WD My Book 4TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Security, Local and Cloud Backup (WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN)
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I’m gong to connect to my Mac. (It is supposed to be useable on both Windows machines and Macs.)
But now here’s the twist: I want to keep it in NTFS (windows) format and install the Paragon NTFS driver so that I can use NTFS from the Mac.
HOWEVER, I really need to keep the drive encrypted and plan to use the WD security software. Will this be possible? Of course I will need to run the Mac version of the security software. Will this software work with the NTFS format?
We do not support third party applications such as the one you are using.
Since using the drive with two different platforms, the Paragon software will work to write and read the files but it might not allow the security software to work.
Thanks to NTFS I was able to recover all my information after late “Mavericks upgrade reformatting” while so many people restored their data losing proper folder and file names. So the choice is yours but after that happens I stay with NTFS.
I was asking because I didn’t want to pay for the Paragon NTFS driver and go through the trouble of trying this if it wasn’t going to work. But after posting my question I saw that the driver has a 10-day free trial period, so I figured why not.
I’ve only been trying this since last night, but so far it is working fine. Even with the drive in NTFS format, the WD security app worked as it should in implementing password protection and unlocking the drive.
From the research I did, it seems like the Paragon NTFS driver is currently the best choice. There is a solution called “NTFS-free” on the SourceForge site that is available, but some of the reviews there said it worked only on paritions up to 1 to 1.5 TB and did not work on larger partitions. I went ahead and tried it and found out this was true, at least for me. It worked fine on a 250 GB drive but did not work on my new 4 TB drive (formatted in one big partition).
In working on this I became aware of the data loss problem affecting WD externals connected to Mavericks and may have even experienced this or something similar to this–or maybe it’s something completely different. On one of my WD drives (an existing drive that is in Mac format) some files and folders disappeared except the root diretory appeared to look intact–however when I copied the folders to another drive, it became apparent that the "missing’ files and folders were still there even though they were “invisible” in Finder on their original drive.
If using the new WD My Book drive with NTFS and encryption worked out, my original plan was to buy a second identical drive and mirror it as a backup. However I think I’ve changed my mind after reading about the data loss problem. Now, I think that it’s not enough to just have duplicate drives–it’s probably a good idea to NOT use backup drive that is the same make and model of the main drive. So I think I’ll get a drive by a different manufacturer and use it in the Mac encrypted format.
it’s probably a good idea to NOT use backup drive that is the same make and model of the main drive. So I think I’ll get a drive by a different manufacturer and use it in the Mac encrypted format.
Yes, it seems very reasonable to me. As for driver, I use Tuxera NTFS for a while.
NTFS offers little help, when mechanics or electronics of a drive fail. Software incompatibilities could happen again, as operation systems get more and more complex and this will effect any disk format
I see what happens in the family around me: From 15 (internal, as well as external) drives, two of them failed every 2 years by some reasons (software glitch, aged electronics or mechanics).
I would depend on multiple redundancy (!) and use the HFS+ format, as recommended by Apple for Mac, unless you wish to connect the drive to a Windows PC, also.
