Reformatting the drive

You might need to reformat your My Book or My Passport drive if the current format is not supported by your computer operating system. For example, if you are trying to connect a Mac drive (HFS/HFS+J format) to a Windows computer (NTFS format), or vice versa. To continue, you must reformat the partition on your My Book or My Passport drive.

CAUTION! Reformatting your drive destroys all of the data on the drive. If you have used the drive on another computer with another operating system, make sure that you no longer need any of the data on the drive before you reformat it.

Note: Reformatting a drive that does not have a WD SmartWare™ virtual CD (VCD) also deletes the WD SmartWare software and all of the support files, utilities, online help, and user manual files. You can download these to restore your My Book or My Passport drive to its original configuration after reformatting the drive.

To reformat the drive:

  1. Click Back to Start to close the Unreadable WD SmartWare Drive dialog and redisplay the What Would You Like to Do? message.
  2. Close the the Welcome to WD SmartWare screen to stop the software installation procedure.
  3. Use your computer system's disk management utility to initialize your backup drive and create a partition compatible with your operating system.
  4. After reformatting your My Book or My Passport drive and creating a partition that is compatible with your operating system, continue with the WD SmartWare software installation: