So I recently bought a WD My Purport Ultra 1 TB of amazon… I use a macbook pro running gone OS X Yosemite… When I got it i formatted it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. When I did this it was all fine and good. I instantly filled it up with 300GB worth of movies and TV series.
Now this is where the problem starts
Two weeks ago I realised i couldn’t use it on my girlfriends PC or any other device which is not a mac, so i decided to back it up and format it to exFat using WD drive utilities on the Mac. I again out all my stuff back in and i could use it on my girls PC, but i started noticing that whenever i connected it to my mac it would take ages for it to mount and show up in finder and disk utility, but eventually after a lot of plugging in and waiting it would come up. Today I plugged into my mac for some file exchanges and it just won’t come up, i have been trying and waiting for the last half an hour but it won’t show up on finder or disk utility, but it does show up on WD Drive utilities, i even did all the scans on the drive and it passes everything. There is a light on the drive and I can even feel it running. I have got some really important stuff on this drive and i would be really glad if any of you could help me out
These comments are not to tell you to “do this” but rather to consider it and check it all over before you leap.
Can a PC read the Ultra?
If so, copy all data on it to your girlfriend’s PC (and beforehand, make a folder on the PC, call it your Ultra data or something that makes sense to you. In that empty folder ,copy all your data on drive to the PC.
Make sure you can copy some of the data (into another folder) back to the drive. If this works well, I suggest you then format the drive ON THE PC, to Windows exFAT format that works on PC and Mac.
In another test folder ON ULTRA, copy some of your data to the drive. If you have your Mac with you, connect the drive to it and see if it shows there, AND you can access and use it.
If this test works fine, then delete the test data, and go for the whole thing copied to your drive by putting it back on the PC to complete the copy job. Do not delete your data from the Windows PC until you are sure it all works fine when drive is back on your PC.
I am now in the process of doing this, copying all the files onto a PC where it works perfectly fine, but just before i started this I noticed that the drive has started to appear in disk utility on my Mac now.
The partition is named as "disk2s2’ and this is not how I had originally named it, also i tried mounting it using terminal and disk utility with no luck. I then tried to verify and repair disk using disk utility still no luck… If there is any way to mount it, do let me know.
Well, good luck with this project. I am not a Mac user, so my understanding of them and their terminology is very limited. You know a heck of a lot more about Macs than I do. You need to figure out this one.
Just be sure that the data on the Windows PC is still intact until you know all the data is on the Ultra again and that it is SAFE to delete the data left on the PC after all is said and done with the data movements.
End result would be, your Ultra is formatted as exFAT by the PC, your data on drive is completely accessible on both your Mac and the (a) PC (as you originally intended).
After getting all back in order, if you are bringing the drive over to your GF’s so you two can enjoy your music and videos there, look into getting a WD My Passport Wireless (MPW) drive. It is formatted exFAT out of the box and can be used wirelessly or connected to either type of computer. I have one and keep my media files on it, and can take it anywhere and use it on anything; especially wirelessly.
