how do you reformat the backup disk (my passport) for Time Machine

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myrwal Author

Level 1

1 points

how do you reformat the backup disk (my passport) for Time Machine

A message said I would have to reformat the backup disk (My Passport) so that I could do backups on Time Machine.

How do I reformat My Passport to do that?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Nov 12, 2013 3:48 PM

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Answer 1

sanjampet

Level 5

7,982 points

Nov 12, 2013 6:01 PM in response to myrwal

see this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

And read this, as it has an extreme amount of information regarding Time Machine. The better you understand it, the better it wil work for you.

This is by the resident TM guru here, Pondini.

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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Answer 2

ronalsia

Level 1

0 points

Apr 19, 2014 9:12 AM in response to myrwal

Hi,

You cannot erase or reformat the first partition which is actually a bit of firmware. WD use Smartware. My issue was that when I needed to restore from a Time Machine backup after a complete grey screen crash, the Mac software "Restore" (Command R) could not find the backup, because it couldn't look beyond the password protected first partition. On a complete crash there is no way to enter the password or browse the external HDD.

Ron

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