WD Hard drive

[Heatherh3]

Did I read somewhere that I need to format the WD Black P10 hard drive for Mac? I purchased a 2 Tb one that I believe you recommended.

[Brian]

I'm moving this to the Macintosh User's Group.

[Brian]

in reality, ANY HD will work with a Mac, so there is no need to purchase a "Macintosh Formatted" HD. It's just a way for manufacturers to force people an "Apple Tax." Meaning, you get charged an extra $30-$50 for something that you can do for free, and in under 5 minutes.

So which HD did you actually purchase, and what version of the MacOS are you running?

[Heatherh3]

I purchased this HD and am on Mac Catalina OS 

[Brian]

OK, perfect.

• Plug in your New External WD HD
• Open your Applications Folder >> Select Utilities >> then choose Disk Utility.
   

• Your new HD should appear in the left column, under "External."
• Select the EHD and click on the Erase Button at the top of Disk Utility

• A pop-up box will appear, asking you what you want to do.
• Give it a familiar name, like WD EHD 2TB or something similar.
• The format must be MacOS Extended (Journaled). Don't worry about encryption or anything fancy. Your pop-up box should look like this:

• Then Click on Erase. It should clear out the drive in a few minutes and prep it to use for a Mac. If it doesn't let me know. We will need to delete the existing Partitions and start over, but that's just an extra step. I want to see if this works or not.