WD External Drives WD Portable Drives. CBB October 15, 2020, 9:46pm #1. I bought a 5TB black WD My Passport Ultra and it doesn’t appear on my Mac. I have MacOS Mojave. When I plug it in, I can’t even see it on disk utilities. I have an older 4TB WD My Passport which shows works perfectly, so the connection on my Macbook is not faulty.
Buy WD 4TB My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 External Hard Drive featuring 4TB Storage Capacity, USB 3.0 Type-A & Type-C, Data Transfer Rates of up to 5 Gb/s, 256-Bit AES Encryption, Bus Powered - No External Power Required, Preformatted HFS+ for Mac. Check the box ‘External Disks’. It’s under the General tab. Finder Preferences Show External Disks. Now you open up a piece of software on your Mac called Disk Utility. You’ll use Disk Utility to format your WD My Passport drive. You find Disk Utility in the Applications folder on your Mac. Applications Folder In Dock. The simple step-by-step guide below will show you how to format your WD My Passport on your computer, so pay attention. The information you'll find here touches on formatting and reformatting WD's My Passport for your Mac. Login into your Mac. Just turn on your Mac and when it boots up, plug in your My Passport drive to your WD. 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.
Buy WD 4TB My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 External Hard Drive featuring 4TB Storage Capacity, USB 3.0 Type-A & Type-C, Data Transfer Rates of up to 5 Gb/s, 256-Bit AES Encryption, Bus Powered - No External Power Required, Preformatted HFS+ for Mac, Windows Compatible with Reformatting. Turn on Your Mac and Log In. Plug in your WD My Passport’s USB cable into its Micro USB B.
Easiest Way to Fix WD Passport Not Showing Error
Follow to learn how to make your WD Passport external hard drive detected again:
'I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB portable drive for storing movies, photos, and important personal files. This morning, WD My Passport suddenly became inaccessible, couldn't be detected by my computer.
The WD Passport ultra is not showing up on my PC and I couldn't access saved data either. Is there a possible way that can help me to repair the not detectable WD drive to work again?'
If you are having a similar problem on your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or other brands of external hard drive or devices, don't worry.
On this page, you'll learn why is WD Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up on Windows PC and how to fix this error on your own with practical fixes and tutorials.
There is a lot of reasons that will cause your external hard drive not showing up or not detected on Windows PC. Check the following list, you may find the exact cause that makes your WD Passport Ultra external not recognized error:
So how to fix these errors and make your WD Passport Ultra external hard drive show up on PC again? Check the fixes and follow tutorials below to get rid of this issue immediately.
5 Fixes to Remove WD Not Showing Up/Not Detected Error:
When your computer cannot detect or read your WD hard drive, you can first try to change the USB cable and connect it with another USB port or new PC to see if the drive can be read or not.
Step 1. Switch a USB port/cable and replug it to your computer.
If the drive can be read via new a USB cable or on a new PC, then the drive is working fine. The problem exists on the USB cable.
Step 2. Reconnect the WD drive via a new USB hub or to a new computer.
You can selectively follow below 4 methods to get problems fixed and repair the WD My Passport drive to show up and work again.
When your WD become inaccessible, you can follow the guidelines below to change its drive letter so as to make WD passport detectable and accessible again in Windows PC:
Step 1. Press Win + R to bring up Run dialog > Type: diskmgmt.msc to open Disk Management.
Step 2. Right-click on WD drive which fails to show up and choose 'Change Drive Letter and Paths..'.
Step 3. Click 'Add' and choose the drive letter beside Assign the following drive letter > Click 'OK'.
If WD drive has already assigned with a letter, click 'Change' to choose another letter for it.
Step 4. Then restart PC and you can check out whether the problem still exists or not.
If the system files corrupted or the WD device contains bad sectors, you won't be able to access the drive. Your computer may not even able to detect it from File Explorer.
EaseUS partition manager software with its Check File System feature supports repairing corrupted file system and bad sectors on WD hard drive. Download it, you can easily make your WD external hard drive show up on the computer again.
Follow to see how to fix corrupted system files and bad sectors on WD device:
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'.
When the WD Passport drive is not working, it's highly possible that the device driver is not updated. So the best way is to update its driver via the following two paths:
Manually Download and Install WD Device Driver:
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon at the left corner and select Device Manager.
Step 2. Find and expand Disk Drivers, Portable Devices, Universal Serial USB Controllers or Other devices to see if WD device is shown as Unknown device.
Step 3. Right-click on Unknown device > select Properties.
Step 4. Go to Details tab > Set Property to be Hardware Ids.
Step 5. Right-click the top Value and click Copy.
Step 6. Paste what you copy into a browser to search the correct device driver, find and download the correct WD device driver and install it on your PC.
Step 7. Then restart your computer and everything shall work fine with your WD My Passport Ultra drive.
Update WD Device Driver from Device Manager:
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and select Device Manager.
Step 2. Expand Device Manager and right-click the WD My Passport Ultra drive.
Step 3. Select 'Update driver'.
Step 4. Select 'Search automatically for updated driver software', wait for the process to complete.
When the Universal USB Bus Controllers is outdated, it may also stop your WD passport from being detected or showing up. So the last efficient way that you can try is to uninstall and reinstall USB controllers:
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.
Step 2. Find and expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click on USB controllers on your WD drive and select 'Uninstall device'.
Repeat to uninstall each USB controller one by one.
Step 3. Restart the computer and Microsoft will automatically reinstall the USB controllers software for your WD drive.
After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.
If your WD hard drive shows up and can be detected normally again, please don't rush to use it. Please do these tips first:
If the WD hard drive still doesn't show up or cannot be detected, some physical errors may have occurred to your device. Please try these tips for a guide:
On this page, we explained why is WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up on Windows PC and provided 5 practical fixes for you to follow and make the drive show up again.
If you are having a similar issue on other brands of external hard drive, internal hard drive, USB, or SD card, you can also try these tips to make your device show up and work again on Windows PC.
For further issues related to the WD passport, check the questions and answers below. You'll get a satisfying answer:
1. WD My Passport not showing up on Mac
If you are having a similar issue that WD My Passport external or internal hard drive not showing up on Mac, you can try the following tips as listed here for help: (Some are similar as shown on this page)
2. How to use WD Passport on Windows 10?
For a new WD Passport: Connect Passport to Windows 10 PC > Open Disk Management and Initialize Disk > Create a New Partition on WD Passport drive.
For a used WD Passport: Connect it to Windows 10 > Open it in File Explorer to use it. If you need more space, delete some useless files on it to free up space.
3. Why is my external hard drive not showing up?
Accordingly, there are many reasons that may cause your external hard drive not showing up. Here is a list of major reasons:
For a resolution, follow to External/Internal Hard Drive Is Not Showing Up in Windows 10/8/7.
Hello, we just had our Mac fixed after it's screen froze and was unable to restart properly. The repair was getting a new hard drive. We still have the same computer, and had been backing up the old one with My Passport for Mac. However, the device became quite full, and we had it unplugged for about 160 days before the fixing of the computer. We asked the employees at the Apple Store if we needed to do anything special with the computer when we got it back, and they just said that we should follow the instructions. When we got the computer back, the screen we got one was similar to what you get when you purchase a completely new computer. When we got to the screen that says 'Would you like top backup with a Time Machine device' I connected the My Passport for Mac into the USB and heard the clicking begin in the device. I then selected backup device and it started to search for devices, but after 30 minutes it had nothing, despite the My Passport being connected to the Mac. Instead of backing up then, we setup a completely new account and computer and then went into Migration Assistant again and tried. Nothing still. Unplugged and restarted the computer multiple times and still found nothing. Nothing on the desktop either, despite the facts the USB to the My Passport was clearly connected. Just to test the connection of the USB port, I plugged in my iPad and it detected it immediately. This is a major problem as we have a ton of information stored on the My Passport and now I basically have to start from scratch. I went to the Time Machine in System Preferences and there was nothing helpful and nothing was found.
Does anyone know what may be preventing it from showing up? Why it won't show up in Migration Assistant? Any help?
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), iOS 10.1.1, WD My Passport for Mac
Posted on Apr 22, 2017 3:04 PM