- Hard Drive not showing up. WD External Drives External Drives for Mac. Aluhn October 15, 2015, 1:29am #1. I have the 750 GB My Passport that I’m using with a Macbook pro. I’ve had it for about a month and it worked great. Today I shut my macbook with the drive still in it as I’ve done many times before.
- Jun 25, 2021 The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go to. Apple (in the top toolbar menu) About This Mac Storage. See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop.
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. This video will introduce 6 effective solutions on how to fix the external hard drive not showing up on mac issue. Text tutorial for reference: http://bit.ly.
Christina updated on 2021/7/3 to Mac Data Recovery
'I just get a WD external hard drive. When I connect it to my Mac computer, it’s not showing up and I cannot access the drive. How to fix the issue and make the WD external hard drive accessible again?'
If the WD external hard drive not showing up on Mac, there are some possible reasons. For example:
- USB Connection issue with the drive.
- Power supply problem of the drive.
- File system incompatible with Mac.
- Volume on the external drive is lost.
- File system of the drive is damaged.
- Preferences are not configured correctly.
Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac Air
How to fix the issue? If the WD external hard drive is not showing up on your Mac, you can have a try with the following methods.
Method 1. Reconnect the WD external hard drive.
Normally, an external hard drive could be showing up in Finder if you connect it to your Mac computer. If the WD external hard drive cannot be recognized, the first thing you can try is to reconnect the drive. You can first change a USB port to have a try.
Also, if the cable is damaged, the connected drive cannot be recognized normally on Mac. You can change another USB cable to reconnect the WD external hard drive to have a try. If you connect the drive with a USB hub or external adapter, please connect the disk to the Mac directly to check if it works.
Sometimes, you can restart the Mac and check if the WD external hard drive could be recognized. Besides, please also connect the WD external hard drive to another Mac and check if it can be recognized on another Mac computer.
Method 2. Solve the power supply problem.
For an external hard drive, if there is a problem with the power supply or the power supply is not enough, it will cause issues and make the WD external hard drive cannot be found in any way.
How to solve the issue in such a case? You can just change a connector to have a try. If the issue persists, you can change a powered USB hub or adaptor to increase the power supply.
Method 3. Change the preferences of Finder.
The system preferences of the Mac will also cause the issue that the WD external hard drive not showing up. For example, if you connect WD external hard drive with the same cable on another Mac and it can be recognized normally, you need to check the preferences of your Finder.
1) Start Finder from the Dock of the Mac computer.
2) Click Finder from the top menu bar and choose Preferences…
3) Under the General tab, please enable the option External disks.
After enabling the option, the connected WD external hard drive will be showing up on the desktop directly. If you want to make sure the WD external hard drive will also be showing up in the sidebar of Finder, please change to the Sidebar tab of the Finder Preferences window. Also, enable the option External disks.
Method 4. Fix the file system with First Aid.
If you can ensure there is no problem with the connection and Finder preferences, there would be issues with the WD external hard drive. To confirm it, you can check it in Disk Utility. If the drive could be recognized here, there should be some issues with the disk. That’s why the WD external hard drive cannot show up in Finder or on the desktop. You can try First Aid on the drive to fix the issue.
1) Run Disk Utility from Applications ->Utilities.
2) Choose the WD external hard drive from the left sidebar.
3) Click the First Aid button at the top of the Disk Utility window.
4) It will take some time to finish the fix process. Once it’s done, you can click the Done button to finish it.
After running First Aid for your WD external hard drive, you can reconnect the drive and check again. If the disk issues could be fixed successfully, the drive should show up.
Method 5. Reformat the WD external hard drive.
The External hard drive can only be recognized and accessed if the files system is compatible with Mac. If the file system of the WD external hard drive is not supported by Mac, the drive will not show up on Mac. To make it work on Mac, you need to format it with a file system that can work on Mac.
Also, if the file system of the WD external hard drive is corrupted, the drive will not show up. If you try First Aid and cannot fix the issue, you can also reformat the WD external hard drive directly. You can format the drive directly in Disk Utility.
1) Run Disk Utilitys and choose the WD external hard drive.
2) Click the Erase button to format the hard drive.
3) Set the Name, Format for the external hard drive.
4) Click the Erase button to format the drive.
After formatting the WD external hard drive in Disk Utility, the drive will be compatible with Mac. It will show up and you can access/use the drive directly on Mac.
How to recover data from an inaccessible WD external drive?
Please don’t do further changes if you have important files on the WD external hard drive. Any further changes may cause further damage to the lost data on the hard drive. We suggest you download and use the software Donemax Data Recovery for Mac to recover the data from the drive.
The software is effective enough to recover data from crashed or unrecognized WD external hard drives. Also, the software is very simple and easy to use. Please do as follows to recover data from the drive with the software.
Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac Laptop
Step 1. Choose the WD external hard drive.
Connect the crashed or inaccessible WD external hard drive to the computer. Run the data recovery software and then choose the external hard drive from the device list.
Step 2. Scan the WD external hard drive.
The software will scan the external hard drive automatically after clicking the Scan button. It will analyze the disk and search for the lost data from the WD external hard drive.
Step 3. Recover the lost data from the drive.
After the scan is done, you can then preview and check the found files. Choose the wanted files and recover them to another drive.
Keep in mind that if you have important files on the crashed or not showing up WD external hard drive, please try to recover lost data first to avoid further damage to the lost data on the drive. After recovering the data successfully to another drive, you can then format or fix the drive for further use.
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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.
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.
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?