Is WD My Passport Good For, Used On Mac And More Burning Q’s

When you’re running out of space on your Mac. And you need somewhere to store your videos, music, photos, or files.

But you’re new to this external hard drive stuff.

You like the WD My Passport For Mac and you’ve got a bunch of questions about it. Is it good for Mac, can you use, it’s compatibility and other features.

Read on for the answers to your WD My Passport burning questions.

What Is WD My Passport For Mac?

Western Digital’s My Passport For Mac is a portable external hard drive. You’d put this drive on your Mac and use as extra storage space. Space that is external storage for your Mac.

This WD external hard drive has a USB 3.2 gen 1 superspeed USB interface. You get USB cables shipped in the box to connect to your Mac’s USB C port. And you’ve got a USB type A cable for older Mac’s with a type A USB port.

As a Mac drive, it’s formatted ready for a Mac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac to use.

And because it’s HFS+ formatted. You can link it up with your Apple Time Machine software and use this drive as a backup drive for your Mac.

Is WD My Passport Good For Mac?

Yes, they are. There are two main types of Western Digital My Passport portable hard drive.

Made for a Windows PC, WD My Passport is NTFS formatted. You’ll need to format with Disk Utility to use on Mac. Or use NTFS driver software.

WD My Passport for Mac is made for Mac. The drive ships ready for a Mac.

Each Passport external hard drive is good to use on a Mac. One takes a bit more effort to use on a Mac than the other.

You can read more about the WD Passport in this review article ‘(Best) WD My Passport for Mac Review‘. Click the linked text and have a look.

Can You Use WD My Passport For Mac?

Yes, you can. Although WD My Passport is an NTFS drive formatted for Windows 10 and 8.1. You can use Disk Utility on your Mac to format the drive. Or use NTFS driver software on your Mac so your Mac can read and write to the drive.

WD My Passport for Mac is HFS+ formatted. And this means your Mac computer knows how to use this Mac drive right away to store your files. Or for a Time Machine backup.

Take a look at this article on the site ‘How To Use WD My Passport For Mac‘.

For more info on using a WD Passport drive on Mac.

Is WD My Passport For Mac Compatible With Big Sur Or Catalina?

Yes, it is fully compatible. Western Digital My Passport for Mac is HFS+ formatted. HFS+ is referred to as Mac OS Extended Journaled file system on your Mac.

Mac’s running MacOS Catalina, MacOS Big Sur or MacOS Monterey can use this WD Passport for Mac drive. And can natively read and write to this HFS+ formatted external hard drive.

Is WD My Passport For Mac SSD Or HDD?

Western Digital My Passport For Mac is a HDD. A hard disk drive. A hard disk drive is a mechanical hard drive with moving parts inside. And this means a knock or a fall while you’re using this drive can break the drive.

It’s best to put your WD drive on a flat surface while you use it. And keep it protected in a case while you move this portable drive around.

In contrast WD My Passport SSD is a solid state drive. A solid state drive has no moving parts inside. And is a faster performing drive with a price tag to match. As an SSD drive cost more per MB of storage. But that price gives you a step up in performance.

Is WD My Passport For Mac Compatible With Windows?

No, it’s not compatible out of the box. Western Digital ships the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive HFS+ formatted. And this means it’s set up for a Mac.

A Windows PC can’t read or write to a HFS+ format drive. Windows needs an NTFS drive or an ExFAT drive.

You can of course reformat a WD My Passport for Mac drive so you can use it on your Windows PC. But unless you were given one as a gift it makes more sense to buy a WD My Passport drive. Without the ‘For Mac’ part of the name.

As that drive is Microsoft NTFS formatted ready to use on Windows 10 and 8.1. And it’s the cheaper of the two drives to buy.

If you’re interested in using your WD My Passport For Mac And Windows. Then click on the link text and head over to a document all about doing just that.

Is WD My Passport For Mac WD Discovery Software Useful For Mac?

Perhaps.

You’ll find that some of their software overlaps with external drive management software in MacOS. Software you get for free in your Mac operating system. And when you upgrade your MacOS. You won’t need to wait till Western Digital releases compatible versions.

Here are some for instances.

WD Discovery – Allows you to link to your cloud storage service like Dropbox and Google drive. Or to social media. So that you can download your documents, videos and photos and back them up to your passport drive.

You may well find this software useful.

WD Drive Utilities – is Western Digital’s management software. They would suggest you use for the external hard drive. On Mac, Disk Utility provides these services.

WD Security – is software you could use to access the 256-bit AES hardware encryption on the WD drive. It’s proprietary to Western Digital.

You could use the encryption provided as a standard feature of the Mac operating system. To password protect and encrypt your files or Time Machine backup.