Can My Book Essential 2tb be used just for storage?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
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i already own 2 my book essential drives from a few years ago.  i have a mac, but purchased the regular version of the drive because i don’t need to to back up my hard drive.  i just need a new drive to upload video directly to and to use as storage for photos and videos.

however, i can’t seem to get the drive to do this. i can’t save directly to it and i can’t even make a new folder on it.  i keep getting a message that says the drive is either locked (it’s not) , read-only or full (defintely not) when i try to make a folder or save to it.  the older my books that i have didn’t come with this software and i’ve never had an issue.  what’s going on?  do i need to buy a different drive (hope not because i purchased online).

thanks!

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rosiegirl,

New External WD drives are formatted to either NTFS for Windows and either HFS+J or APM on for Mac.

Older External WD drives were formatted to FAT32 which  can be used by both Windows and Mac.

If you are using Mac OS and purchased regular version (NTFS), you can simply go to Disk Utility and reformatted (HFS+J) and partition to GUID/Intel CPU and APM for Power PC.

Good luck.

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I see it was asked if the “my Book” Essential can be use just for storage. Which is what I would love to do, with 6 kids i need something for vids and photos. I have a gazziilion… can someone explain to me just how to just that and nothing more.

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