1-16 of 182 results for 'wd mac passport' My Passport for Mac Silver Portable External Hard Drive. By Western Digital. $49.99 $ 49 99 $79.99 Prime. WD 2TB Blue My Passport External HD + Amazon Basics Carry Case. By Western Digital. See all items in bundle. See details for this bundle.
Table of Contents. WD My Passport Which One? There two products under the WD My Passport title. One is WD My Passport and is designed to be plugged into and work straight away with a Windows PC. The other is called WD My Passport for Mac and is designed to be plugged into a Mac and work straight away. Regardless of which one you have you can use both on a Mac. So why pay the extra dollars for the one sold and branded for Mac when they both will work?
Getting started Go ahead unbox. Inside you’ll find your WD My Passport external drive, USB cable and quick start guide. If you haven’t purchased the WD My Passport drive yet and are thinking about your options, make sure you purchase a drive that is large enough for your needs. I won’t go into the ins and outs of that here. Take a look at Still thinking about which to choose? Take a look a Or take Connecting up the WD Passport Drive on Mac Turn on and log into your Mac then you’ll be ready to connect up the My Passport drive.
Understand what connections you have on your Mac The WD My Passport hard drive is powered from your Macs. One end of the cable is USB 3.0 (and USB 2.0) compatible and that is the end you connect to your Mac.
And assuming your Mac has a USB 3.0 or 2.0 port you can plug straight in. Macbook 3.0 USB Ports The other end of the WD cable has a Micro USB B port and plugs into the My Passport drive. Should your Mac be of the latest variety then it will have USB 3.1 ports also referred to as USB C or Thunderbolt They are physically different as you can see but backwards compatible with the right USB cable.
You will need to get yourself an adaptor cable that will plug into your Thunderbolt port at one end and the Micro USB B port at the other. Don’t panic, they are available on Amazon and my favorite ones are; 1.
The My Passport drive won’t run as fast as a Thunderbolt drive – but then you pay a lot more for those drives. The My Passport drive will run just fine on the Thunderbolt port of your newer Mac at the USB 3.0 speed specifications. Once Plugged In There is an LED light on the front of the WD My Passport drive, it blinks slow and steady when the drive is on standby, fast flashing when the drive is being read or written to by your Mac a steady light when the drive is not doing anything LED Off, when the drive is off. Your Mac should recognize the drive is plugged in and you’ll see a icon appear on your desktop representing the hard drive. External Drive Icon On Desktop Now you are ready to set up and use your My Passport drive.
Decide what you would like to use the My Passport on your Mac for And then set it up that way. What do I mean by that?. For copy or pasting files of specific types of e.g. Music or Photos.
Transfer files from one Mac to another, perhaps taking your My Passport to another location. as a Backup destination for Time Machine. Share files between a Mac and a PC You can have your Passport drive specific to one thing. Say backups or split up or partitioned for several roles. How do I Start to use WD My Passport for Mac?
To start, particularly if you have a WD My Passport no Mac in the title, you will need to format your external hard drive. I have a specific article to for Mac use the link to find out how. Then you may want to partition your WD My Passport drive.
Again I have an article covering ‘How to Partition WD My Passport for Mac’ Why Partition? Partitioning allows you to take advantage of the cheaper cost per terabyte of larger hard drives. Divide your drive into sections and use the drive for different things. Depending on what you plan to use your WD My Passport drive for I have 5 ways – how to use WD My Passport for Mac.
Way 1: Creating Folders on your WD My Passport Drive With your Passport drive connected you double click on the desktop icon for the hard drive. Important Note If the copy of the files on the WD My Passport hard drive is the only copy of the files you have, then you are in a vulnerable position should anything happen to the My Passport drive. Do make sure you have a copy of the entire drive or copies of the files elsewhere just in case the drive should fail. Should you have files on the WD My Passport drive you want to copy across or move to your internal hard drive, you follow the same procedure.
Open up a finder window on your My Passport hard drive and a separate window on your internal drive. Select and Copy the files from where they are to where you want them to be on your internal drive. Create first a folder on your internal drive if you want the files collected together in a particular place.
Be sure to eject the My Passport drive safely when you are done using it. Right click on the drive icon on your desktop and select Eject. Right Click to Eject External Drive YouTube Video Showing How to Use For Mac Acquevara’s YouTube video shows how to Use WD My Passport for Mac. I give you a link to it here as an additional resource should you appreciate watching a video.
WD My Passport External Hard-drive Set Up Guide for Mac Video Credit: Acquevara I have set the video to start where he shows how to use the external hard drive on a Mac. Hope you find the video useful. Way 3: Using a WD My Passport Partition Once partitions are set up it is easy to use them.
When the My Passport drive is connected to your Mac and it has partitions those partitions will appear on your desktop similar to when you have multiple hard drives connected. Partition desktop icons Each icon represents a partition. You can,. Double click on each partition icon to open up a finder window looking into that partition.
Copy and paste or drag and drop to it as I have described in the copy and paste section above. To use the partition as a place for storing your files.
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Way 4: WD My Passport How to Share with a Mac and a PC?. Plug the USB cable for the WD My Passport drive into your Mac. Double click on the desktop icon for your partition. You can copy and paste or drag and drop as I have described above to put your files in a partition you have set up for sharing between a Mac and a PC.
Want to find out how to between a Mac and a PC? Follow this Link. Eject the drive by right clicking on the drive or partition icon and then you can connect the USB cable into your Windows PC and view and use the files there. Want to use a partition and allocate it to Time Machine for backup? The following section tells you how. Way 5: How to Set Up WD My Passport to work with Time Machine? Rest assured this is really easy to do.
The first thing to do is to ensure your entire disk – if you are using the whole disk for Time Machine is formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File System. Or you have a partition of a sufficient size formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File System. If you haven’t already done that, l for mac via this link to my article Now you are ready to tell Time Machine on your Mac to use your WD My Passport hard drive. Open up System Preferences.
You can do that by going to spotlight search at the top of your Mac desktop window. Time Machine Available Drives. Click on Use Disk. If you want an encrypted backup, you can also select the check box to encrypt backups here. You’ll see the option at the bottom left corner of the Time Machine screen. If it is the first time you are setting up Time Machine and the check box isn’t already selected.
On the next screen check the box to ‘Show Time Machine in menu bar’. You can also check the box to ‘Back Up Automatically’ if you would like your Mac to kick off a backup when your WD My Passport backup drive is connected to your Mac.
You can kick off a Time Machine backup straight away, when your My Passport drive is connected to your Mac, by heading to the top of your desktop and selecting the Time Machine Symbol. Right Click to Eject External Drive Ejecting The WD My Passport hard drive and Ejecting a partition To ensure you do not corrupt the data held on your WD My Passport drive always, always right click on the drive or on all the partition icons to eject the drive partitions before removing the USB Cable. Frequently Asked Questions.
If I use Time Machine Do I only have access to the drive from the one Computer? There are a few parts to this question and answers. Firstly because the drive is connected to your Mac via a physical cable, a USB cable. The My Passport drive can only be connected onto one Mac at a time. The second part of the answer really depends on the intension for having the drive connected to more than one Mac. There is absolutely no reason why a My Passport drive that is large enough can’t be split into two partitions. One partition acting as the backup partition for one Mac when it is plugged into that Mac.
And the other partition as the backup to the second Mac when it is plugged in there. In addition Time Machine can be used to backup one Mac and restore onto another. This is particularly useful when you have upgraded your Mac and want to restore your files to your new Mac. By telling Time Machine what drive and/or partition to backup to and restore from you have full flexibility. Can I use My Passport for Mac with a PC? Yes, but to do that you need to create a partition that the PC can read.
Copy off any files that are on the hard drive that you still want to use. Then format and create one partition for your Mac to use formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Create another partition formatted to. Both your Mac and a PC can see the ExFAT partition. Of course if you want the whole drive shareable between a Mac and PC you can format the entire hard drive to ExFAT and then both can read and write to the complete hard drive.
Last Words I trust that I have helped you stay nice and calm as you learnt how to use WD My Passport for Mac. And I have put your mind at rest that not only can you use WD My Passport on a Mac, it works really well on a Mac. Don’t be shy I invite you to check out my other articles here on the site.
The WD Elements and the WD My Passport external hard drives are targeted at the portable drive, on the go market place. The WD Elements is positioned as their entry-level drive for the portable consumer and Western Digital is quite open in saying it is a basic drive. The WD My Passport drive is aimed at the market above the Elements drive and classed as the start of their premium external hard drive range. And the WD My Passport comes in a 'for Mac' guise, but more on that later. Then the questions you may have in mind are; If there isn't a special offer on at the moment is it worth paying the extra to move up to the My Passport drive? And when there is a price premium.
Is the My Passport drive worth it? Let's dig in deep and find out. Nope they come in identical drive sizes, we'll have to look elsewhere other than drive capacity to separate the two.
The important thing to remember when you are planning to buy an external hard drive is to work out how much capacity you need for your Mac and not to scrimp. For example If you are planning on using the drive as a backup for Time Machine then calculate how much disk you are backing up and times by two and that way you will have the capacity you'll need as a minimum for use with Time Machine. In some cases it pays to have a product that has been on the market a while. In the case of the this drive was released to the market in 2013. It is a strong seller and has been consistently amongst Amazon's best sellers in the portable external drive market. It's well priced, reliable and flexible in that you can attach it to a Mac, PC or connect the drive to a games console. Yes, it's basic and that means there are no frills that come with the drive.
And the painful truth is that sometimes those frills can look attractive but they can get you into trouble. More on that later.
The My Passport drive is the newer product, released to the market in 2016, positioned by WD to be the next step up compared to the basic Elements drive. The product has also sold well, has proven to be reliable and has the same flexibility in that you can also plug the external drive into a Mac, PC or a games console. What is it about the WD My Passport drive that justifies the higher price? Well let us see. The USB standard is backwards compatible, thanks be. This means that if you have a newer Mac, say a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro with Thunderbolt connections you will need to purchase for yourself a USB C to USB A adaptor, or a USB cable that is USB C at one end and USB B Micro at the other end. Neither the nor the My Passport drives are Thunderbolt drives and won't read and write at Thunderbolt speeds.
But Hey, you do pay a price premium for Thunderbolt drives and if you are not a power user - and you would know if you are one. A Thunderbolt drives speed isn't needed for backup or for storage of normal everyday files, pictures or music. Armed with your adaptor USB cable you plug into your new Mac and due to backwards compatibility your Mac will send the information down to the Elements or the My Passport at USB 3.0 speed. It may sound obvious to state but neither of these drives are classed as rugged in any way. Yes, they are sold as portable but there is little to protect the drive from shakes, drops excessive heat or cold.
If you are truly porting these drives around then a protective case is a must to protect the drive and your data. These are laptop class drives, which is why they are a convenient size and weight to carry around. But they are not the most robust of drives. This means that when in use place them on a solid surface before powering up. The My Passport user manual clearly states this.
Knocks or shakes in use are particularly damaging and there is no ramp loading technology as on the to offer some protection. Hitting all the primary colors and what's more the USB cable provided matches the drive. So apart from matching to your other accessories or clothing there is a practical aspect, when you have multiple drives. You can buy a drive color and team it with the function you want it to serve. Spare backup drive - blue. Drive for your music - yellow A drive color for particular types of projects you're storing on it. The LED indicator light on the My Passport drive provides indications for;.
When the drive is being accessed - fast flashing. On standby - Slow flashing.
Idle - steady constant light. Off - the LED is off Other considerations, the My passport has squared corners, I guess helpful for stacking purposes but some users have disliked the angular sharp corners Personally I think it depends on your personal preference here, The drive comes with a smooth end which some have said shows fingerprints and can look grubby quickly. The other end being patterned. I think you would have to go some to put scratches on the plastic outer, that said I really wouldn't recommend just putting the drive in a bag loose as the WD advert for the drive seems to suggest.
It is not a ruggedized drive, knocks, shakes being tossed about in a bag with no protection will shorten the life of these portable drives. The WD Elements at the other end of the look spectrum is practical, black, rounded corners - there is little to offend. My favorite site for this data is the usb.userbenchmark.com. Where for this comparison they have over 3,800 User Benchmarks recorded. The speed test and results are taken as an average of all these tests. The My passport was 4% faster on USB 3.0 performance When the My Passport 1TB is compared to the WD Elements 1TB. The pure read performance was 101 Mb/s.
3% faster, versus 98 Mb/s on the WD Elements Portable. Write performance was 103 Mb/s 4% faster, versus 99.2 Mb/s On the random write speed. This test probably more accurately reflects real world use as a typical consumer user would write files of various sizes. The My Passport got the crown At around 9% faster overall than the WD Elements Portable Here is a.
Both are USB powered so this mean's that all you need to do is power up your Mac, Macbook Pro or Macbook Air and plug in the USB cable. Note that by default the drives come with USB 3.0 cables and an adaptor cable or USB C to Micro USB B cable will be needed for the Mac's with Thunderbolt connections. After a few seconds your Mac will recognize the drive is connected. The drive will appear as an Icon on your desktop. So that's it in terms of physical connection what about using the external drive. By default the WD Elements Portable is NTFS formatted as is the My Passport drive.
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Your Mac running Mac OS reads and writes to disks formatted as;. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system, also known as HFS+ or. ExFAT file systems or. the new Apple File System (AFS) newly available with Mac OS High Sierra. But don't let that put you off, because Mac ready formatted drives come at a price premium and you may need to reformat them anyway as Mac OS can be pretty picky about how its formatting is done. And the act of reformatting both drives is quick and easy. I have instructions here on the site depending on what you plan to use the external drive for.
Would like to find out how to format the WD Elements for Mac?. Would like to find out how to format the WD My Passport for Mac?. The 'for Mac' guise of the WD My Passport comes ready formatted as HFS+ (known on the Mac as Mac OS Extended (journaled) file system). A nice to have for those Mac users who really do not want to go to the trouble of formatting a drive no matter how easy it is.
You plug this drive in and it's there ready to drag and drop your files to or connect up to Time Machine. This drive is a USB 3.0 drive the same as the other My Passport drives however it is supplied with a USB-C cable ready for connection to the newest Macs. Saving you purchasing an adaptor cable.
You won't get the snazzy colors I'm afraid. This drive is only available in black. You can download a version of the WD Discovery software that runs on Mac directly from the Western Digital support site. The Mac version doesn't include the backup software.
Mac has its own backup software - Time Machine. So not only will the WD backup software not work on your Mac you don't need it and Western Digital knows this and does not supply this software for Mac. Mac OS also has Disk Utility which allows you to run a check on the external drive health, repair transient errors and of course reformat the drive. Largely your Mac has you covered for the utilities the WD Discovery software provides. The My Passport is supplied with inbuilt 256-bit AES hardware encryption on the drive itself and that teams with the WD Security software. As I said earlier the software supplied is PC only however, You can download the Mac version of the WD Security software direct from the Western Digital support site. The Mac version of this software is supplied on this drive by default on the 'for Mac' version of the My Passport drive - if you pay the extra for that flavor.
You then use the WD Security interface to manage the password and electronic hardware encryption. Great you say There are some buts. The WD Security software needs to be on all the Mac's you are connecting the My Passport drive to so you can manage the password protection. Bit of a pain if you are swapping the drive between Macs. Say your Mac had a major failure and you can't boot up normally.
You could always boot up to Mac OS Recovery and use your Time Machine backup to completely restore your system. Even to a replacement Mac. But if your stuck with a drive that needs the security system unlocked, before you can get to your Time Machine backup, but you can't unlock it because you can't get to the WD security software.
You may as well not have a backup. A 'handy' feature is, forget your password and type it in five times wrong and your My Passport drive erases everything on it. To be fair, forget your drive encryption password under Mac OS and you are in trouble too but at least you can play around to remember it. Your Macbook Pro or Macbook Air hasn't been used for a little while and goes onto standby. The password for the drive needs to be re-entered if not set up on that Mac to automatically open the drive on your Macbook waking up. You do pay extra for these software features, and you may like them for your particular case. All I am trying to do is to outline where it may trip you up.
If you use Mac OS to manage your security then your Mac and the Mac's recovery software understands all about it. Both the WD Elements and the My Passport external hard drives are manufactured by Western Digital - it's where they get the WD part of their names. Started their company in 1970 so have been around for nearly 40 years.
I would say any company that has been around that long must be doing something right. Their products have a great reputation in the market place for reliability, going head to head with some of the best names out there in the consumer market place. They have sold thousands and thousands of external drives covering a raft of industry areas from, networked attached storage, solid state drives through to drives targeted at specific markets.