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I have a new My Passport Elite and at first I could open it on my Ubuntu Linux laptop but I could not open it on Mac OS X.

Someone formatted it and now I could open it on Mac OS X and Windows XP but not on Ubuntu Linux any more. When I tried to open it on my Ubuntu Linux, it says there is an error.

What can I do to open it on all three systems just like my flash drive?

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Do you know what they formatted it to? The only format that natively works across all three operating systems is FAT32. – wag2639 Jan 31 '11 at 6:30
I don't know anything about how he format it but is there any format that he can do so the Passport Elite can work with all three systems? – Cal Jan 31 '11 at 6:48
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Format (or have someone format) the drive to NTFS.

On Ubuntu and Windows XP, NTFS is both readable and writeable.

OS X by default is NTFS read-only.

To get around this limitation you can download the NTFS-3G package that enables writes to NTFS-formatted drives.

You can find it here: http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

After you install NTFS-3G onto OS X, and format the drive to NTFS, you will be able to read and write files whether you are using Windows XP, Ubuntu, or OS X.

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Format your drive with FAT32 so that there is support across all 3 systems. FAT32 is both read/write capable with Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, and Mac OS X.

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