can it be formatted to use for system backup of windows 7 laptop
945956
You can format this drive to either FAT32, NTFS, ExFAT, or whatever. Will work for system backup or making a recovery disk.
289965
You sure can, there is no need to format the drives before installing. I bought this to take my two drives from an old desktop that had died, each that had plenty of data, and had it up and running with my new laptop in no time at all with full access to all of the old data. I've now used this with both Windows XP and Windows 8 without any issues, and have since swapped in a new drive from another old desktop.
1467436
Yes. You'll have to go to the WD website to get.instructions on how to format it using Disk Utility. Not hard, but not plug and play.Hope this helps. Cheers,Steve
967865
Is there any software on the internal memory that will be erased if I format the drive?
2079170
Yes. Just need to format it in a format thats appropriate for Windows. Like exFAT. There are some formats that will be read/write for both Mac/Window. These will be most versatile
1029923
Yes. It's blank. Usually installation of an OS (operating system like Windows, Linux, OSx) will format the drive. Different OS's may use different format parameters so the drive will work in many different computers and OS's.
1375822
You can format it as you wish. Put NTFS, because FAT32 limits the file size to below 4 GB which is fairly useless and negates the real strong point of this stick - lightening and moving huge fils around...
504748
Yes it will go through the USB or eSATA (preferred) You just format the drive.
668780
Yes, of course. You have to format it in ExFAT, it supported by Win7 and Mac without problem.Also you can format any flash drive in ExFAT, it allows files more than 4Gb
1164704
Yes. You can specify which folders to be backed up, the type and frequency to be used.
2137310
As long as your machine has a Firewire 800 port you should be okay. What matters is the hardware you are using and not the operating system. You can just drag and drop files to the WD, but I use Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper to automate my backups.
364524
If your drive has an mSATA, then it's OK. You can also get a SATA to USB adapter to get the data out.
293116
If your using it as a secondary drive Windows will reformat it for you. I reformatted mine several times.
796105
Yes, but it has to be formatted to exFAT if you want the files to be over 4gbs. (NTFS also for Windows)
103520
Yes, treat it as a standard removable usb drive, don't run the "backup" software.
1916788
This will work fine just like any other external USB drive. If you don't want it formatted as NTFS, it can be easily formatted as FAT32 or whatever your need is.
1975928
You should be able to. I was able to reformat it to ext4 for a Linux data drive with no problems.