Mac user w/New WD passport needs to be formatted as windows...HOW?! =/

Hello,

I just bought a WD My passport Essential SE (1 TB). I bought this one because even though I am a mac user, the place where I work has windows and just for general reasons I want a hard drive to be able to go back and forth between the two. However, I have done some research and don’t want to use FAT32 because I hear there can be a lot of problems with it and file corruption.

So I am stuck because a message pops up saying “cannot be modified” and I am assuming it is because it has to be formatted but how I do format it to windowsw when my computer is a mac??

Thank you for your time! =]

NTFS is the format for Windows Mac can only read it.  Go tp Apple and download NTFS-3G http://mac-free.com/download/NTFS-3G.html and install on Mac. Then that Mac and Windows will both be able to read and write to that drive.

Joe

Thank you so much for your help. I installed the NFTS-3G and restarted my computer, but now when I connected the external hard drive this message came up

"NTFS-3G: Volume no cleanly aborted

The NTFS volume that you’re trying to mount (/dev/rdisk1s1) has not been umounted properly. This many mean that the volume is in an inconsistent state, and mounting it with NFTS-3G could lead to data loss. You are recommended to attach the drive to a windows compuetr and unmoutn it properly with the “safe remove hardware” feature to guarantee the safety of your NTFS volume.

To ignore this warning and attempt to mount the volume anyway, press “Force” button. To abort the mount process, press “Abort.” "

What do I do? =/

If you have a Windows machine handy hook it up to that and use the icom to remove safely. It sounds like some data is corrupt. See if that fixes the problem.

Joe

thanks…but i don’t have one

I have a Mac  and want to use my WD passport Elite 3200 to move file from my Mac to my  laptop (with Windows XP).  I followed Joe_S directions and download the NTFS-3G program from Apple, install it, follow the format and partions for “Windows NT Filesystem NTFS-3G”, and upload to my WD passport  some files.  However, the laptop doesn’t recognize my WD passport.  

Do you know what I’m done wrong???