Dumb question: Can the WD “My Passport Ultra” USB 3 External HDD be reformatted to any Mac format?

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Level 2

208 points

Dumb question: Can the WD “My Passport Ultra” USB 3 External HDD be reformatted to any Mac format?

Hello, this might be a dumb question but Western Digital make two different versions of the “My Passport Ultra” USB 3 External HDD:

My Passport Ultra:

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-ultra-usb-c-hdd?sku=WDBC3C0020BSL-WESN

My Passport Ultra for Mac:

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-ultra-for-mac-usb-c-hdd?sku=WDBKYJ0020BSL-WESN

The first one (My Passport Ultra) states that read/write capability can be provided for Mac by installing an NTFS driver to read⁄write on macOS 11+.

My question is - why not just reformat the My Passport Ultra to any natively compatible Mac format?

I’ve never encountered an external HDD yet which cannot be reformatted from the get-go. But the fact that WD make a different version “for Mac” makes me wonder… why does that even exist?

I don’t want to use third-party NTFS drivers since future MacOS updates could break it temporarily (until the driver is updated) or permanently (if the driver is never updated). And I don’t want to buy this drive in case there is some bizarre reason you can’t reformat it using the Mac’s Disk Utility.

So just checking with those who know or who have done it… thanks.

Mac mini (M2, 2023)

Posted on Jul 21, 2024 3:56 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 9

79,060 points

Jul 21, 2024 6:35 PM in response to Brendan Jones

Brendan Jones wrote:

Yes, thanks for that, but it doesn’t quite answer the question. The question is not should I, but can I.

The answer was Yes, as in Yes you can.

i.e. is it possible to reformat the WD “My Passport Ultra” USB 3 External HDD to any Mac format?

Again Yes. see > Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Or is there some hardware/firmware in the drive itself which prevents it, and it cannot be anything other than NTFS?

No it is just a format that you can change.

The technical specs imply that to use it on a Mac, you must install the NTFS driver.

That is only if you want the Mac to be able to use NTFS.

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Answer 2

Brendan Jones Author

Level 2

208 points

Jul 21, 2024 5:47 PM in response to den.thed

Yes, thanks for that, but it doesn’t quite answer the question. The question is not should I, but can I.

i.e. is it possible to reformat the WD “My Passport Ultra” USB 3 External HDD to any Mac format?

Or is there some hardware/firmware in the drive itself which prevents it, and it cannot be anything other than NTFS?

The technical specs imply that to use it on a Mac, you must install the NTFS driver.

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Answer 3

Jul 22, 2024 6:17 AM in response to Brendan Jones

So why do WD make a “Mac” version of this drive?

Maybe they got enough complaints "your drive does not work with Photos.app etc"?

By default most drives are pre-formatted as FAT, exFAT or NTFS which might not work properly with macOS or corrupt some apps' databases and links. Most people just start using the drives as such before doing their homework and formatting the drives as APFS or MacOS Extended (GUID). The related errors is a FAQ in some forums here.

Some macOS versions nag or refuse to work with incompatible formats but IMHO Apple should make its apps nag more loudly and clearly inform the users to use a proper format. The same applies also to harmful 3rd party anti-virus and "cleaner" apps which produce all kinds of obscure errors and bad press for Apple.

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