I just purchased a 1TB My Passport Essential SE for my Mac and I’m not really a fan of the backup software (or any backup software in general). I was told that I could make this external hard drive into a “drag & drop” type format, without using any software. Is that true? If so, how do I do that with a Mac? (By drag & drop I mean using Finder to transfer data back and forth between my hard drive and my computer.) Thank you!
Hi,
You can use this drive on a Mac, but you will need to reformat it for use as it is preshipped with the NTFS format. Once formatted to HFS+ you should be able to use it as a drag and drive drive.
You might want to download the VCD manager and hide/disable the VCD just so it wont keep mounting on your system, but you can discard the software as soon as you have run the utility.
Here are a couple of links. One is for the VCD manager to hide the VCD, the other is on how to format a drive in Mac.
VCD manager:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/utilitiesstep1.asp?id=wdfMP_SEEssential&os=mac
Mac format:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3865
1 Like
it worked perfectly…thanks!
Your Very Welcome
For the record, I’ve also verified that drag & drop (or command line access) works fine with my Passport Essential on Fedora 11, 12 Linux, with no set-up required. I haven’t tried it on other Linux versions, however.
