
- #Format wd elements for mac how to#
- #Format wd elements for mac professional#
- #Format wd elements for mac mac#
See image below.ĮxFAT in macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) and earlier Select the Scheme (Partition Table Scheme) from the drop-down menu.For this article, we chose exFAT, see image below. Select the Format (file system) from the drop-down menu.Assign the name that will be given to the drive. The Erase dialog window will now appear.After selecting the appropriate drive, additional option buttons will become available on the top part of the Disk Utility window.In the example below, the one to be selected would be WD Elements SE. It is usually directly above the name of the drive. Choose the drive listing that is farthest to the left (Not indented) for the drive to be formatted. Typically there are two listings for each drive unless more than one partition exists on a particular drive. From the left-side pane, choose the drive that is to be re-formatted. From the Applications folder, open Utilities, and lastly double-click on Disk Utility. Choose Applications from the left-side panel.
#Format wd elements for mac mac#
#Format wd elements for mac how to#
For instructions on how to do this, please see the instructions below: Erase There are two easy ways to format a drive to use ExFAT is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility using Erase (Step 4) or Partition (Step 7).
#Format wd elements for mac professional#
Important: For SanDisk Professional drives, please Click Here for InstructionsĮxFAT in macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and above This could quickly damage the drive's partition and corrupt the data on the drive. Never attempt to connect any external drive to multiple computers at the same time. Western Digital recommends that when formatting a drive that it be the only drive present on the system to limit occurences of accidental data loss. Once the process begins, ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE WILL BE LOST! This process is Data Destructive and cannot be undone.

The instructions in the article below are designed to help repartition and format a hard drive. The easiest way to format the drive to FAT32 or ExFAT is by using macOS's built-in Disk Utility for FAT32, or both macOS and Windows' built-in tools, Disk Utility or Disk Management respectively for exFAT. For more information about what these limitations are please see Answer ID 20778: File and partition size limitations using the FAT32 file system (Windows and Mac).

This is a file system limitation that affects both macOS's and Window's, and the only workaround is to format the drive to exFAT. FAT32 has several limitations, including a 4 GB per-file limit. Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (macOS) format.įor a hard drive to be able to be read from and written to on both a Windows and macOS computer, it must be formatted to ExFAT or FAT32 file format. This is useful if a drive is being used under both Operating System (OS) to move files between the two environments. This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS.*ENDĪ Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and macOS.

This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system.
