WD elements/passport question

tomsz · May 29, 2013

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to buy a small WD drive. The primary purpose is to store very large video-files from a short film I'm about to make.

My questions are:

-What is the difference between Elements and My Passport? They seem similar in size, price, etc.

-I currently have a Samsung drive which is great, but won't store large files; this is an ntfs or fat32 issue, correct? Will this be an issue in the new drive, and if so, is a simple formatting enough to fix it?

-Is WD good for switching between Mac and PC?

-Are 1TB disks stable? I've heard before it's better to buy 2 500gb ones, wonder if there's truth to that.

Cheers, Tom

popatim · May 29, 2013

Passport usually comes formatted in ntfs and should work on both mac and pc. Other than that one uses a mini usb connector and the other a micro. They may be bundled with different software, I don't recall since I dont use it.

Fat32 has a 4gb file size limit so yes, changing the format type would probably take care of your problem. NTFS file size is huge, something like 18 exabytes. I'm sure you'll run into hardware limitations long before youreach that point. LoL

Lastly I'd like to remind you that important data, like your movie, should be stored in more than one place. I'd hate to see you back here in a week going "I dropped my passport, how do I get my files off of it?"

kenrivers · May 29, 2013

According to what I have read the Mac will read from an NTFS formatted drive but will not write to it. I have found this to be true from personal experience as well. This article - http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57401784-285/the-best-ways-to-format-an-external-drive-for-windows-and-mac/ - discusses the best way to format a drive for use with a PC and Mac.
Other links on this issue that you might find useful:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4151004?start=0&tstart=0
http://techqa.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/can-mac-read-and-write-to-ntfs-drives/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4152122?start=0&tstart=0

craigward · Aug 5, 2013

kenrivers :

kenrivers is absolutely correct. If you're requiring read/write between Mac and PC you'll have to reformat the drive into exFAT. This is the best solution for transferring data between the two platforms. Other ways to do this is to jump into Terminal on the Mac to allow read/write with NTFS drives. Which can get very messy, especially if you get something wrong.

alister_s · Nov 28, 2013

You can also read/write to ntfs from Macs by using Paragon NTFS for Mac, a small driver which I have found works very well. I believe there may be others.

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WD elements/passport question

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