Drag & Drop??? [ Edited ]

[yasir]

I just purchased a 1TB My Passport Essential SE for my Mac and I'm not really a fan of the backup software (or any backup software in general).  I was told that I could make this external hard drive into a "drag & drop" type format, without using any software.  Is that true?  If so, how do I do that with a Mac?  (By drag & drop I mean using Finder to transfer data back and forth between my hard drive and my computer.)  Thank you!

[james_kessman · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can use this drive on a Mac, but you will need to reformat it for use as it is preshipped with the NTFS format.  Once formatted to HFS+ you should be able to use it as a drag and drive drive.

You might want to download the VCD manager and hide/disable the VCD just so it wont keep mounting on your system, but you can discard the software as soon as you have run the utility.

Here are a couple of links.  One is for the VCD manager to hide the VCD, the other is on how to format a drive in Mac.

VCD manager:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/utilitiesstep1.asp?id=wdfMP_SEEssential&os=mac

Mac format:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3865

[yasir]

it worked perfectly...thanks!

[james_kessman]

Your Very Welcome

[dusty14]

For the record, I've also verified that drag & drop (or command line access) works fine with my Passport Essential on Fedora 11, 12 Linux, with no set-up required. I haven't tried it on other Linux versions, however.