Formatting My Passport Ultra to exfat format

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hi,

I’m considering buying the 2 TB version of this hard drive and want to move files that are larger than 4gb from my Mac to my Windows 8.1 PC. I realize that I have to format the new harddrive to exfat but am wondering what happens to the software the harddrive comes with. I mostly want to use the password protect feature. Will the software be erased when I format the drive? If it is and I redownload it from the western digital website, will I need a license key to activate it or will it just work? Also, do I download the software to my computer or to the harddrive itself?

Please let me know if this is a good idea otherwise I can buy and elements harddrive and not worry about the software part of the hard drive.

Thanks for any help you may provide.

2

When you plug the Ultra into your PC, it will appear as two drives. One will be the unlocker software, and that partition appears as a read-only CD drive. The other is the main partition, which is the one that you will be formatting to exFat.

All of the supplied optional software (quickview, smartware etc) is on that second partition, but it is only there for storage/convenience of supply/transport. It is actually installed on the PC that the drive is connected to, nothing of that part is actually installed on the drive. So you can simply copy the software (the installation files) from the MP Ultra onto your PC hard drive, do your reformat and then copy the software back to the MP again (or just keep it on your PC if you prefer). It’s just supplied that way to save you having to download everything from the WD website, for convenience and not having to rely on an internet connection (which makes sense given that what you bought is local storage).

There is nothing actually installed onto the drive itself (aside from the unlock software which you won’t be able to touch by simple formatting), so license keys aren’t involved (or at least they only come into play when you actually install the software onto your PC, and that doesn’t matter where you got the install files from).

3

Thanks so much for your help!