Moreover, you wont be able to enjoy the numerous benefits that this new file format has to offer you.

Most of the external drives especially the WD ones available in the market are either formatted in NTFS or HFS format.

Format Wd Elements High Sierra Mac OS Version

However, the new Macs are shipped with the latest Mac OS version, macOS High Sierra which supports the Apple File System or APFS.

If your WD external drive isnt in this new format, you wont be able to use it if your Mac has been updated to macOS High Sierra.

In such cases, you need to simply convert your WD external drive to APFS format.

Then pick Mac OS Extended Journaled from the drop-down menu for the Format under the Partition Information.

You will see a tick-mark appear once the conversion has been completed.

It was introduced by Apple in the year 2006 and is now the default file system of the latest Mac operating system, macOS High Sierra.

This new file system replaces the previous file system, Mac OS Extended or HFS, which was used by all the Mac OS versions which came before it.

It offers several advantages over its predecessors and is automatically applied to your hard drive upon the installation of macOS High Sierra.

APFS has been optimized for SSDs and flash drives but can be used for external and hybrid drives as well.

So, if you dont have this Mac OS installed on your Mac, you wont be able to open any drives using the APFS format.

Moreover, it is also the recommended file system for SSDs and flash drives.

The following are some of the advantages that you can avail of by converting to APFS.

The process is almost instantaneous and will be over in the blink of an eye.

The reason why APFS can do that is that it makes use of metadata.

This allows it to complete the copying and cloning process much more quickly than HFS ever could.

Apple has worked on the reliability of this file system and has ensured that it does not crash as much as HFS used to do.

This means that you would have to face fewer instances of file corruption than before if your drive is using the APFS format.

It stores the information on the partitions in such a manner that files dont get fragmented and need to be pieced together later.

This efficient use of the available drive space ensures that you dont run out of storage space anytime soon.

With APFS, you get the chance to encrypt individual files and folders on your drive in addition to encrypting the entire hard drive.

This offers you an added layer of security that HFS couldnt provide.

Format Wd Elements For Mac High Sierra