Reformatting Windows-Format Western Digital MyBook USB drives

14 Sep 2009 23:28:19

Euan Williams

Western Digital MyBook USB2 drives come in the standard Windows format (green packing) box -- and, believe it or not, for £30 or so extra, in a (yellow packing) "Mac-ready" box.

Using Disk Utility to erase and reformat the PC format drive as Macintosh Extended (journaled) produces a series of errors (and possible mild panic).

The solution is to set up the drive with Disk Utility as a single partition, using the Options menu on the "partition" page in disk utility to choose GUID (Intel), Apple (PPC), etc. partition types (explanations are provided). Once this is done, normal partitioning can easily be done.

This tip may be useful with other Windows-formatted drives: why pay "Mac surcharges" on standard kit?

refs:
> how to format a WD MyBook external hard drive for Mac OS X <
and the related:
> http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/1377 <

Maybe this will help stop "Mac are too expensive nonsense".

Re: Reformatting Windows-Format Western Digital MyBook USB drives

15 Sep 2009 10:41:37

Douglas Cheney

I bought a Lacie USB Drive from Macro, and formatted as Mac OS Extended and that is working very well with SuperDuper as a cloned drive wich I can start from