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I have a 2009 MacBook Pro. I bought a new WD Essentials portable HD. It won't mount on the MacBook. Will it not because I cannot update my OS to anything more current than the 10.7.5 I have on there now, and therefore the drivers I need are not the most current for this new HD? My older WD HD's mount with no problem.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Earlier Mac models
JD1701 wrote:
I have a 2009 MacBook Pro. I bought a new WD Essentials portable HD. It won't mount on the MacBook. Will it not because I cannot update my OS to anything more current than the 10.7.5 I have on there now, and therefore the drivers I need are not the most current for this new HD? My older WD HD's mount with no problem.
Did you erase, reformat and initialize that new WD as new...using the Disk Utility.app
ref: Erase a volume using Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
this will remove any proprietary software that comes preinstalled on it.
The last update to OS X 10.7.5 was 2012
Yes and No. ExFAT has certain naming conventions, is not bootable on Mac OS, and will not yield a true clone when backing up via clone or even a recoverable Time Machine backup. If you want to loosely backup documents that work on both platforms, then yes, you can do that.
File sharing PCs and Macs is a far better way to avoid this problem.
Share Mac files with Windows users - Apple Support
Mojave and High Sierra directions most clonely approximately Lion's setup. But you will not be able to use APFS formatting on Lion at all. HFS Extended GUID is needed for Lion.
Upon purchase, I loaded data onto it, then realized it wasn't properly formatted to work off both my new LG Gram PC, and my 2009 10.7.5 MacBook Pro. As I didn't have enough free space on any storage I had, I took the HD to a friend, and he moved the 2TB of data off into his storage, he formatted the HD to exFAT, and moved the 2TB of data back onto it. When I first got it, did I erase it? No. Was it ultimately reformatted? Yes. Initialized? Not sure. But, my friend did all the moving of data and reformatting on his Windows 10 machine. Would it work for me if I did this on the 2009 MacBook Pro? Do I have to format it exFAT using my MacBook Pro for it to be mountable on it?
The Windows machine will not maintain the bootability of any drives it manages.
The WD software likely is not compatible with your Mac. If you reformat it with Disk Utility on your Mac after backing up to another drive, you will be better off.
You might want to get a second drive to copy any info you need on it before reformatting anything.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying the new drive may function as I want it to (mounting both PC & Mac) if I use the Mac disk utility and format it for exFAT?
I was definitely already contemplating getting another drive.
Uh-oh...now my ignorance is making an appearance! :) My situation is this; I have been storing my image files on (now 7) WD external hard drives formatted to mount to my MacBook Pro, where my old PS CS editing software is located. I have an LG Gram that I travel with and store my image files on. I now want to have my external drives mountable to the PC and Mac for storage and accessibility requirements.
I was told by Apple that my machine is maxed out in terms of OS (and for all intents and purposes, everything else). It's as current as it will ever get. There's no more upgrades.
Is the "file sharing" you mention conducive to what my intended use I am describing?
File sharing means having one computer serve up its disks to another computer over the network.
The computer offering the files acts as a sort of NAS (network-attached storage unit), and the computer that's accessing them remotely sees them as being stored on a NAS.
This is generally slower than accessing a directly-connected drive, and sometimes applications will not permit certain files to be stored on network drives or will not work well if you store them there. E.g. Lightroom Classic would likely be very unhappy if you tried to store its catalog files on a network drive. If you kept the catalog on local drive(s) and the images on network drives, that might work – though I don't know how easy it would be to move a Lightroom Classic catalog between the two platforms given different filesystem naming conventions.
JD1701 wrote:
Uh-oh...now my ignorance is making an appearance! :) My situation is this; I have been storing my image files on (now 7) WD external hard drives formatted to mount to my MacBook Pro, where my old PS CS editing software is located. I have an LG Gram that I travel with and store my image files on. I now want to have my external drives mountable to the PC and Mac for storage and accessibility requirements.
I thought of something else.
If you're traveling with one notebook, while leaving the other at home, with the drives that hold the pictures, file sharing would raise these issues:
The notebook that stays at home would need to remain powered on, and you would need to make it accessible from the Internet – not just from your local network. The notebook that is traveling with you would be pulling in files over the Internet. Depending on the number and size of files you were working with, and the speed of your Internet connection (on the go and at home), that might not be the fastest thing …
MacBook Pro will not mount ExFAT formatted external drive
