Aug 20, 2018 Read this article till the end to fix My Passport not opening on Mac or unable to copy or transfer date between them. Some users have recently reported that their My passport for Mac not showing up on Mac which is a very serious issue. What can be the reasons external hard drive not showing up on. Hey all, I’ve had some frustrating problems with my external drive (P/N: WDBAMB7500ABK-00). Last night it worked perfectly, but today it isn’t even showing up in disk management. It’s taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don’t think this should be a problem. Problem I was having:. After 8 months of owning a WD 3TB My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, one day the drive would not show up when I plugged it in to my MacBook Pro. Very important documents and photos on the drive with no backup. After plugging in, light would be solid for a few seconds, then keep blinking.
Summary: The WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder nor in Disk Utility? WD external hard drives won't work on Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover data from not showing up/not working WD HDD without data loss.
West Digital external hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements Portable, or WD Easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and music files, etc. What's more, they are widely known thanks to their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability compared with other external HDD.
However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport drive won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD external hard drive light is on but not work. Even worth, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.
If the WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Finder, Disk Utility or on the desktop after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If your WD My Passport isn't showing files, how to access data? You'll get answers here.
- Table of contents
- 1. Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
- 2. Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
- 3. How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
- 4. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?
- 5. Bonus tips
Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder on Mac is just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD external hard drive not showing up or not working.
- Recent macOS update issue
- System failure
- Virus infection
- Motherboard issue
- WD My Passport drive damage or corruption
Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up on Mac. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.
1. Safely remove the WD My Passport external hard drive and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.
2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other external hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.
3. Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.
4. Connect the WD My Passport external hard drive to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport external hard drive undetectable.
How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
If the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac still does not work or not show up in Finder/Disk Utility after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.
Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences
If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow your external hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.
Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.
Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.
Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.
Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD Passport hard drive for Mac in Finder.
Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility
If the My Passport for Mac external hard drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.
When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:
Case 1: Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.
Case 2: Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.
Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.
Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually
Sometimes, external hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the external hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the external hard drive.
Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.
Step 3: Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.
Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.
Method 2: Repair My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid
If you can't mount the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.
Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive.
Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.
Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.
Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac
If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.
The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover data from the WD My Passport portable drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Recover data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.
Step 2: Fiddler for mac. Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
Step 3: Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.
Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility
After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport external hard drive with no fuss.
Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive in the left sidebar.
Step 3: Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.
Step 4: Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.
What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?
If Disk Utility can't show up My Passport for Mac external hard drive at all, it means the WD My Passport drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some physical problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.
Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport external drives for Mac
Apparently, most external hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport portable drive in good condition, you should pay attention to:
- 1. Make sure that your WD My Passport portable hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
- 2. Always safely and properly unmount the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
- 3. Don't just unplug the USB cable, on the contrary, unmount your drive by right-clicking (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.
'My 1TB WD external hard drive is not working on my Windows 10 PC and I can do nothing to the drive since it fails to show up in This PC.
I've changed the USB port but it still not working.
I don't know what reasons have made the drive not responding, and neither I know any solutions. I've saved quite a lot of important files inside the drive. If you have any methods to fix my issue and make the WD external hard drive work again, please help me. Thank you.'
I've changed the USB port but it still not working.
I don't know what reasons have made the drive not responding, and neither I know any solutions. I've saved quite a lot of important files inside the drive. If you have any methods to fix my issue and make the WD external hard drive work again, please help me. Thank you.'
Though it's no longer a new problem that external hard drive fails to work or suddenly fail to show up in PC. But it's still a tough issue for ordinary users when their external hard drive, USB or SD card etc devices suddenly become unrecognized, not working or responding in PC. Here below, you'll find 1 quick fix and 4 methods to fix WD external hard drive not working issue. If your external hard drive or storage devices are having this issue, relax and just follow to get your problem fixed right here now.
Quick fix WD external hard drive not showing up/unrecognized/responding error
1. Click Start > Type: devmgmt.msc in the Search box and hit Enter.
2. Open Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
3. Right-click on the USB Root Hub > Select Properties.
4. Go to Power Management and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
2. Open Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
3. Right-click on the USB Root Hub > Select Properties.
4. Go to Power Management and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
After this, reboot PC and reconnect WD external hard drive to your PC, then you'll be able to use the drive again.
If this quick fix doesn't work, relax and just follow below-offered methods to repair not working WD external hard drive or devices now.
If this quick fix doesn't work, relax and just follow below-offered methods to repair not working WD external hard drive or devices now.
Fix WD external hard drive not recognized error
Here you have two methods to follow and fix WD external hard drive not recognized or undetectable error in Windows 10/8/7:
Method 1. Reboot PC into Safe Mode to make WD external hard drive recognizable
- Go to Setting > Update & security.
- Tab on Recovery > Advanced Startup > Restart now.
- PC will automatically boot into another Startup Settings screen.
- Press F4 to initiate PC reboot into Safe Mode.
- Then check whether the WD external hard disk can be detected or not.
Method 2. Change drive letter to make unrecognized WD external hard drive detectable
The other way is to change the drive letter with Disk Management tool so to make unrecognized or undetectable WD external hard drive to show up in PC: Recording apps for mac.
- Right-click on This PC/My Computer > Select Manage.
- Go Disk Management > Find your external hard drive and right click it by choosing Change Drive Letter and Path..
- Assign the drive with a new letter that doesn't exist in your PC and mark the Partition as Active.
- Click OK.
- Restart PC and your External hard drive will show up and work again.
Fix WD external hard drive not working/responding issue
When WD external hard drive, USB or other brands of storage devices are not working or not responding to any operations in your PC, don't worry. You can follow below-offered methods to get problems fixed right now:
Method 1. Update WD external hard drive driver to make it work
1. Click on Start > Type: devmgmt.msc in Search to open Device Manager by hitting Enter.
2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click every USB device found there and select Uninstall.
3. Then check out whether any devices show up as unrecognized or not:
2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click every USB device found there and select Uninstall.
3. Then check out whether any devices show up as unrecognized or not:
- If WD external hard drive shows unrecognized, go to drivers tab and delete/uninstall the driver; Then check out whether the external hard drive shows up in My Computer/My PC or not.
- If it doesn't show up, reboot or restart PC;
- If it shows up but disappears later, repeat above steps and go to Disk Management, change the drive letter of your WD external hard drive and reconnect it to PC to let PC detect it again.
Method 2. Repair corrupted system files/bad sectors on not working WD external hard drive
Corrupted system files or bad sectors on WD external hard drive or other storage devices would block your device from working or responding in Windows PC.
Professional partition manager software from EaseUS will repair bad sectors and fix corrupted system files to make your WD external hard drive work again. Free download, install it and follow below guide steps to fix bad sectors and corrupted system files on your drive now:
Step 1: Open EaseUS Partition Master on your computer. Then locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose 'Check File System'.
Step 2: In the Check File System window, keep the 'Try to fix errors if found' option selected and click 'Start'.
Step 3: The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it has completed, click 'Finish'.
Wd My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up
Extra Tip: WD external hard drive recovery
Wd My Passport For Mac
After fixing not working external hard drive on your Windows PC, you may continue using it for storing fancy data again.
But if you lost files or valuable data on the drive, don't worry. Professional WD external hard drive recovery solution offered by EaseUS hard drive recovery software is what you exactly need. It will simply restore lost files from WD external hard drive within 3 simple steps on Windows 10/8/7 etc PC.
If you lost files after fixing WD external hard drive not working issue or cannot access saved data in your storage devices, just free download EaseUS hard drive recovery software and let it help now.
But if you lost files or valuable data on the drive, don't worry. Professional WD external hard drive recovery solution offered by EaseUS hard drive recovery software is what you exactly need. It will simply restore lost files from WD external hard drive within 3 simple steps on Windows 10/8/7 etc PC.
If you lost files after fixing WD external hard drive not working issue or cannot access saved data in your storage devices, just free download EaseUS hard drive recovery software and let it help now.