My Passport Ultra backup problem

I have a new My Passport Ultra that I am having trouble getting started with. The model no. is WDBZFP0010BBL  .

On the Home Tab when trying to backup I only see Dropbox as a backup device. The WD hard drive says “no writable partition found”. However in my disk management program it shows that the hard drive is a full partition and it is healty. I am using Windows XP and want to get a full backup.

The question is how to make the HD partition writable?

Welcome to the Community.

Is Disk Management displaying/assigning a drive letter? If not, then Windows will be unable to mount the volume and WD SmartWare will be unable to use your WD Passport Ultra as a backup target.

Try assigning/changing the drive letter first as instructed in the following link:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/137/

If it doesn’t work then you may need to reformat/partition your hard drive:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/

My passport HD is showing as a healthy full 1 Tb partition in Disk Management.

However the backup program shows it as a non writable partition. What next?

Even if the hard drive is displayed as healthy, it does not mean it can be used by your system. Does it show a file system? Or is it listed as raw? Does it have a drive letter? If not, are you able to assign a drive letter by following the links provided above?

Not sure what you mean by file system as the files that were on it when it arrived were displayed. I have removed them as I re-partitioned. Not sure what “raw” means in this context. There was always a drive letter assigned and still is when i mount the drive. The native WD backup program still shows the drive as not having a writable partition, so I cannot back up to it which is why I bought it. I’m going to try another back up pogram and see if that works.