Unable to format "WD My Passport for Mac" external hard drive in Windows 10

[Elliot B.]

The 1 TB hard drive arrived today.

 

I connected it to my PC but nothing appears in This PC.

 

I appear unable to format it as an NTFS drive.

 

Disk Management shows:

 

 

Any ideas?

[adrynalyne]

Use diskpart. Level it and start over. 

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Do you have a Mac available?

 

Seems they come formatted differently and may not be readable from a Windows PC off the bat.

Quote

Here’s something your My Passport for Mac Quick Install Guide might not tell you: Hard drives usually come formatted in two different ways, one catering to Windows and one catering to Mac. NTFS-formatted drives work with Windows computers, and HFS+ drives work with Mac.

Source

Just now, adrynalyne said:

Use diskpart. Level it and start over. 

That was going to be my next action....I swear 😉

[jasondefaoite]

Delete the 200MB EFI partition (right click on it, delete), then the same with the 931GB partition. After that the entire drive should be unallocated. Then you can right click on it and format it as NTFS.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

3 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Use diskpart. Level it and start over. 

if diskpart isn't able to detect it due to windows limitations you may be able to format it by booting into GParted from a USB stick as well

[adrynalyne]

4 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

if diskpart isn't able to detect it due to windows limitations you may be able to format it by booting into GParted from a USB stick as well

If disk management can detect it (as it shows), diskpart will be fine. 
 

Open diskpart 

list disk

select disk [number]
clean disk

[Brandon H Supervisor]

2 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

If disk utility can detect it (as it shows), diskpart will be fine. 
 

Open diskpart 

list disk

select disk [number]
clean disk

yeah I misread the OP; I thought he was saying disk utility couldn't detect it but realized was just saying it couldn't format it. so yeah either solution should work fine

 

edit: disk utility is basically worthless; it's so limited on what it can do, I don't understand why they've never expanded its functionality.

[Elliot B.]

49 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

If disk management can detect it (as it shows), diskpart will be fine. 
 

Open diskpart 

list disk

select disk [number]
clean disk

 

Any ideas?

[adrynalyne]

2 minutes ago, Elliot B. said:

 

Any ideas?

That was from memory and faulty apparently. 
 

Type just clean. 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

3 minutes ago, Elliot B. said:

 

Any ideas?

looks like once you select the disk you just use the command 'clean' not 'clean disk' judging by the help screen that it recommended you look at 🙂

 

[Elliot B.]

Thank you, all! 🙂