Bought a Cipherwave external HDD 2.5, says on the box it is ok for Mac but it is not working. Any suggestions, should I format the drive on a PC and if so as what?

Chances are it was formatted as NTFS format by the PC which is not MAC compatible. You will need to reformat the drive in HFS format if you want it to work as a MAC disk only or in FAT32 format if you want to read it in PC and MAC machines.

When have you bought you mbp ?
Your External HDD is in which format, Do you have an app like NTFS for mac osx, or Tuxera NTFS on your MBP if your HDD is not formated as MAC OSX drive. .....

click start control panel administrative tools computer management disk management right click on your drive select properties click tools you should see click check now

click start two boxes automatically fix files and scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors place then a tick in both boxes then select check now start or

you might tick one box then return after its finished the first repair then return and tick the second box

you should not do anything while the chkdsk utility is in progress any input may damage this drive

hope this helps

format driver, but chose NTFS for file system

It is dependent on whether you are solely going to use the Hard drive with your macbook or whether you may use it on a PC as well. If you are going to use it with just the mac format it in Mac format if with PC and Mac format it for a PC.

You format the drive using disk utility which can be found by opeing up the applications folder and then the utilities folder. Open up disk utility and then on the left hand side select your hard drive, then select erase from the right. For Mac formatting under Volume Format select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" then name the drive and then click "Erase..." For PC formatting under the Volume Format select "MS-DOS (Fat)" Remember reformatting will wipe any information from the drive.

Hope this helps.

Your WD External HDD is formatted for MAC, in order to be able to read the files both on MAC and Windows you have to format the HDD as FAT32.

You probably formatted your harddrive in NTFS. NTFS is a so called "file system", but it is designed by microsoft, it only works on microsoft systems and on some linux distributions. However it is not compatible with mac.
So what now? You can go and find software that makes your mac ntfs compatible, or you could backup the files on a windows computer, format your drive in FAT32 and copy the files back to the drive. Take a look at this: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/ That should make your mac NTFS compatible.
good luck!

yes you could simply format the harddrive in Fat32 using your macos that would be the best solution but don`t forget to backup your data by copy pasting the files on your mac or something else and after that to move them on the external hdd again to be available on the windows machine

MAC can't read NTFS. Most items are made for PC, will this work with a MAC as stated on the box?
Most external drives are usually formatted just for MAC use.
PC's and MACs don't like playing together.

According to their website you have to contact them for advise on software for your computer.

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