“I have a Mac and connected the cord to the iMac and the new WD external hard drive. When I click on time machine is says it a back up disc is not available. How do I format this and get it to recognize the new WD?”
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It depends on what OS you’re running, but WD support has a web page dedicated to this very issue. I’ll attempt to post a link here. If it doesn’t work, you should be able to google ‘format wd passport for Mac time machine’ and get on the right track. Hope this helps and best of luck. Link below. https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3865&lang=en
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.You need to use the Disk Utility to format the drive first. Then your Mac will recognize it. It worked great for me. If you don't know where that is, just click on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right and start typing "disk utility". I use this same drive to back up my 2016 MacBook Pro.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Thank you for your answers which helped. Then when I clicked to back it up, a pop up came and asked if I wanted to replace or back up both. Not understanding I initially said back up both. I called a friend who is good with this stuff and said since I had used another external hard drive, the computer was looking for that as well which is why it was answering it didn't recognize the new device. When I clicked on replace, which is what I was doing, it worked and has continued to work. It did take probably about 10+ hours the first time since it was backing up everything in the computer. So with all of your help I got it to work up until I clicked on back up. Thank you all. I thought I'd answer what I did in case anyone else had this problem.
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