When I bought the WD My Passport Ultra drive, I was surprised to find that it didn’t support OS X out of the box. Yes, it has some OS X-specific software on it, but even that doesn’t help. Turns out, it was malformed. These hard drives are customized to run well on Windows (as you would expect) and they don’t run well with OS X.
So for it to run, what we need to do is format it in Log format, which is an OS X or MS-DOS (FAT) only format, which means it will run with both OS X and Windows . If you only use the hard drive on your Mac, I recommend using Journal.
Why you need to reformat your external hard drive
When I got the hard drive for the first time, I couldn’t copy anything to it (but I could copy from it). Disk Utility shows it formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) but I’m pretty sure it will be NTFS instead. If you have the same problem, your only recourse is to reformat it in one of two formats.
Like my WD My Passport Ultra, most external hard drives available today are customized to work with Windows, not OS X.
If you only use the external hard drive with your Mac, or you want to use it for Time Machine backups, format it in the . Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you are like me, who also need to use at least part of the hard drive from a Windows PC, you will need to choose MS-DOS (US) Format. But here you won’t get great support for Time Machine. Also, you cannot create partitions larger than 2 TB or move files larger than 4 GB around.
How to reformat an external hard drive
First, connect the external hard drive, bring up Featured search using keyboard shortcuts Cmd + Space and type in Disk Utility. Press Enter and Disk Utility will launch. You can also find it in utilities folder in Applications.
Now, from the left column, select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive’s name is), and click Erase navigation.
From here, in Formatselect Mac OS Extended (Journaled)name it if you want and click Erase.
You will receive a warning. Again, click Erase.
In seconds, you should have an OS X-ready hard drive.
Related: Check out our Ultimate Guide to OS X Yosemite.
How to create partition
I’m planning to use my hard drive both for Time Machine backups and for carrying media files around. I may need to use the hard drive with a Windows computer so I will format one of the partitions as MS-DOS (US), fully aware of its limitations. The other, for Time Machine backups, will be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Format.
To create a partition, select the hard drive from the left column and click the . button Bulkhead navigation.
From the dropdown below Partition layout, select the number of partitions you want. Don’t go overboard here.
Now, just below, you will see a representative image of the partitions. You can use breakpoints to change the size of partitions by moving it up or down. You can also click on a partition, give it a name, and choose a format.
Once you’ve decided on all the details, just click Apply button. From the pop-up, select Bulkhead.
Disk Utility: See two tips for using Disk Utility and 8 ways to free up space on your Mac.
What do you use them for?
What are you going to do with the external hard drive? Time Machine backup perhaps? Or just archive media? Share with us in our forum section.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
