Hello I have recently had this problem were my external hard drive is not showing up on my mac. I have contacted apple support and they have tried to help me my reseting my computer but still nothing has worked. I was able to have it show up on my parents windows computer but not my mac. When I plug it in my mac I can hear it vibrating & the light shows up but nothing else happens. Sometimes, you think WD hard drive is not recognized by Mac because the WD external hard drive isn't showing up on Mac, neither in Finder nor on the desktop. However, the fact is that the WD hard drive is detected by macOS but it is not set to show up on Mac. In this case, you can show the WD hard drive by changing the preferences. Understanding why My Passport drive not showing up on 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; System failure; Virus infection. Jul 26, 2021 If the external or USB hard drive is still not showing up (WD external hard drive or Toshiba hard drive is not showing up in File Explorer), your next step is to open Disk Management and check. Open Windows search by pressing Win+S. Type disk management. Select Create and format hard disk partitions.
I have a 1 TB WD external HD that won't mount. I connect it via firewire to my MacBook Pro running OS 10.13 High Sierra. My mac sees the drive, it just won't mount. I've also tried to mount it via USB, but again, my system sees the drive, but won't mount it. Does anyone have any suggestion what I can do?
Generally, when you connect an WD, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung external hard drive to Mac, it will be automatically mounted, then you can perform read and write operation on it. Alternatively, you can also select the disk and click on Mount to make it accessible by the operating system using Disk Utility.
However, hard drive problems may happen that your WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac, usually when you desperately need to access some data stored on it. Remain calm, all data on WD external hard drive is still there. This article will explain how to fix WD My Passport not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected.
WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac, how to fix?
First of all, if your WD external hard drive is listed on the left-hand-side menu of Disk Utility, you can make sure it doesn't have any hardware problem. Why the WD external hard drive won't mount? It is because the file system of the disk has been corrupted, preventing the disk from being accessible on Mac. Just try these solutions below.
Solution 1: Run Disk Utility to repair the WD external hard drive
No matter what problems you are meeting on a disk, First Aid is your first choice to repair it.
Step 1: Launch Disk Utility.
Step 2: Choose theunmountable WD external hard drive.
Step 3: Select First Aid in the top center and click Run.
Solution 2: Reformat to fix WD My Passport not mounting
If Sometimes, the Disk Utility may not function as desired. In this situation, the only solution is to reformat the WD external hard drive. But reformatting will remove all data on the disk. In order to avoid data loss, you have to recover lost data from unmountable external hard drive as soon as possible.
Step 1: Recover lost data from unmountable WD external hard drive on Mac
As the best free Mac data recovery, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is able to recover lost data from unmountable, unreadable, corrupted, inaccessible external hard drive, hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, memory card, etc. It supports to recover documents, photos, music files, videos, emails on Big Sur 11/macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
1. Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
2. Launch this program. Select the unmountable WD external hard drive and click 'Next'. The program will start scanning this drive for recoverable files.
3. After the scanning process finishes, you can click the found files and preview.
Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac
4. Choose what you want to get back and click 'Recover'.
5. Go through the recovered files and make sure all desired files are back.
Step 2: Fix WD external hard drive not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on Mac by reformatting
1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
2. Select the unmountable WD external hard drive and click 'Erase' on the top.
3. Provide a name and a format to erase the drive.
4. When finished, you can mount your WD external hard drive on Mac and use it again.
Also read: Other ways to erase external hard drive on Mac
Hope this tutorial can help to fix WD external hard drive not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on Mac. If your WD external hard drive not recognized on Windows, it is also easy to be fixed. If you have any question, please feel free to contact us.
Also read: Can't See External hard drive showing up on Mac, What to do?
Still have questions?
A few days ago while I was trying to transfer files from the WD My Passport Ultra 2TB to the Time Capsule, it suddenly became unrecognizable. I've replaced the cable (no difference) and also run the Disk Utility on it. Disk Utility displayed the drive as uninitialized. It allowed me to run first aid, but then it just said 'operation successful' and there's no change to the drive. Please help!
Similar to what happened above, when WD My Passport is uninitialized on Mac, Disk Utility may show the drive uninitialized and all partitions get lost. Most of time, Disk Utility doesn't even read the drive. In this case, each time you plug into your WD My Passport, the operating system can't recognize it, making all data on the drive inaccessible. Have no idea of what goes wrong? Just keep reading. This passage will focus on how to fix WD My Passport uninitialized on Mac without data loss.
How to fix WD My Passport uninitialized on Mac?
Unfortunately, First Aid can only repair some tiny disk errors, WD My Passport uninitialized issue is beyond its capability. Under this circumstance, initializing the external disk is the most effective and easiest way. But if you have useful data, please back up before initializing. Forget to make any backup?iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery can help you.
Recommend: recover lost data from uninitialized WD My Passport on Mac at first
As free Mac data recovery software, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac enables you to recover lost data from uninitialized WD My Passport on Mac and other brands of external hard drive,recover lost data from uninitialized AppleAPFSMedia, even recover lost data after initialize a disk, whatever the drive is formatted to APFS, HFS+, HFS, exFAT, FAT32. It is compatible withmacOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Besides, it can alsorecover lost data even emptied from Mac Trash Bin, recover lost data from formatted drive,recover lost data from unmountable drive, recover lost data from unreadable drive, recover lost data from inaccessible hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, memory card, pen drive, digital camera, etc.
Step-by-step tutorial to recover lost data from uninitialized WD My Passport on Mac
Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.
How Do I Fix My Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On My Mac
Step 2: Click 'Find Lost APFS Partitions' on the top right corner and then choose the uninitialized WD My Passport to scan all lost partitions on this drive.
Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Operating System
Step 3: Select the partition where you lost data and click 'Next' to scan all lost files on this partition.
Step 4: Preview the scanning results, and click 'Recover' to finish recovery process.
Step 5: Go through to ensure you have got all lost files back.
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.
Step 3: Click the Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.
Step 4: Complete the related information (name, format, scheme, etc.), then click Erase button.
Common reasons for WD My Passport uninitialized on Mac
If you want to find out the cause of WD My Passport uninitialized on Mac, please recall what operations you did with the external hard disk before your hard drive not initialized. Did you plug the drive into unsafe computer? Did you interrupt the process when trying to partition the drive? Did you experience power failure or system crash when using the portable drive? Here are some general reasons for WD My Passport uninitialized:
1. File system corruption.
2. Virus infection.
3. Bad sectors.
4. Head volume corruption.
5. Connection problem.
According to your own situation, you can determine what might be the real cause. Even so, the most important thing is to fix WD My Passport uninitialized on Mac.
See also: How to fix when WD external hard drive for PS4 not recognized/not working?
Still have questions?