Problems with Western Digital My Passport

[wellsws]

I got a WD My Passport a while back and just can't get it to work right. Ideally, I'd love to strip all the software out of it and just use it as a back up hard drive but I think it's in the firmware? Anyway, the 2 problems I'm having with it are:

1- When I set up the backup through WD SmartWare it always fails because it says the hard drive is full. But it's not. It far from being full. I can't figure that out. It's 500GB but only backing up around 300GB (mostly music and pictures).

2- If I try to drag a drop a folder to the hard drive I get the error "The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code 0)."

It's basically useless as is. Does anyone have any suggestions other than using it as a paperweight? Any help would be great! Thanks in advance.

 

[miles01110]

Is it out of warranty? I'd just try to exchange it for a new one.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Do you want to recover any data off the HDD?
If not, why not use Disk Utility to format the HDD?

Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility
Partition Your Hard Drive With Disk Utility

 

[S.B.G]

Dump the WD SmartWare software and let OS/X manage the HDD with Time Machine. Their software is clunky at best, as you are experiencing. Make sure to back up your data somewhere else, and run Disk Utility on it, erasing all of it and then let OS/X take over. It should be smooth sailing from there.

 

[wellsws]

Thanks for the replies. I just reformatted using Disk Utility to MS-DOS (FAT) (I want to use it on PCs too). I can drag a drop individual files but if I try to drag the iTunes folder, for example, I keep getting that error I mentioned in my original post. That's what's really bugging me. I can't just grab a folder and copy it.

 

[S.B.G]

Thanks for the replies. I just reformatted using Disk Utility to MS-DOS (FAT) (I want to use it on PCs too). I can drag a drop individual files but if I try to drag the iTunes folder, for example, I keep getting that error I mentioned in my original post. That's what's really bugging me. I can't just grab a folder and copy it.

Is it specifically the iTunes folder that you can't move, or is it any folder that won't move?

 

[wellsws]

Strangely enough, it's the itunes folder, movies folder and my "documents" folder. I was able to copy pictures and some other folders. I don't have itunes open.

 

[eusebietz]

Maybe I was lucky

I was having the same problem as everyone here, but accidentally i put my hard drive upside-down and leave it like that, suddenly my Mac recognized the hard drive

 

[Ifti]

Remember FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit. Do any of the folders you are backing up contain files over 4GB in size?