external HDD only showing up on mac

[kittyducky06]

i have an old WD My Passport for mac. is there a way for me to use this as a 1tb external drive on windows. i dont want any WD software for back up i want drag and drop files

[Airdragonz]

Reformat the entire drive to exfat. Beware that all files currently on the drive will be erased when you reformat though.

[kittyducky06]

48 minutes ago, Airdragonz said:

Reformat the entire drive to exfat. Beware that all files currently on the drive will be erased when you reformat though.

can i do this on widows because the drive doesnt even show up on diskpart

 

[Airdragonz]

1 hour ago, kittyducky06 said:

can i do this on widows because the drive doesnt even show up on diskpart

 

You'll need to use a mac most likely

[ZacoAttaco]

I think Mac's can change drives so they are only readable in MacOS so a clean format is the only way. I don't know why or when they do this but I've heard of it happening. Make sure you have a backup on your Mac beforehand

[kittyducky06]

18 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

I think Mac's can change drives so they are only readable in MacOS so a clean format is the only way. I don't know why or when they do this but I've heard of it happening. Make sure you have a backup on your Mac beforehand

but how do i "clean format" using disk utilitay and formatying to exfat does nothing

[ZacoAttaco]

21 minutes ago, kittyducky06 said:

but how do i "clean format" using disk utilitay and formatying to exfat does nothing

So even if you format the drive to exFAT using Disk Utility, Windows still won't read it? In that case there might be something else wrong. If you have a Linux Bootable USB around try booting into that and see what happens. We might be able to fix from within a bootable Ubuntu or some other distro.

[kittyducky06]

5 hours ago, ZacoAttaco said:

So even if you format the drive to exFAT using Disk Utility, Windows still won't read it? In that case there might be something else wrong. If you have a Linux Bootable USB around try booting into that and see what happens. We might be able to fix from within a bootable Ubuntu or some other distro.

 

6 hours ago, kittyducky06 said:

but how do i "clean format" using disk utilitay and formatying to exfat does nothing

 

6 hours ago, ZacoAttaco said:

I think Mac's can change drives so they are only readable in MacOS so a clean format is the only way. I don't know why or when they do this but I've heard of it happening. Make sure you have a backup on your Mac beforehand

 

8 hours ago, Airdragonz said:

You'll need to use a mac most likely

 

9 hours ago, kittyducky06 said:

can i do this on widows because the drive doesnt even show up on diskpart

 

 

10 hours ago, Airdragonz said:

Reformat the entire drive to exfat. Beware that all files currently on the drive will be erased when you reformat though.

 

10 hours ago, kittyducky06 said:

i have an old WD My Passport for mac. is there a way for me to use this as a 1tb external drive on windows. i dont want any WD software for back up i want drag and drop files

never mind my windows laptop reconised it so i guess it is my computer