As of 2018, Western Digital offers no shortage of external drives for Mac computers – from the My Book Essential to the My Book Pro and the My Book Studio, nearly 30 WD drives play nicely with Apple’s macOS operating system, as does the My Passport Studio model. But with more than 262.5 million PCs shipped in 2017, according to data from Statista, there’s a good chance your Passport Studio will need to play nicely with a Windows computer, too. When it comes to cross-platform flexibility, you’ve got a few options for crossing the Mac and PC streams. About eFAT and FAT32 Here’s something your My Passport for Mac Quick Install Guide might not tell you: Hard drives usually come formatted in two different ways, one catering to Windows and one catering to Mac. NTFS-formatted drives work with Windows computers, and HFS+ drives work with Mac.

However, by formatting your My Passport differently, you can ensure compatibility in a variety of different ways. Hard drives formatted to exFAT or FAT32 can read and write data on both Mac and PC operating systems, though FAT32 is limited to a 4-gigabyte-per-file size limit. Formatting your drive will erase all its data, so be sure to back it up before making the change. External Drive for Mac to Windows 10 If you’ve got a WD external drive for Mac platforms and you want it to work on a Windows 10 PC, exFAT format is your best bet.

To start formatting, connect your WD Passport to your Mac; then open “Mac HD” and click “Applications,” “Utilities” and “Disk Utility.” From the Disk Utility window, select the Passport hard drive. Here, you’ll usually see two listings of partitions available on the drive – select the listing that is furthest left.

Click the Disk Utility’s “Erase” button; assign the drive a name in the “Name” field; then hit “Erase,” and click “Done” when the erasing process is complete. Now, click the “Partition” button at the top of the Disk Utility and click “Format.” Choose “exFAT” from the drop-down menu that appears and click “Apply” to format the drive, which will take a few minutes. Once the formatting is complete and you get a message that says “Operation successful,” click “Done.” To Windows 8 and Earlier The external drive for Mac to Windows 8 transition makes use of Window’s built-in Disk Management software rather than the macOS Disk Utility, but you’ll still want to format your WD Passport as an exFAT drive.

To do so, connect the Passport to your PC, enter the Windows 8 Start menu and choose “Disk Management.” In the Disk Management app, right-click on the drive and select “New Simple Volume.” from the menu that appears. This brings up the New Simple Volume Wizard. Click the “Next” button until you get to the “Format Partition” window and choose “exFAT” under “File System” (you can also change the name of the drive under “Volume label” if you wish). Make sure the “Perform a quick format” box is checked, and click “Next” when you’re ready. Click “Partition” and then “Finish” to format the drive to a cross-platform compatible exFAT mode.

/onehalf The USB cable is compatible with both USB2.0 and USB3.0 and is around a foot in length. PERFORMANCE As this is a Mac OS-targeted product, the pre-formatted file system is in HFS but it is possible for anyone to just format it for Windows use. Since this drive is mostly a cosmetic redress of the My Passport line we’ve checked before, most of the numbers should be in line with what we’ve seen before. In the interest of fairness though, we will not be including the results we got from the 2TB My Passport for consistency purposes.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra Mac Compatible

Priced at around Php4,900, this drive should be around the price range of most 1TB solutions with the 2TB and 500GB variants coming in for Php8,990 and Php3,790 respectively. We known its rude to generalize or stereotype, but Mac fans tend to have a bit more to spend than PC users so its good to know that WD isn’t riding the Apple Tax bandwagon by overcharging for these things.

Western Digital My Passport 1tb For Mac

Even more so is the performance we’re seeing is still very respectable so we’re giving this drive both straight 10s for Performance and Value. Everything’s not all sunny for the WD My Passport for Mac though. To make it jive with Mac products, the WD employed a silver coating on the case which sadly gets easily marred and scratched. Another oversight is the cable color of choice as most Mac fans would surely go want a white cable. We’re docking 2 points for Quality for these. All in all though, Western Digital manages to deliver a great performing product with this one. The slim profile, large capacity and reasonable price makes it an easy choice for anyone looking for a portable storage solution for their MacBook, Ultrabook or basically any use.

We give the WD My Passport our Value award. And for a Mac-targeted product, that’s rare. It also comes backed by a 3-year global warranty.