Will the WD Elements and My Passport work with both my Macbook and laptop?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi there.  After spending lots of time researching and getting no where, I am hoping that someone can give me a straight answer as to whether the WD Elements and My Passport will work with both my Macbook and laptop.  I have a work laptop and a Macbook at home and so I need an external hard drive which can be used in both. 

Any help will be greatly appreciated. 

2

Bexwelch,

What operating systems are installed into said systems? Physical disk drive compatibility depends on power distribution for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. Beyond power requirements, the File System applied to the disk drive will control the disk drive’s behavior when connected to particular computers. NTFS for Microsoft Windows will not work properly on Apple Mac OSX computers. Likewise HFS for Apple Mac OSX will not work properly on Microsoft Windows systems. FAT32 on the other hand will work on both systems at once, but it will restrain the maximum size of files that can be copied.

3

Thank you for the reply.  On my Macbook pro I have OS X 10.9.3 (13D65).  My work laptop has Windows 7 Entreprise on it.  There are no USB 3.0 ports on either.  Do any WD hard drives have the FAT32 file system on them and if so what would be the maximum file size that could be copied on to it please?  I will only be using the hard drives to back up my photos.  Thanks for your ongoing help. 

4

Bexwelch,

FAT32 can be applied at will to any NTFS or HFS WD disk drive. There are no limitations related to how many times you can change the file system back and forth between NTFS, FAT32 and HFS beyond considering the disk drive will be completely erased every time you change the File System by means of re-formatting the disk drive.

FAT32 will not allow you to copy individual files larger then 4GB. It will accept folders with total size beyond 4GB as long as an individual file within said folder does not exceed 4GB.

For additional limitations related to FAT32, please visit the following link:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1287/

In order to format/partition a WD disk drive into FAT32, please visit the following link:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/291/