive A Second Time.

Double click on Erase.

6. Then Select The ExFAT Format.

You have just formatted the WD Passport drive as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. This time select ExFAT from the format drop down menu.

Leave the partition map as GUID as before.

Then Select the Erase button at the bottom right of the window.

Several short moments later you’re done.

Your Western Digital My Passport drive is now formatted to work on both Mac and PC.

And when you plug your My Passport drive into either you will be able to see the drive, read and write files. Copy and Paste files and create folders on both Mac and PC.

7. Ejecting Your Western Digital My Passport Drive

Never just pull out your USB cable either from your Mac or your Windows PC. You need to eject the drive first.

By ejecting the drive your computer can write anything it is still holding in its memory to the hard drive. And you’ll keep the risk of corrupting your files to the smallest possible.

To Properly Eject the WD My Passport Drive.

1. On your Mac. Put your cursor over the WD My Passport Icon on the desktop.

Right click. Next click on the Eject option.

2. Wait until you can’t see the Icon on the desktop.

3. Then check the LED lights on your WD My Passport drive. When they stop flickering and you have a steady constant light you know the drive is idle.

Then you’re free to unplug the USB cable.

An Alternative Way to Eject on your Mac or for Your PC

Go to the Finder Window on your Mac or the Explorer window on Windows PC. Right click on the file icon of your WD My Passport drive there.

Wait till the icon disappears and the flickering on the drive stops. Then you can pull out the USB cable.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why Didn’t My WD Passport Work On My Mac And PC?

Western Digital sells the WD My Passport with a file system called NTFS (New Technology File System).

A file system is how the My Passport external drive stores your all your files. Whether they are documents, photos or music on the drive.

Your Mac can read NTFS. So when you plug in the drive your Mac can see the documents. And you can copy them off onto your Mac.

But you can’t write any files back, update any of the documents or delete them. This is because all those actions mean the Mac has to write to the drive and it can’t.

To write to the drive you either need third party software that allows you to do that.

Or you reformat the drive as I have led you through in the article.

2. Why Can’t ‘WD Passport For Mac’ Work On Windows?

The version of the Western Digital external drive sold in a ‘For Mac’ guise does not work on Windows. Not without some third party software or without reformatting.

Because the file system on the WD Passport For Mac external hard drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

This file system is also called HFS+.

A Windows PC can’t see, read, write to HFS+.

To share that drive between a Mac and Windows PC you need software. Software that translates HFS+ into something the PC can understand.

Or follow the steps in this article to reformat the drive to ExFAT.

3. How To Open WD My Passport For Mac On Windows?

Because your Western Digital portable drive has a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system (HFS+) written on it. Your Windows PC can’t see, or open the drive.

Your options are to use a third party software solution that sits on your windows PC. This software would allow your PC to see, read and write to the drive.

Or you can reformat the drive to ExFAT and freely open the WD Passport without any special software on it.

4. Why Do You Use The ExFAT Format?

Because both your Mac and Windows PC can read and write to ExFAT.

What does this mean?

Copy your documents onto an ExFAT formatted WD My Passport drive. And plug into either computer.

Whether it’s your Mac and or your PC it will see those documents.

And use those documents on both computers. If it’s your music collection you want to enjoy and listen to on both your Mac and PC, then you can with ExFAT.

Both a Mac and a Windows PC can also read and write to FAT32 formatted drives.

Why didn’t I suggest that?

And you may see some sites suggesting you format to FAT32.

But FAT32 has a file size restriction of 4GB. OK, so you’ll likely have file sizes smaller than that.

But as the older file system standard FAT32 is slow.

Much slower than ExFAT. And ExFAT can store a file up to 16 Exibyte in size.

These days ExFAT is the file system to choose for your modern Mac and Windows PC.

To Close

You’ll find it so much easier when you can work on your documents from either your Mac or a Windows PC.

And see the photos you have stored. Or hear your favorite tunes on your Mac or PC.

You’ll find other documents on the site all about your My Passport portable hard drive.

My Passport Wireless

Product Overview (PDF)

Quick Installation Guide (PDF)

User Manual (PDF)

Register your product

Support for this product has ended and is no longer available per WD Product Software Support Status.
For assistance Ask the WD Community or reference the online Knowledge Base.

How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on Windows and macOS

Answer ID 8200 | This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS.. read more.

How To Map a WD Network Drive on Windows 10

Answer ID 25436 | This answer explains how to map a WD network drive on a Windows 10 computer. . read more.

WD external drive is not seen by Windows or Mac and data on the drive is inaccessible

Answer ID 21239 | This answer explains what to do when a WD external (USB, FireWire, or eSata) drive is no longer given a. read more.

How To Backup Files Using WD Backup

Answer ID 3653 | This answer explains how to backup files using WD Backup. read more.

How to update Windows and macOS drivers

Answer ID 13977 | This answer explains how to update the OS drivers.. read more.

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 10
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 7
• Windows Vista

Instructions

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 10 (all editions, including May 2019 Update, except for Windows IoT edition and Windows 10 LTSB)
• Windows 8.1 (all editions)
• Windows 8 (all editions)
• Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)

Instructions

You need at least one of the Western Digital branded (WD, SanDisk, G-Technology) storage products connected to your system to be able to use this software. When using with the My Cloud NAS products, the software must be running from an operating system on the same local network.

The installation procedure is straightforward.

1. Download the .zip file that includes both the executable file as well as the User Guide.
2. Extract the .exe file and the User Guide.
3. Run the executable file and follow the on-screen instructions.

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• macOS Big Sur 11.0
• macOS Catalina 10.15
• macOS Mojave 10.14
• macOS High Sierra 10.13
• macOS Sierra 10.12
• OS X El Capitan 10.11

Instructions

You need at least one of the Western Digital branded (WD, SanDisk, G-Technology) storage products connected to your system to be able to use this software. When using with the My Cloud NAS products, the software must be running from an operating system on the same local network.

The installation procedure is straightforward.

1. Download the .zip file that includes both the executable file as well as the User Guide.
2. Extract the .dmg file and the User Guide.
3. Double-click the Acronis True Image setup file (the file has a .dmg extension).
4. Drag the Acronis True Image icon to the Applications folder.
5. Run the installed program.
6. When prompted, provide administrator credentials and follow the on-screen instructions.

My Passport Wireless

Product Overview (PDF)

Quick Installation Guide (PDF)

User Manual (PDF)

Register your product

Support for this product has ended and is no longer available per WD Product Software Support Status.
For assistance Ask the WD Community or reference the online Knowledge Base.

How to Partition and Format a WD Drive on Windows and macOS

Answer ID 8200 | This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS.. read more.

How To Map a WD Network Drive on Windows 10

Answer ID 25436 | This answer explains how to map a WD network drive on a Windows 10 computer. . read more.

WD external drive is not seen by Windows or Mac and data on the drive is inaccessible

Answer ID 21239 | This answer explains what to do when a WD external (USB, FireWire, or eSata) drive is no longer given a. read more.

How To Backup Files Using WD Backup

Answer ID 3653 | This answer explains how to backup files using WD Backup. read more.

How to update Windows and macOS drivers

Answer ID 13977 | This answer explains how to update the OS drivers.. read more.

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 10
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 7
• Windows Vista

Instructions

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 10 (all editions, including May 2019 Update, except for Windows IoT edition and Windows 10 LTSB)
• Windows 8.1 (all editions)
• Windows 8 (all editions)
• Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)

Instructions

You need at least one of the Western Digital branded (WD, SanDisk, G-Technology) storage products connected to your system to be able to use this software. When using with the My Cloud NAS products, the software must be running from an operating system on the same local network.

The installation procedure is straightforward.

1. Download the .zip file that includes both the executable file as well as the User Guide.
2. Extract the .exe file and the User Guide.
3. Run the executable file and follow the on-screen instructions.

Description

Supported Operating Systems

• macOS Big Sur 11.0
• macOS Catalina 10.15
• macOS Mojave 10.14
• macOS High Sierra 10.13
• macOS Sierra 10.12
• OS X El Capitan 10.11

Instructions

You need at least one of the Western Digital branded (WD, SanDisk, G-Technology) storage products connected to your system to be able to use this software. When using with the My Cloud NAS products, the software must be running from an operating system on the same local network.

The installation procedure is straightforward.

1. Download the .zip file that includes both the executable file as well as the User Guide.
2. Extract the .dmg file and the User Guide.
3. Double-click the Acronis True Image setup file (the file has a .dmg extension).
4. Drag the Acronis True Image icon to the Applications folder.
5. Run the installed program.
6. When prompted, provide administrator credentials and follow the on-screen instructions.