WD Passport Ultra - Do you have to Format before using it?

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
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Do WC My Passport Ultra come already formated or do you have to do that yourself? I followed all the on screen installation instructions…and then copied some things to it…and then noticed the “format” option in the pull down menu on properties…was I supposed to format it before copying to it? I have WIn7.

And if I do have to format it, it says it will erase everything on it. I dont’ care about the things I put on it as I can copy them agian, but… will the format erase all the installation instructions and things that came already installed on the drive? I intend to only use this as backup so it won’t be in constant use, but still… I want it to be right. What do I do?

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Should be no need to format it - it comes as standard formatted with NTFS so is fine for use under Windows out of the box. The format option is always there under windows for drives (if you have suitable priviledges), it’s standard (you should see something similar if you look at the properties of any drive on your machine).

And yes, if you format it then it will clear everything from the drive itself (although probably not the virtual CD drive with the drive unlocker on it).

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Did you hear that? It was  HUGE sigh of relief! Thank you so much for answering! I was afraid I had messed it up. The thought of trashing $90 was really stressing me out!