“I have a 1TB WD Elements external hard drive and use it to store all my photos. Today, I connect it to my Windows 10 PC and will copy the photos from it to my PC, but the drive does not appear in This PC and I cannot access it. I reconnect it again and again, change to another USB port, try another USB cable, but still not work. Is there any any way to fix this issue? I really don’t want to lose all my photos.” - Cash
Question: Q: MY PASSPORT WD Drive not showing on my macbook but shows on others. For no reason whatsoever my macbook pro won't show my WD external HD. It powers up normally and I see the light on the HD, it reads on other macbook pro's and it even gets read by my LG smart TV. Understanding why My Passport drive not showing up on Mac Why Won't My Hard Drive Show Up Mac. Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up on Mac just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD My Passport for Mac not showing up or not working. Recent macOS update issue.
- Here's how to start over. External hard drive showing up in Disk utility not in Devices. This problem also happened after OS X Yosemite update. Next, the USB was plugged into PC and scanned and fixed it as recommended by Windows 10. I have never used my wd my passport ultra before and it will not show up on my mac.
- Try to initialize WD My Passport on Mac. If you have made a backup of WD My Passport or you don't care about the data on the drive, you can directly initialize the drive in Disk Utility. Step 1: Launch Disk Utility from Utilities. Step 2: Select the uninitialized WD My Passport on the left part of the window.
- Show the mounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive on Mac destop; 2. Force Mount the WD Mac hard drive in Disk Utility; 3. Run First Aid to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting error; 4. Check the power supply of the WD My Passport for Mac drive; 5. Check the USB cable; 6. Check the USB port of your Mac; 7. Check for driver update.
Actually, when you find your connected WD external hard drive won’t show up on your computer, you will change the USB cable, USB port and check the power adapter if it needs, etc. You also can check the software driver for the WD external hard drive. If it still can’t make your WD external hard drive be recognized by your computer, you can try the methods below to fix this issue. Of course, if you lose your files during the fixing processes, we will show you how to get the lost files back.
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Fix 1. Create New Volume if it shows unallocated.
First of all, open Disk Management (Click This PC > Choose Manage > Click Disk Management) on your computer. If you find your WD external hard drives shows unallocated, just create a volume for it. Right click the Unallocated space and choose ‘New Simple Volume’, then follow the wizard to create a new volume. After that, open This PC (or My Computer) to check if the WD external hard drive is showing up.
Fix 2. Assign a new drive letter for your WD external hard drive.
In most cases, your WD external hard drive can’t be recognized by your computer is caused by drive letter conflict or having no drive letter. It is easy to fix this issue by adding a new drive letter for it. Open Disk Management, find the WD external hard drive and right click it, choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. If the device doesn't already have a letter, click Add and choose one. If it does, click Change and try another one.
Fix 3. Format the WD external hard drive using Disk Management.
If your WD external hard drive gets crashed or the file system of it is incompatible, you can format it so that it can be recognized by your Windows computer. Open Disk Management > Right click the WD external hard drive > Choose Format to format it.
Fix 4. Recover lost data from unrecognized or formatted/initialized WD external hard drive.
Data recovery software can help you recover files from your WD external hard drive whether you have formatted/initialized it or not. Now, follow the steps below to get all files back.
Step 1. Download a reliable WD data recovery program - such as Magoshare Data Recovery. It can help you find all existing files, hidden files, deleted/formatted and lost files from your WD external hard drive.
Step 2. Make sure the WD external hard drive has been connected to your computer and run Magoshare Data Recovery. Select the WD external hard drive to start data recovery.
Step 3. Click on Scan button, Magoshare Data Recovery will deeply scan the WD external hard drive and find every recoverable file.
Step 4. Once the scanning is completed, you can preview all recoverable files. Then select the desirable files and save them to your computer. Don’t save the recovered files to the WD external hard drive.
Fix 5. Repair crashed WD external hard drive with AweEraser.
AweEraser is a safe, powerful and easy-to-use data erasure & disk management program. If you have installed it on your computer, you can use it to help you repair your crashed WD external hard drive.
1. Open AweEraser on your computer and choose Disk Tools. If you can see the WD external hard drive in the drive list, just select it then click on Repair button. This tool will scan the crashed WD external hard drive and help you fix minor logical errors. Mostly, it will fix the errors by formatting it.
2. If you are going to sell, donate or trade in your WD external hard drive, you can use Erase Hard Drive mode to help you fix the crashed WD external hard drive and permanently wipe all data from it so that no data can be recovered by the next owners.
Open AweEraser, choose data erasure mode - Erase Hard Drive. This mode will help you wipe and format your WD external hard drive. After erasure, all data on the WD external hard drive will be erased permanently, can’t be recovered by any data recovery method.
Select the WD external hard drive and click on Erase button. AweEraser will format and wipe the WD external hard drive. 100% safe.
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'I have a WD My Passport external which is not recognized on Mac, but I have stored many files on this external HDD. So can anybody tell me how to recover data from an unreadable external hard drive for Mac? I have some important excel files on this external, so I would appreciate it very much if anybody can recommend useful excel recovery software.'
WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows PC for data transferring or backup. If a WD My Passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, you had better make it clear if the problem is caused by external HDD error or Mac OS crash.
Windows? -> [5 fixes] how to fix wd usb disk not showing up on Windows 10
Here are 4 fixes for you on MAC for fixing the wd disk not showing up problem.
#1 - Try it on another mac machine
You can connect the WD My Passport to another computer to see if it can work normally. Once you are sure that the WD My Passport is corrupted and becomes inaccessible, you had better stop performing any further data writing to this external.
#2 - Recovering files from WD My Passport that Is Not Readable on Mac
For an unreadable external hard drive data recovery, you need to rely on a professional data recovery program. Free mac data recovery tool such as Lazesoft Data Recovery for mac is a good solution for data recovery from any storage media including WD My Passport when it is not detected by Mac OS or other PC.
Also read: 5 free file recovery software for mac
Option: Recovering data from wd external hard disk with free data recovery software on Windows 10 - iCare Data Recovery Free.
#3 - Fix WD My Passport Not Showing UP on MAC with Disk Utility
Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac
#4 - Check Finder preference
Check wether the disk is selected under finder preference under General, and Sidebar.
Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac
Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work on Mac
Everybody knows that the most important thing is to restore all lost data when a WD My Passport drive is not recognized on Mac, but many people still like to know the reasons why an external hard drive stops working on Mac. Here are some possible reasons:
- WD My Passport external contains too many bad sectors
- The WD My Passport is infected with virus or Trojan
- WD My Passport portable HDD file system is corrupted
- WD my passport external hard disk is formatted wrong or needs updated drivers
- More other reasons
Wd My Passport Not Showing Up Mac
Solution When WD My Passport Is Not Recognized due to Incompatibility issue
An external hard drive might not show up on a computer when it is formatted improperly. As you know, when you buy a new external hard drive, it usually has FAT32 or NTFS file system. Both of file systems are able to be recognized by Windows OS, but it might become unreadable when you plug an external hard drive that has FAT32 or NTFS file system to a Mac computer. Therefore, if a WD my passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, but it is able to be compatible with Windows OS, you only need to format it to HFS+ file system which is able to be recognized by Mac OS.
WD My Passport Does Not Show up due to Virus Attack
As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. However, sometimes, virus infection might corrupt the file system of WD my passport external hard drive and make it not show up when you connect the external to your computer. In this situation, you can recover all inaccessible data at first and then you can run antivirus software to scan the external hard drive and finally format the external into proper format.
WD My Passport External Is Recognized on Mac but becomes Inaccessible
Another situation is that the WD my passport portable hard drive can show up on Mac OS when you plug it to your computer, but the problem is that you are unable to access any data stored on this disk. In this situation, you can also check whether the external hard drive file system is compatible with Mac OS. If WD my passport external HDD has unknown file system, you can use iCare Data Recovery to recover files from inaccessible drive and then try to format the WD my passport external hard drive to HFS+ file system. If you want to use your external hard drive in Windows PC, you can connect it to a Windows PC and format RAW to NTFS file system.
It does not matter why a WD My Passport external HDD is not recognized, you have chance to recover files from WD portable hard drive which is not detecting as long as it is not physically damaged or overwritten.
Last updated on Aug 30, 2021
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Last updated on Aug 30, 2021
Wd My Passport Not Showing Up On Mac
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