WD my passport for mac - trying to make it also work on windows.

ILoveGreen

Hi there,

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, i just figured that this was the most likely.

I decided to upgrade my portable hard drive, and purchased a 2TB WD 'my passport for mac' which the guy in the store told me would definitely work on both windows and mac if i wasn't using it as a time machine, which i'm not.

I primarily have a macbook pro but also want to be able to share files with windows computers. After purchasing i plugged it into my mac and it worked fine, and then plugged it into a windows os laptop and while it installed driver software, i can't even see the drive on the laptop. After a bit of googling, i discovered that i need to re-format it to work on both but that there will be a file size limit attached to this (4GB).

Has anyone dealt with this before? I'm not very savvy with reformatting etc as i've never had to do anything like this before. My previous portable hard drive was a WD, and i didn't have to do anything to it and it worked on both.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm also still within the date to return it so if there are any suggestions regarding using a different brand of hard drive, i'm definitely open to them.

Thanks

Sad Professor

It's got nothing to do with the brand, it's to do with the filesystem. The only filesystem natively supported by both OS X and Windows is FAT32, which as you mention, has a file size limit. However, there are Mac apps you can get that will allow you to read/write to a Windows (NTFS) formatted drive. NTFS-3G, etc. I don't have a lot of experience with them though, so maybe others can advise you.

5uspect

You can use exFAT to get around the FAT32 file size limit.
You may have to install the exFAT update for older versions of Windows but should work out of the box for OS X and Win7.

ILoveGreen

Sad Professor wrote: »

It's got nothing to do with the brand, it's to do with the filesystem. The only filesystem natively supported by both OS X and Windows is FAT32, which as you mention, has a file size limit. However, there are Mac apps you can get that will allow you to read/write to a Windows (NTFS) formatted drive. NTFS-3G, etc. I don't have a lot of experience with them though, so maybe others can advise you.

Thanks Sad Professor, i don't know much about them either!

5uspect wrote: »

You can use exFAT to get around the FAT32 file size limit.
You may have to install the exFAT update for older versions of Windows but should work out of the box for OS X and Win7.

Thanks 5uspect, apologies for a probably silly Q, but does the 4GB file size limit apply to per file? or per folder of files? I'm just wondering if i can get away with the FAT32. The exFAT seems really helpful, except i can't seem to get the windows laptop to show me the hard drive. It appears to install some WD drivers, but then i can't locate it under 'my computer'.

Have portable hard drives changed recently, or was i just really lucky with my last one? It was a WD external hard drive and worked on both mac and windows perfectly.

5uspect

ILoveGreen wrote: »

Thanks Sad Professor, i don't know much about them either!




Thanks 5uspect, apologies for a probably silly Q, but does the 4GB file size limit apply to per file? or per folder of files? I'm just wondering if i can get away with the FAT32. The exFAT seems really helpful, except i can't seem to get the windows laptop to show me the hard drive. It appears to install some WD drivers, but then i can't locate it under 'my computer'.

Have portable hard drives changed recently, or was i just really lucky with my last one? It was a WD external hard drive and worked on both mac and windows perfectly.

The limit is per file. You may need to install an update to get the windows machine to see the drive. exFAT was developed after XP and has native support on windows 7 and Vista SP1.

Here is the link for XP:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364

mathepac

I suggest that you shop elsewhere!

To sort out the current problem you could use MacDrive which enables Windoze (up to and including Windows 8) access to media formatted for OS X, read and write files, repair disks and so on.

Bring all Windows versions into the 21st century - this is what your salesman should have sold to match the Mac formatted drive he sold you.

I have no connection with MediaFour other than as a user.

ILoveGreen

5uspect wrote: »

The limit is per file. You may need to install an update to get the windows machine to see the drive. exFAT was developed after XP and has native support on windows 7 and Vista SP1.

Here is the link for XP:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364

Thanks 5uspect!

So i decided to just go ahead and try to format to exFAT, but can't see the drive anywhere on the windows laptop. I even went into computer - 'manage' - and then 'disk management' to see if i could find it there, and nada.

Its a vista os and i'm pretty sure that its all up to date. And i keep coming across NTFS during my quick searches online, would this work too? And would i be able to format this on my mac?

5uspect

Mac can only read NTFS by default. Did you format the disk as exFAT on the Windows machine?
Is Vista updated to SP1?

ILoveGreen

5uspect wrote: »

Mac can only read NTFS by default. Did you format the disk as exFAT on the Windows machine?
Is Vista updated to SP1?

Oh right, well if thats the case, exclude NTFS! I couldn't format the disk as exFAT on the windows because i couldn't even find the drive on it in order to do the format. For some reason, it just doesn't even recognise it. The vista is updated to SP2.

I think FAT32 is probably the way to go and i'll just stay away from any massive files with this one.

5uspect

The drive should appear fine in Windows - it'll just complain that it isn't formatted if you're using an unpatched version of XP.

It should just appear as Removable storage in Start>Computer. If it isn't working then there could be something wrong with the drive or the Windows PC which would make me worry about hardware.

Does the exFAT partition work in OS X? Do you have another machine running Windows to try it on?

EDIT: So a google search suggests the Dish Utility screws up exFAT. Erase the disk and format it in Windows.

ILoveGreen

5uspect wrote: »

The drive should appear fine in Windows - it'll just complain that it isn't formatted if you're using an unpatched version of XP.

It should just appear as Removable storage in Start>Computer. If it isn't working then there could be something wrong with the drive or the Windows PC which would make me worry about hardware.

Does the exFAT partition work in OS X? Do you have another machine running Windows to try it on?

No, its not appearing I managed to get my old 1TB WD hard drive running and checked the formatting on it, and its formatted to FAT32. I definitely didn't do that when i got it, so i wonder what has changed? (Taking into account that this thing is over 6 years old at this stage! ) I also plugged that into the windows laptop and that recognises the drive etc under removable storage.

I don't have another windows machine that i can try it on, but i think it may have something to do with the 'specifically for mac' part of it. I'm going to format it to FAT32 and see if the windows recognises it then.

ILoveGreen

Yep, formatted it to FAT32 and then windows recognised it.

Still a bit wary of how durable this new one is... it makes me think of the old nokias that were indestructible vs the phones that die at the first whiff of trouble!

Fingers crossed this thing keeps working for me! I really wish corsair made their own versions of these, i love my usb keys!

Thanks a million for all your help

5uspect

Now that Windows can mount the drive try and format in exFAT in Windows.

ILoveGreen

5uspect wrote: »

Now that Windows can mount the drive try and format in exFAT in Windows.

I think i'm going to leave it in FAT32 for the time being and see how i get on with that. If i'm having trouble with file size, i'll reformat again!

Thanks again for all your help!!