See Protect your Mac information with encryption. You can also encrypt a disk and protect it with a password without erasing it. I did recently a reformatting, but only managed to do a quick format using the format utility provided by windows 8.1 because the long formatting. I can’t see any sign of external damage, and the drive is visible from the Windows Explorer. You can encrypt your data without erasing it by turning on FileVault in Privacy & Security settings (see Encrypt Mac data with FileVault). Hi, I’d like to check the correct functioning of my WD Elements 1Tb external disk drive, since it doesn’t save the data as it used to do sometime ago. If the Security Options button is not available, you can’t use Disk Utility to perform a secure erase on the storage device. Secure erase options are available only for some types of storage devices. The WD Elements drive is protected by a limited 2-year worldwide warranty and a micro-USB to USB Type-A cable is included. Choose View > Show All Devices to see the storage devices at the. (Optional) If available, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, then click OK. The Elements drive quickly backs up and retrieves files by utilizing USB 3.0 technology and draws power from a USB bus-powered port on your device, meaning that it requires no other additional external power source. In the sidebar, youll see a list of internal and external drives. To change the password later, select the volume in the sidebar, then choose File > Change Password.

In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to encrypt.Ĭlick the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map.Ĭlick the Format pop-up menu, then choose an encrypted file system format.Įnter and verify a password, then click Choose. If Disk Utility isn’t open, click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the Search field, then click the Disk Utility icon. In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices. If the device contains any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device or volume.

Wd elements disk utility