I recently purchased a 5TB external hard drive from Western Digital, but I'm having some trouble. When I plugged it in, it prompted me to install software, which I thought was just for initial setup. However, the main issue is that the drive is read-only, meaning I can't copy any files onto it. I'm using a Mac, so I'm wondering if I should use Disk Utility to format the drive. Also, I've noticed that 259MB are already used on the drive, but there's nothing on it. Any advice?
2 Answers
Check if your drive has built-in security features. If it does, you'll likely need to use their software to unlock it every time you want to write files. If it's just a regular external drive, you should be able to format it and use it without any special software. Just make sure you're using a compatible file system for your Mac.
It sounds like your drive might be formatted with the NTFS file system, which MacOS reads as read-only by default. You could look for drivers that allow write access, but a better option might be to reformat the drive to exFAT. This way, it’ll work on both Mac and Windows. If you only plan to use the drive with your Mac, consider reformatting it to APFS instead.
Thanks for the tip! I really don’t want to be tied to their software. I’m actually erasing it in Disk Utility now to reformat. Let’s see if that fixes the issue!