WD My Passport not working with G5

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Level 1

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WD My Passport not working with G5

I just formatted a new WD My Passport 5T and it works fine on my Macbook Pro. But when trying to use it with my old G5 (to copy over files) it won't work. Even if I try to copy a small jpeg, it says "...cannot be copied because there is not enough free space."

The WD tech suggested I re-format the disk using my G5, in case it wasn't backwards compatible, but that didn't work either. Now we're thinking it might be a Permission issue...?

Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

Posted on Sep 2, 2020 3:33 PM

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Answer 1

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indigox Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 5, 2020 4:37 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks, HWTech. I did have it formatted like that but it still wasn't working. Then I found the solution yesterday: instead of bypassing the alert, "Backup with Time Machine?" I finally hit Yes (instead of No like the tech told me) and it worked! The disk did a full backup of my G5 and I was able to get all my old files. Hope that helps anyone with the same issue.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,758 points

Sep 5, 2020 11:42 AM in response to indigox

On the G5 make sure to click on the physical drive on the left pane of Disk Utility and not the volume name. With older versions of macOS you need to select the "Partition" tab/button after selecting the physical drive in the left pane of Disk Utility. Select "1 partition" from the drop down list. Make sure the drive is partitioned using "GUID" and select the "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" option. Here is an article showing the procedure including screenshots:

https://www.owcdigital.com/assets/support/support-formatting-and-migration/Mac_Formatting_6-10.pdf

If you still have issues, then most likely the drive is not compatible with the older versions of macOS. Newer drives use a different block size which older versions of macOS may not be able to understand even if the drive pretends to have the older and smaller block size. When erasing or rather partitioning the drive on the G5 do you see the whole drive size as available or do you see a much smaller drive like 2.2TB?

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WD My Passport not working with G5

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