WD external USB drives such as My Passport, My Book, WD easystore portable, WD easystore Desktop can also be used with Time Machine. Please refer to Answer ID 1694: Starting macOS Time Machine Backups to My Passport and External USB Drives for assistance in configuring a WD external drive with Time Machine.
I have a 1TB Passport Essential SE (USB 2.0) (version 1.1.1.4) and am currently using it for my Mac Time Machine on my MacBook Pro 7.1 (2010 mid-yr) with OS X 10.8.4. I would also like to use it as an external drive for pictures and videos from my MacBook, because they are using too much space on my laptop. I tried to drag & drop, but it wont accept that. I tried to create a seperate folder, but there was no option in the menu bar to create a folder.
Is it possible to do what I want on one Passport? I’m thinking maybe I have to wipe it out, create a partition, then put Time Machine on one side and use the other as an external drive, but I dont even know if that will work. I kinda know my way around a computer just a bit, but not much beyond an average joe Help please?
I tried the partition thing and it worked! Here are the details of what I did, just in case you have the same issue: I found answer ID 3865 and basically followed those steps. I selected the “Instructions for Mountain Lion.” Some of the screens looked a little bit different, but it is fairly easy to find the selection referred to in the original answer. In Step 3: Instead of selecting 1 partition, I selected 2 partitions. I named one of them “Time Machine Backups,” and the other partition “External Drive,” but you can name them whatever you want.
In Step 4: I selected “GUID Partition Table” because I saw that somewhere on my original Time Machine. This step seemed a bit weird because you’re not selecting “Apple Partition Map,” although it’s an Apple Computer. The Apple Partition Map might work, but I did not try it, so I can’t attest to whether or not it works. After following the rest of the steps and the formatting was complete, I started a Time Machine Backup. When it asked for the drive on which I would like to create the Time Machine Backup, I selected the partition I had designated for “Time Machine Backups.” So far, it seems to be working fine, although the backup wont complete until later tonight I have also tested copying and moving files to the other partition, and that works fine as well. I’ll wait until the entire backup has completed before I actually move my picture, video, and perhaps some non-essential files to my “External Drive” Partition.
Hope this helps someone!!! Dan Powered by, best viewed with JavaScript enabled.
My Passport for Mac is trusted, portable storage that perfectly complements your on-the-go lifestyle. Designed to fit in the palm of your hand, theres plenty of space to store a massive amount of photos, videos, music and documents. Perfectly paired with Apples Time Machine backup software and password protection, the My Passport for Mac drive helps keep your files safe. Western Digital My Passport for Mac 4TB Portable External Hard Drive:. Designed for Mac and Time Machine ready.
Password protection with hardware encryption. Trusted drive built with WD reliability. USB 3.0 port; USB 2.0 compatible. 3-year limited warranty Reviews. This is my second WD passport external hard drive. This one looks sleeker than the last one.
Easy to set up and easy to use. Plug-in ready for Mac. Easy way to back up everything on my computer.
I was hesitated between this item and Seagate 4T Slim in the beginning. The seagate one is smaller and cheaper, but I chose this one because of the “encryption” function as it advertised. It turned out, you have download and pay additional money for a software for the encryption! Other than that, it works fine. I bought this USB 3.0 2 terabyte drive to replace a USB 2.0 1 terabyte external drive that was using for a Time Machne drive on my Mac. I plugged the new drive in — I didn’t even bother installing the utilities — and it was recognized immediately by the Mac.
Getting it to “adopt” my old Time Machine backups was straightforward but painfully slow. I would attribute that to my old drive being USB 2.0 but also the huge number of files.
Save yourself grief: don’t use “Finder” to copy the files, use “Super Duper!” instead. Still, expect that it could take 30+ hours to migrate a terabyte of backup files.
Once it finished, I told Time Machine to use the new drive and it’s worked like a charm ever since. Now what I don’t like: the white drive activity LED on the drive can either be OFF or it can be blinking. I would prefer a true activity indicator, and maybe a choice of colours (tricolour LEDs are cheap).
The utilities on the drive were much newer than what Western Digital had online. The utilities are quite limited in what they can set. Other than that, I’m very pleased with it. And Walmart was by far the least expensive place to buy it.
I used this for my PC and Mac and does it’s job. USB 3.0 and works like a charm. Would recommand to anyone.
Don’t buy the “mac” version the default still works with the mac for a lower price. This external hardrive does not work as well as the Maxtor I owned before. Ever since using it I have had an error message regarding it when closing down my laptop and when I go to “safely” disconnect the device after backing up files it acts like the device is still being used. Something is not working like it should.