WD 4T external HD?

Nutsfortubes · Dec 23, 2021

Ok I have the following,
MacBook Pro mid2012 non retina.
8Gb RAM
2Tb SSD Mercury pro
so I have 2 WD passport drives
A 2Tb and a 4Tb
The two works as it should but the four does not while it will let me see the few movies and photos I put on it when it was hooked to my 2016 Mac 21. It will not allow me to copy and paste to it on my MacBook. What am I missing?

MacInWin · Dec 23, 2021

What format are the drives? If you just plunked down the drive as it came from WD, it is probably in Windows format, NTFS, which macOS can read, but not write. If you wrote to it with the one Mac, you may have had some third party software to add that functionality that is not on the MBP.

Nutsfortubes · Dec 23, 2021

Yes the disk is formatted to NT.
How can I reformat it?

mfpv · Dec 23, 2021

Nutsfortubes said:
Yes the disk is formatted to NT.
How can I reformat it?

Applications -> Utilities-> Disk Utility

MacInWin · Dec 23, 2021

Caution: reformatting will erase everything on the drive. Everything. Gone. Not retrievable.

Start with a good backup. Things can always go wrong.

OK, with that warning, use Disk Utility to erase the drive. Open DU, click on the "View" button and select "View All Devices." Now select the hardware line for the WD4T. Be careful to select just the drive you want, this action is not recoverable. Make sure you get the right one. Now click on Erase and the resulting dialog will ask for you to name the drive, say how you want it formatted and what partition scheme you want. Give it a name you want, select APFS or "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and GUID for format and partition scheme. Let it do the job. At the end, it will be formatted for macOS to read and write. And everything that had been on the drive will be gone.

If you want to keep what is on the drive, you'll have to copy it to someplace else while you do the erasing/formatting.

You didn't say what version of macOS you are running, but you can find more details at Apple.com. Start here, it's for Monterey, but you can select the version you are running in the window.

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, erase and reformat a storage device to use with a Mac.

support.apple.com

Nutsfortubes · Dec 23, 2021

OS 10.25.7

MacInWin · Dec 23, 2021

Nutsfortubes said:
OS 10.25.7

Typo? There is no 10.25.7.

Nutsfortubes · Dec 23, 2021

Right. All fixed backed up formatted restored. All is good thank you everyone.

MacInWin · Dec 23, 2021

Great work!

IWT · Dec 24, 2021

Nutsfortubes said:
Right. All fixed backed up formatted restored. All is good thank you everyone.

May I just conclude this post by suggesting that every time you purchase a new External Hard Drive (EHD), that you carry out the Erase/Reformat action that Jake detailed before you use the EHD.

No matter whether the accompanying blurb says the EHD is "Mac Compatible", I always do this. That way, you know the EHD is good to go; you also wipe out most, if not all, so-called pre-set security settings; AND it is a test that the EHD is actually working. A few do not work "out of the box".

Ian