Summary: WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix WD My Passport not working issue and recover data from unrecognized WD My Passport.
Hi guys, My ‘WD My Passport Ultra’ 1TB external hard drive isn’t reading on my Mac right now. I was using it and out of nowhere, it ejected itself and couldn’t be read when I plugged it back in. I want to fix this but in a way where I don’t have to reformat my drive because I have some important files on it. Here are some info on my mac and the drive I hope this helps.
Everything has flaws. At times, WD My Passport won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD hard drive's light is on but not working. Even worse, it may become unreadable on your Mac. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.
If the WD My Passport is not showing up on Mac desktop, Finder or Disk Utility after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If you can't see files from WD external hard drive on Mac, how to access data? You'll get answers here.
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. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.
1. Safely remove the WD My Passport 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 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 drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.
4. Connect the WD My Passport 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 undetectable.
If the WD My Passport for Mac still does not work or not show up on Mac after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.
If your WD My Passport 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 the connected 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 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 My Passport for Mac on the desktop.
Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD My Passport for Mac in Finder.
If the WD My Passport for Mac 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, hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the 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 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 WD My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid
If you can't mount the WD My Passport 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.
Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.
Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.
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 lost data from the WD My Passport for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is free hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover lost data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. Zip opener mac. 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 lost data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
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 for Mac drive with no fuss.
Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac 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.
If My Passport for Mac hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, it means the WD hard drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some hardware problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.
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.
Apparently, most hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport for Mac in good condition, you should pay attention to:
Western Digital My Passport is a commonly used external hard drive for Mac. Data from any external storage drive like WD My Passport drive can get deleted or lost due to different reasons. Before you recover files from My Passport on Mac. Let us know the various data loss scenarios associated with it.
No matter how you lose or delete files from WD drive on Mac. The problem of data loss can be resolved easily with the help of Remo Recover Mac software.
Remo Recover Mac is a specialized tool to restore My Passport for Mac including macOS latest versions like Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, etc. Additionally, this WD Recovery software Mac supports data recovery from various file systems like APFS, exFAT, HFS+, HFSX, FAT16, FAT32, etc.
This WD Recovery software Mac not only supports file recovery from various data loss situations like accidental deletion, inaccessible, corrupt, formatted or reformatted WD Mac Passport drives of different series like My Passport Ultra 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. But it also supports data recovery from other models such as My Book Velociraptor Duo, My Net HD Dual-Band Router, etc. on Mac.
Note: It is always recommended to stop using your My Passport drive soon after losing files from it to completely restore My Passport for Mac. Adding or updating files in it can overwrite the space available after data loss and thus, it can lead to permanent loss of data from WD external drive.
Download and install Remo Recover Mac software and follow the below-mentioned 5 steps to recover data from WD My Passport for Mac easily.
Step 1: Firstly connect WD My Passport external hard drive to your Mac computer and launch the Remo Recover (Mac) software.
Step 2: Select Recover Volumes/Drives option and click the Volumes Recovery option.
Step 3: Select the My Passport drive to restore My Passport data on Mac and then click Next.
(Note: Click the below check box to recover data if My Passport external drive is not listed on the screen.)
Step 4: Now, select Standard Scan and specify the file types to perform data recovery from WD Passport on Mac.
(Click Advance Scan option to recover data from corrupted, formatted/reformatted, unrecognized and inaccessible WD external hard drive)
Step 5: After the end of the scanning operation, this WD recovery software Mac displays all the recovered files from My passport drive. Now click Save button to easily retrieve them on a location of your choice.