Result: Drive does not appear in Disk Utility. The drive did appear in Disk Utility but attempting to format it indicated failure, much more quickly this time, after a few seconds. Connected to an older Mac with USB-A ports.Tried to get the disk to mount using these instructions from WD, but of course I still used my USB-C to USB-A adapter.Disk Utiltiy indicated indeterminate progress for about 15 minutes, finally indicating that the reformatting failed, and furthermore that re-mounting failed. Launched Disk Utility and told it to Erase and format as a APFS volume, since this is what Apple now recommends for Time Machine.Did not install the software because I thought it was not needed and might interfere with my intended use as a Time Machine backup.The drive mounted and I saw two software installers, one for Windows and one for Mac. Connected the new WD Passport to one of the two USB-A ports on my USB-C to USB-A adapter.Did I do anything wrong at the beginning? What should I do now? My late 2020 Apple Silicon MacBook Air, running the latest macOS 12, has only USB-C ports.īelow are the steps I did. Thinking that a drive could be flaky after 5 years, yesterday I bought from Best Buy a new WD 2 TB My Passport to replace it. For the last week or so, Apple’s Time Machine has been failing to back up to my five year old WD 1 TB My Passport.
