Summary : Let's figure out how to format your WD Passport on macOS & Windows. In this blog post, we will walk you through the formatting process and share instructions to format an external drive on macOS & Windows.
But before you proceed, understand that formatting carries a risk of hard drive corruption and data loss. So, in case, if you had accidentally lost your data due to drive formatting or corruption, we also recommend a data recovery software that can rescue data from your HDD. Take a free trial to evaluate the software now.
To format Western Digital My Passport for Mac or Windows, you can rely on in-built applications of your system to format your WD My Passport in exFAT or FAT32 format. Before proceeding further, it is recommended to take a backup of your important files. Wd My Passport free download - My Lockbox, Lazesoft Recover My Password Home, My WiFi Router, and many more programs. For data recovery call: 855.366.4232or request your service here: video.
Professional photographers and videographers have their hands laid upon various digital devices. Usually, their arsenal includes a cutting-edge Windows 10 desktop, the latest and the magnificent MacBook Pro, DSLR & SD-Cards, of course, and the trusted & loved external drives, such as the WD My Passport. The WD My Passport drive's role is crucial since the individual will leverage the portable media to safely store their collection of pictures, videos, audio, and docs. But despite the best of the best device specifications, there remains one small glitch to rectify.
We know, Mac and Windows have their native file systems, such as the new APFS or HFS and the NTFS. A WD My Passport formatted with a Mac file system will be a dud on Windows and vice-versa. Thankfully, FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file systems to make your WD My Passport work with a Mac and a Windows PC simultaneously. In the next 5 minutes read, you will master yourself in formatting a WD My Passport safely and in a manner best suited for sharing your digital files between a macOS and Windows OS.
To format a Western Digital My Passport external hard drive in ex-FAT or FAT32 format, you can bank on built-in applications of Mac & PC. However, while doing this, you have to keep in mind and follow the correct steps. Here you will get to know about the process to format your 'My passport' portable drive in FAT32 and ex-FAT file system in both Windows and Mac platforms.
Warning: Erasing WD My Passport empties the drive. So, back up the storage medium before performing the erase operation either in Windows or macOS Platform.
In Windows Platform
1. Connect your WD My Passport hard drive to your Windows PC through the USB cable. Wait till Windows detects the external hard drive and configure it as an expansion drive automatically.
2. Click the Start button and type this pc, then select This PC app. A new Windows Explorer window opens. See a list of installed drives and their drive letters on the left side of the screen.
3. Locate the icon assigned to Western Digital My Passport drive and right-click the connected drive icon, and click Format in the pop-up menu.
4. Select the File System from the drop-down list and choose either exFAT or FAT32. Enter a relevant name in the Volume label field. Go with ‘Quick Format,' then click Start.
In macOS Platform
1. Connect your Western Digital My Passport drive to a Mac computer, and let macOS detect and mount the drive for use. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the Desktop.
2. On macOS Dock, select Finder. Navigate to Applications > Utilities and select the Disk Utility application.
3. When the Disk Utility opens, choose the Western Digital hard drive icon from the sidebar. Next, click the Erase tab.
4. In the Erase dialog window, select the Volume Format drop-down list and choose APFS (native filesystem), or ‘MS-DOS (FAT)' or ex-FAT. The ex-FAT file system is best for formatting WD My Passport on Mac.
5. Click the Erase button. Let macOS erase data on the drive and reformat it to APFS, FAT32 or ex-FAT format. Once formatting is done, you can use the drive in macOS or OS X as a regular hard drive.
Data Loss due to Accidental Formatting of WD My Passport
We can't rule out the possibilities of human errors resulting in the WD My Passport external drive's accidental formatting. A slight mistake permanently removes all of the contained pictures, videos, audio files, and docs instantly from the WD My Passport. If you have accidentally erased your WD My Passport hard drive, use the free data recovery software for Mac or Windows as per need. The next sections share the data recovery steps in Windows and macOS platform.
Steps to Recover Data from WD My Passport on Windows
a. Select: Run Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition for Windows on your PC and select file type, then click Next. Select WD My Passport from the Recover From screen.
b. Scan: Turn on Deep Scan and click Scan. Wait till the scan completes.
c. Recover: Preview your recoverable files and select all the required files. Click Recover. Specify the drive location to save files, then click Save. Wait till the recovery is over.
Steps to Recover Data from WD My Passport on Mac
a. Select: Launch Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition for Mac on your MacBook, Mac mini, or iMac. Select file type, then click Next. Select WD My Passport.
b. Scan: Toggle on Deep Scan and click Scan. Wait till the scan is over.
c. Recover: Preview your scanned files and select all the necessary ones. Click Recover. Click Browser to specify the save location, then click Save. Wait till the recovery is complete.
Usability of the Free Data Recovery Software
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition (Windows or Mac) can help you free scan your WD My Passport storage drive, free preview recoverable files, and free recover up to 1 Gigabyte of data. If you need unlimited data recovery capability, you need to upgrade the software from Free Edition to Professional or Premium Edition. All the editions of Stellar Data Recovery have a 30-day money-back guarantee; so, upgrade with confidence.
Tips for Effective Formatting
1. Format your Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to FAT32 or ex-FAT format to conveniently transfer the data between a Mac and Windows system.
2. There are specific third-party systems, like Digital Camcorders and Sony PlayStation, which need the drives to be formatted in either FAT32 or ex-FAT format to perform read and write operation. Check it before selecting a file format.
3. FAT32 supports a maximum volume of up to 8 Terabytes and maximum file size up to 4 Gigabytes. Ex-FAT supports a maximum volume size up to 128 Petabyte and maximum file size up to 16 Exabyte.
4. Due to the limitation of FAT32, it is not useful for every user and affects Mac's and PC's performances. Therefore, it is better to choose ex-FAT instead.
5. Like FAT32, ex-FAT is not a commonly used file system, due to which its support may vary among third-party devices.
6. The corruption chances of the external drive increase if used on both Mac and PC systems regularly. So, please back up the data before sharing them between the two computers.
How To Install Wd Passport
Readers also find the below topics helpful:
Conclusion
We hope the blog helped you format your WD My Passport storage drive for Mac and PC. You can format the drive in either FAT32 or exFAT that are compatible with both macOS and Windows. It is advisable to select the exFAT file system to format the drive due to its large file size storage capacity. But before you format/erase the drive in Windows or macOS, you must back up any important files stored on the drive to preempt data loss. Call of duty modern warfare alpha servers down. In case you didn't back up before formatting and lost your data stored on the drive, use the recommended free data recovery software available for Windows and Mac to retrieve your lost data.
Don't worry when your Seagate, Toshiba, WD external hard drive suddenly slows down while copying files. This page takes WD external hard drive slow transfer rate as an example to show you how to effectively fix this error and improve your external hard drive transfer speed immediately.
My WD USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Gets a Slow Transfer Rate, Help
'I have a 1TB WD My Passport USB 3.0 external hard drive with 400GB data saved in it. Recently, the external hard drive became extremely slow while transferring data. I tried to copy a single Word document to the drive, it took me 5 minutes to complete.
The thing is that I still have more 500GB free space left on the disk. But how come did the drive become so slow in copying and transferring data? And how do I fix this issue to speed up my WD external hard drive? Help.' Heic image converter tool.
External hard drive slows down while copying or transferring data is not a new case anymore. According to many users, it seems that the following issues are likely to occur to your disk:
- File copying stuck
- Data transferring slow
- File loss
- Drive crashing, hanging
- Computer freezing, etc.
So how to fix and get rid of these problems? Continue reading and find solutions here now.
8 Fixes for 'WD External Hard Drive Data Low Transfer Rate' Error
When your external hard drive slows down or even stuck in copying files, stop the current operation immediately. Then try the following fixes to improve your WD external hard drive speed again:
- #2. Backup Files to Another Location, Like Cloud - Free Up Disk Space
- #3. Clean Up Large & Useless Files - Free Up Disk Space
- #4. Defrag Disk - Free Up Disk Space
Method 1. Change USB Port - Reconnect External Disk to USB 3.0 Port
Note that if your USB 3.0 external hard drive is plugged on via a USB 2.0 port, it will become extremely slow in opening up the drive or file copying. Most current computers are shipped with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 to satisfy most users' needs.
So how to identify if your external hard drive is connected to the right USB port? You can classify them through the colors of the USB port:
You can also tell the differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 via the icons as shown below:
Follow the steps here to change the USB port, connecting your external disk to PC via the USB 3.0 port:
Step 1. Connect your WD external hard drive with its original USB 3.0 cable.
Step 2. Locate the USB 3.0 ports on your PC.
Step 3. Plug the external hard disk to PC via the USB 3.0 cable and USB 3.0 port.
Now, you can try to copy and transfer data between your computer and external disk again. If the speed is normal now, congratulations and you can stop here.
If the WD external hard drive still owns a slow transfer rate, try the other fixes as shown below.
Method 2. Compress, Backup Data to Another Location, Like Cloud
When your external hard drive is merely full of data, it will slow down. The best way is to free up the disk space. If you've saved many important data on the drive, you can try to compress or back up data to another location, like a cloud drive.
Here, we'd like to recommend you to try professional backup and recovery software - EaseUS Todo Backup Home for help.
With it, you can even selectively compress and backup files on the WD external hard drive by taking small space. Follow the steps to backup and compress files on your external disk:
Step 1. Run EaseUS Todo Backup and choose 'File' on the main window.
Step 2. On the 'File Backup' window, you can choose almost every type of files from many directories via the 'User Defined' mode.
But it's faster using the 'File Type' mode when you only back up some specific file types such as documents, pictures, videos, music, and so on. So, use the proper way to choose the target files you want to backup.
Then add the plan name or text description to the file backup and then choose a backup location.
To backup files to an external hard drive, click 'Browse..' in the 'Destination' area.
Expand the 'Computer' and choose the external hard drive you've correctly connected to the computer. Click 'OK'.
Also, if you're interested in getting more backup features, go and find them by clicking 'Schedule', 'Image-reserve strategy' and 'Backup options'.
Step 3. After settings were all made, click 'Proceed'.
You can even backup those files to Cloud storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. You may refer to Back Files to OneDrive for help.
When the backup process completes, you can delete those files so as to gain more free space on your WD external hard drive and improve its transfer speed.
Method 3. Clean Up Large Useless Files on WD External Hard Drive
When a hard drive or an external hard disk is occupied by many large useless files, it will affect the disk performance, slowing down its transfer rate. EaseUS Tools M as shown here can do the cleaning job for you:
Step 1. DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for free and install it on your computer.
Step 2. Launch EaseUS Tools M in Windows PC. Select 'Large File Cleanup' on the main screen.
Step 3. Select the drive and click 'Scan' to let the program locate, find all large files on your disk.
Step 4. Identify and select useless large files and click 'Delete' to remove those files from your PC or laptop. A message pops up and tells you this process will permanently delete the files. Click 'Yes' to start the process.
Method 4. Defrag and Clean Up Fragments on External Hard Disk
If your external hard drive is being used for a very long period, it may contain many fragments, taken huge space on your drive. The best way out is to clean up existing fragments on the external hard drive:
We hope the blog helped you format your WD My Passport storage drive for Mac and PC. You can format the drive in either FAT32 or exFAT that are compatible with both macOS and Windows. It is advisable to select the exFAT file system to format the drive due to its large file size storage capacity. But before you format/erase the drive in Windows or macOS, you must back up any important files stored on the drive to preempt data loss. Call of duty modern warfare alpha servers down. In case you didn't back up before formatting and lost your data stored on the drive, use the recommended free data recovery software available for Windows and Mac to retrieve your lost data.
Don't worry when your Seagate, Toshiba, WD external hard drive suddenly slows down while copying files. This page takes WD external hard drive slow transfer rate as an example to show you how to effectively fix this error and improve your external hard drive transfer speed immediately.
My WD USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Gets a Slow Transfer Rate, Help
'I have a 1TB WD My Passport USB 3.0 external hard drive with 400GB data saved in it. Recently, the external hard drive became extremely slow while transferring data. I tried to copy a single Word document to the drive, it took me 5 minutes to complete.
The thing is that I still have more 500GB free space left on the disk. But how come did the drive become so slow in copying and transferring data? And how do I fix this issue to speed up my WD external hard drive? Help.' Heic image converter tool.
External hard drive slows down while copying or transferring data is not a new case anymore. According to many users, it seems that the following issues are likely to occur to your disk:
- File copying stuck
- Data transferring slow
- File loss
- Drive crashing, hanging
- Computer freezing, etc.
So how to fix and get rid of these problems? Continue reading and find solutions here now.
8 Fixes for 'WD External Hard Drive Data Low Transfer Rate' Error
When your external hard drive slows down or even stuck in copying files, stop the current operation immediately. Then try the following fixes to improve your WD external hard drive speed again:
- #2. Backup Files to Another Location, Like Cloud - Free Up Disk Space
- #3. Clean Up Large & Useless Files - Free Up Disk Space
- #4. Defrag Disk - Free Up Disk Space
Method 1. Change USB Port - Reconnect External Disk to USB 3.0 Port
Note that if your USB 3.0 external hard drive is plugged on via a USB 2.0 port, it will become extremely slow in opening up the drive or file copying. Most current computers are shipped with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 to satisfy most users' needs.
So how to identify if your external hard drive is connected to the right USB port? You can classify them through the colors of the USB port:
You can also tell the differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 via the icons as shown below:
Follow the steps here to change the USB port, connecting your external disk to PC via the USB 3.0 port:
Step 1. Connect your WD external hard drive with its original USB 3.0 cable.
Step 2. Locate the USB 3.0 ports on your PC.
Step 3. Plug the external hard disk to PC via the USB 3.0 cable and USB 3.0 port.
Now, you can try to copy and transfer data between your computer and external disk again. If the speed is normal now, congratulations and you can stop here.
If the WD external hard drive still owns a slow transfer rate, try the other fixes as shown below.
Method 2. Compress, Backup Data to Another Location, Like Cloud
When your external hard drive is merely full of data, it will slow down. The best way is to free up the disk space. If you've saved many important data on the drive, you can try to compress or back up data to another location, like a cloud drive.
Here, we'd like to recommend you to try professional backup and recovery software - EaseUS Todo Backup Home for help.
With it, you can even selectively compress and backup files on the WD external hard drive by taking small space. Follow the steps to backup and compress files on your external disk:
Step 1. Run EaseUS Todo Backup and choose 'File' on the main window.
Step 2. On the 'File Backup' window, you can choose almost every type of files from many directories via the 'User Defined' mode.
But it's faster using the 'File Type' mode when you only back up some specific file types such as documents, pictures, videos, music, and so on. So, use the proper way to choose the target files you want to backup.
Then add the plan name or text description to the file backup and then choose a backup location.
To backup files to an external hard drive, click 'Browse..' in the 'Destination' area.
Expand the 'Computer' and choose the external hard drive you've correctly connected to the computer. Click 'OK'.
Also, if you're interested in getting more backup features, go and find them by clicking 'Schedule', 'Image-reserve strategy' and 'Backup options'.
Step 3. After settings were all made, click 'Proceed'.
You can even backup those files to Cloud storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. You may refer to Back Files to OneDrive for help.
When the backup process completes, you can delete those files so as to gain more free space on your WD external hard drive and improve its transfer speed.
Method 3. Clean Up Large Useless Files on WD External Hard Drive
When a hard drive or an external hard disk is occupied by many large useless files, it will affect the disk performance, slowing down its transfer rate. EaseUS Tools M as shown here can do the cleaning job for you:
Step 1. DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for free and install it on your computer.
Step 2. Launch EaseUS Tools M in Windows PC. Select 'Large File Cleanup' on the main screen.
Step 3. Select the drive and click 'Scan' to let the program locate, find all large files on your disk.
Step 4. Identify and select useless large files and click 'Delete' to remove those files from your PC or laptop. A message pops up and tells you this process will permanently delete the files. Click 'Yes' to start the process.
Method 4. Defrag and Clean Up Fragments on External Hard Disk
If your external hard drive is being used for a very long period, it may contain many fragments, taken huge space on your drive. The best way out is to clean up existing fragments on the external hard drive:
Step 1. Connect WD external hard drive to PC, open File Explorer.
Step 2. Right-click the external disk and select 'Properties'.
Step 3. Go to the Toos tab, click 'Optimize' under Optimize and defragment drive.
Step 4. Select 'Remove customized settings'.
Step 5. Choose your disk and click 'Optimize' to complete.
Method 5. Update External Disk Driver
When the external hard drive driver is outdated, it may not function normally. To speed up its transfer rate, you can update the disk driver with the steps listed here:
Step 1. Right-click on This PC or My Computer, select 'Manage'.
Step 2. On Computer Management, select 'Device Manager'.
Step 3. Expand Disk drives, right-click on your hard drive which is not showing up, and select 'Update driver'.
Step 4. Select 'Search automatically for updated driver software'.
Method 6. Check and Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sectors on WD External Hard Drive
When the external disk contains corrupted file system or bad sectors, you may not be able to access nor transfer files via the drive. Here are the steps that you can follow to fix the corrupted file system and bad sectors:
Step 1. Connect the WD external hard drive to your PC.
Step 2. Press Windows + R keys, type cmd and hit Enter.
Step 3. Click 'Yes' when you are requested to launch Command Prompt as Administrator.
Step 4. Type chkdsk E: /f /r /x and hit 'Enter'.
Replace E with the drive letter of your WD external hard drive.
Method 7. Change File System, Convert WD Drive to NTFS, and Optimize Its Performance
Mostly, when your drive is not set with a proper file system, it may also affect your disk performance. To optimize its performance, you can follow the two tutorials as listed here to fix WD external hard drive slow transfer rate error:
#1. Convert WD External Hard Drive to NTFS
Normally, NTFS is more suitable for huge storage devices, including internal and external hard drives, to apply and save data. Therefore, if your device is FAT32 or exFAT, just follow tips below to convert your WD external hard drive to NTFS:
Step 1. Connect the WD external hard drive to your PC.
Step 2. Right-click on Start and select 'Command Prompt (Admin)'.
Step 3. Sign in with your Administrator account if necessary.
Step 4. Type convert G: /fs:ntfs and hit 'Enter'.
Replace G: with the drive letter of your WD drive.
#2. Optimize External Hard Disk Performance
Step 1. Connect the slow WD external hard drive to your PC.
Step 2. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.
Step 3. Expand Disk Drivers, right-click your WD external hard drive, and select 'Properties'.
Step 4. Go to the 'Policies' tab, select 'Better performance', click 'OK' to confirm.
After this, you can get a faster WD external hard drive, and you can use it to transfer and save files at a high transfer rate again.
Method 8. Run Antivirus
Sometimes, viruses or malware infections may also cause the drive slow transfer rate issue. To fix this, you need to run antivirus software to clean the slow disk:
Step 1. Connect the slow external hard drive to PC.
Step 2. Run antivirus software or tool.
Step 3. Select to scan both PC and the external hard drive.
Step 4. Clear all found viruses and malware.
Step 5. Restart PC and reconnect the external drive to PC.
After this, you can use the external hard drive to copy and transfer data again.
Conclusion
Note that if your hard drive or external hard drive slows down suddenly while copying or transferring files, don't worry. You can directly follow the fixes on this page to get rid of this issue form your disk.
To avoid unnecessary data loss, don't forget to create an extra backup of important files from your external disk to another device or even a Cloud drive. You can take EaseUS Todo Backup for help.
If you still have some questions in fixing the external hard drive slow issue, check the questions and answers below. Hope these answers can help you out.
People Also Ask about External Hard Drive Slow
1. Why is my external hard drive transferring so slow?
According, the below-listed errors are the main reasons that cause your external with slow issue:
My Passport Hard Drive Wd
- Low storage space: storage device runs out of free space.
- The device is occupied by large useless files.
- Corrupted system files/bad sectors on the storage device.
- Setting an invalid or improper file system on the external hard drive.
- External hard drive connection issue, not connected via USB 3.0 port
- The Disk driver is outdated.
- The disk contains too many fragments.
2. How fast do external hard drives transfer data?
Mostly, the transfer speed of an external or internal hard drive highly depends on the USB device performance. Here is a list of the maximum performance of different interface on an external hard drive:
- USB 3.0 - Up to 4.8 GB/sec
- USB 2.0 - Up to 480 MB/sec
- USB 1.1 - Up to 12 MB/sec
3. Why is my computer so slow all of a sudden?
There are many reasons that may cause your computer to slow down all of a sudden. Here are the main reasons:
- Many apps are running background
- High CPU or high RAM usage
- The hard drive is out of free space
- Virus or malware infection
- Windows is out of date
- Hard drive driver is out of date
- Hard drive failure
- ..
Convert Wd My Passport To Internal Drive
How to fix this issue? Refer to Windows 10 Slow Suddenly for help.
