Reformatting WD passport Mac to microsoft

WD External Drives My Passport Wireless
1

Hello ! I have been using my WD passport on my mac for years. All of a sudden, my Mac can no longer identify the external harddrive because it has been reformatted to Windows (Microsoft NTFS (compressed)).

Has this ever happened to anyone else !? I’m not sure what to do or how to recover the data. and im confused as to why all of a sudden the passport is now configured for Windows…

thanks in advance

2

Hi @ella1,

Please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

Well, most external hard drives are designed to work for Windows computers. Windows was mainly optimized for NTFS (New Technology file system) format, on the other hand, APFS was created for the Mac OS. NTFS is not compatible with Mac and similarly APFS does not get along with Windows. So if you’re trying to connect an external hard drive to a Mac, you might have to format the drive before you can use it.

Further, I suggest you to check the below link that explains all the methods to format your external drive for mac without any data loss:

Hope it helps!