Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

Answer (1 of 6): When you plug in a hard drive into your Mac, you expect it to pop up in Locations in Finder, next to your remote disk and the computer itself. But sometimes Macs don't recognize external hard drives like WD or Seagate. Jun 15, 2017 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. But sometimes Macs don't recognize external hard drives like WD or Seagate. If the drive is not showing up on your Mac chances are it has not been formatted correctly, has been corrupted, or is faulty. WD hard drive not recognized is a frequently asked question by Mac users in Apple-related forums. “Hi all, I have 1TB WD external hard drive with lot of essential project files, pictures, videos and important movies. Definitely something has gone wrong without my knowledge; now my WD external hard drive is not showing up on my Mac machine.

By Katrina | Posted to Home > Mac Data Recovery Tips, updated on August 20th, 2021User rating:

Summary: Here you will find 5 methods to fix WD My Passport for Mac drive not showing up or working on Mac. To avoid data loss, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can help save your data to a safe place.

Everything has flaws, even the WD My Passport for Mac drive that you used for years.

It happens frequently that:

WD My Passport won't show up when connecting to your Mac computer
WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility
WD external hard drive light on but not working after macOS Big Sur update
WD My Passport drive won't open WD unlocker application on M1 Mac
Mac didn't unlock the WD My Passport drive but asking for the WD Drive Unlock application
WD My Passport Ultra becomes encrypted or unreadable on your Mac

Either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible and concerns you a lot.

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.

Solutions for fixing WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac

Method 1: Do the basic checks
Method 2: Check Finder Preferences
Method 3: Install the latest WD drive unlock application
Method 4: Check & repair drive in Disk Utility
Method 5: Recover data and erase the drive
Method 6: Repair your WD hard drive in local shop

Fix 1: Do the basic checks

Usually, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable, and some hardware problems could make WD My Passport not showing up.

Before going further troubleshooting, do the following basic checks is very necessary.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug or slowly plug, which sometimes 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 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 doesn't show up or work on Mac after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Wd external hard drive not showing up mac air

Fix 2: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences prevents your WD My Passport drive from showing up.

In other words, you didn't allow the connected external hard drives to show 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.

1. Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.
2. Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD My Passport for Mac on the desktop.
3. Go to the Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Locations' to show your WD My Passport for Mac in Finder.
4. Go to Desktop or Finder and check if your WD My Passport is showing up. If not, download, install iBoysoft Data Recovery on your Mac and then check if your WD My Passport is detected by iBoysoft Data Recovery.
5. If your WD My Passport is recognized by iBoysoft Data Recovery, follow the wizard to recover data and then format WD hard drive.
If your WD My Passport drive is not detected by iBoysoft Data Recovery either, send WD hard drive to an expert for reparation.

Solution 3: Install the latest WD drive unlock application

Typically, if you have received a message like 'You must run the WD Drive Unlock application from the WD Drive Unlock CD associated with the drive you want to unlock' and you can't open or unlock your WD drive (My Passport):

This has been discussed a lot that WD hard drive not working after the macOS Big Sur update or when connecting to an Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Air.

If you have used WD Utilities or have created a secure password to keep others from accessing the files on the drive, you have to type the password to unlock the drive (unless you enable auto-unlock for this computer) each time:

You shut down or restart your Mac.
You disconnect and reconnect the WD My Passport.
Your Mac wakes up from sleep mode.

Besides, you have to unlock the WD drive with your password even if you have uninstalled the WD My Passport software from your Mac.

To fix that Western Digital My Passport hard drives not working or unlock (though you know the right password) after the macOS Big Sur update, simply download, update, and install the latest WD Discovery Utilities for macOS 11 Big Sur.

If unfortunately, you can't remember the password, you can only reformat the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive to make it work again, but at the expense of data loss. So, recovering your data with iBoysoft data recovery software in advance.

Fix 4: Check & repair drive in Disk Utility

If the WD Passport hard drive is not showing up in Finder after trying the above methods, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

Usually, 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.

1. Manually Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

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.

1. Go to Finder>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility.
2. Click Show All Devices in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.
3. Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.

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 Disk Utility, which can analyze and repair basic hard drive errors especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps.

To run First Aid to check the WD My Passport hard drive:

1. Go to Disk Utility.
2. Select the WD hard drive.
3. Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window and then click Run.

After running First Aid, try to mount the WD Passport hard drive again to check if it can be mounted and accessed now.

If your WD My Passport drive cannot mounted, try next solution to recover data and then erase the drive.

Fix 5: Recover data and erase the drive

If First Aid was unable to repair the errors in the WD My Passport, it means that the file system of the WD drive has been damaged. Common, to fix the WD My Passport for Mac drive that's not showing up on Mac, you have to reformat it.

The question is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will also erase all data on this drive as well. Hence, firstly, recover data from WD drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery.

Tutorial to recover data from My Passport for Mac hard drive:

1. Download, install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
2. Select My Passport for Mac and click the Scan button to scan all data on this drive.
3. Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click Recover to get them back.

Next, you can courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport for Mac hard drive with no fuss.

1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the WD My Passport for Mac drive in the left sidebar.
3. Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.
4. Complete the information for your WD drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.

Fix 6: Send your WD My Passport drive for repair

If My Passport for Mac hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility, it means that the WD hard drive is not recognized or detected by the Mac. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac has some hardware problems. You'd better send it to a local reparation center.

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
Motherboard issue
WD My Passport drive damage or corruption

Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport drives for Mac

Apparently, most hard drives not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outage. In order to keep your WD My Passport for Mac in good condition, you should pay attention to:

Make sure that your WD My Passport doesn't become physically damaged.
Always safely and properly eject the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
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'.
Properly use WD software like WD Drive Utilities, WD Backup software ( to back up important files to your My Passport drive), and WD Discovery ( to organize and share your files to the My Passport drive to backup your online social life).

Final thoughts

Actually, My Passport for Mac hard drives are just like other external hard drives, which may not show up after connecting to a Mac. This article offers a full guide to help you fix the WD drive not showing up issue in different situations. It's worth mentioning again that once this issue happens, rescue files from your WD Passport hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac first, or you'll face permanent data loss.

'I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB portable drive for storing important personal files. Suddenly, the WD Passport ultra is not showing up on my PC.
How do I fix My WD Passport Ultra not showing up on my computer?'

When your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or external hard drive is not showing up, you can neither access nor use the drive on your computer.

But don't worry. Follow this guide, you'll learn the causes and fixes to the WD Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up error on your own.

Here is the complete guide to making your WD Passport external hard drive detected again:

PAGE CONTENT:

Fix 1. Add New Drive Letter
Fix 2. Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sector
Fix 3. Plug WD My Passport Halfway-in-USB
Fix 4. Try a Different USB Cable/Port or PC
Fix 5. Update WD External Device Driver & Reinstall BUS Controllers
Fix 6. Send Disk for Repair

Some of you may also want to learn what causes the wd external hard drive not showing up on the computer. Continue reading and check it out.

Why is My WD Passport Not Showing Up?

We consulted many experienced users and IT professionals, and we concluded the causes below. Check out why is your WD Passport Ultra external not showing up:

1. A faulty USB port/cable, or a damaged USB hub on PC
2. No drive letter is assigned to WD Passport drive
3. Corrupted file system or bad sectors makes WD drive unreadable
4. WD drive driver is out of date
5. Universal USB controllers drivers are outdated

These causes may also lead to some of your other devices malfunctioning, such as:

So how to fix these errors and make your WD Passport Ultra external hard drive show up on PC again? Follow through the tutorials below to get rid of this issue immediately.

Part 1. Check The State of WD External Hard Disk in Disk Management

Connect the WD external hard drive to your computer via the USB cable. Follow steps here to check the state of your WD external hard drive in Disk Management:

Step 1. Press Windows + R keys, type diskmgmt.msc in the Run box, and click 'OK'.

Step 2. In Disk Management, locate and check the state of your WD external hard drive.

Part 2. Fix WD My Passport External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Error

Check the state of your not showing up or not detected WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive and refer to the right fix to make your drive work normally again.

Fix 1. Add New Drive Letter to Make WD Passport External Hard Drive Showing Up

Applies to: Fix WD passport external hard drive not showing up due to the drive letter confliction.

If your WD displays as 'New Volume' with no drive letter in Disk Management, it won't show up in File Explorer. Don't worry.

You can change or add a new drive letter so to make WD passport detectable and accessible again in Windows PC:

Step 1. Press Win + R keys, type diskmgmt.msc in the Run dialog, click 'OK' 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', set a new drive letter to assign to the WD external drive, and click 'OK'.

If the WD drive has already been assigned with a letter, click 'Change' to choose another letter for it. After this, restart your PC and check if you can visit the WD external hard drive in Windows File Explorer.

Fix 2. Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sector

Applies to: Fix WD passport external hard drive not showing up due to file system error or bad sectors.

If the system files are corrupted or the WD device contains bad sectors, Windows disk management may detect it as '*Others' or RAW. Your computer may not even able to detect it from File Explorer.

EaseUS partition manager software with its Check File System feature can help. As long as your Disk Management can detect it, you can apply this tool to fix the corrupted file system and bad sectors on WD hard drive.

Follow to see how to fix corrupted system files and bad sectors on WD device:

After this, you can check the drive. If your files were missing, move to Part 3 and apply reliable data recovery software to bring back all your WD external hard drive data.

Fix 3. Plug WD My Passport Halfway-in-USB

This method is more like a temporary solution. According to a user's feedback on a forum, in this 'bizarre way', his computer successfully recognized the external hard drive. Here's how to do it.

Step 1. Plug the USB cable halfway through any one of your computer's USB ports.

Step 2. Wait for the WD hard drive to show up in File Explorer.

Step 3. When you see your hard drive, push the USB completely into the USB port.

It might be unreasonable, but quite a lot of people solved their problem with this trick. Have a try on it!

Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

Fix 4. Try a Different USB Cable/Port or PC

When your WD hard drive neither shows up in File Explorer nor Disk Management, you can try to change the USB cable, try another USB port, or a 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 is with the USB cable.

Step 2. Reconnect the WD drive via a new USB hub or to a new PC.

If the WD Passport drive shows up, it is the damaged USB hub that stops WD from showing up.
If the WD passport is not detected either on your current or the new PC, replace the WD drive with a new one.

Fix 5. Update WD External Device Driver & Reinstall BUS Controllers

When the WD Passport drive is not working, it might be caused by the outdated device drivers. So the best way is to update its driver via the following three paths:

#1. Download and Install WD Device Driver:

Step 1. Connect the problematic WD external hard drive to your PC.

Step 2. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.

Step 3. Find and expand Disk Drivers, Portable Devices, Universal Serial USB Controllers, or Other devices.

See if the WD external hard drive is shown as an 'Unknown' device.

Step 4. Right-click on Unknown or not working WD external hard drive, select 'Properties'.

Step 5. Go to the Details tab, set Property to 'Hardware Ids'.

Step 6. Right-click the top Value and click 'Copy'.

Wd External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Computer

Step 7. Paste it into a browser and search for the correct device driver.

Step 8. Find and download the correct WD device driver and install it on your PC.

After this, restart your computer. And everything shall work fine with your WD My Passport Ultra drive.

#2. 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.

Mac Can't Read External Drive

Step 3. Select 'Update driver'.

Step 4. Select 'Search automatically for updated driver software', wait for the process to complete.

#3. Uninstall/Reinstall USB Controllers

When the Universal USB Bus Controllers are outdated, it may also stop your WD passport from being detected or showing up. So you can try to uninstall and reinstall USB controllers:

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.

Step 2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers, right-click on USB controllers of the WD drive, and select 'Uninstall device'.

Repeat to uninstall each USB controller one by one.

Step 3. Restart the computer and Windows will automatically reinstall the USB controllers of your WD drive.

Symbol otf regular. After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.

Notice:: If the WD external hard drive is still not showing up in both File Explorer and Disk Management after trying all these solutions, send your drive for repair as shown in Fix 3.

Fix 6. Send 'Unknown' & Not Detected WD External Hard Disk for Repair

If your WD external hard drive displays as 'Unknown' in disk management, the last thing you can try is to send the disk for repair.

You have two options for this issue:

Option 1. Beyond the Warranty: Send WD external disk for repair in a local repair center
Option 2. Within the Warranty: Send WD external disk back to its manufacturer

Part 3. Get Data Off WD External Disk and Format It to Work Again

If your WD hard drive shows up and you can access the disk again. Take the last guide in this part to fully protect your files and make the WD external hard drive viable for saving and editing data again.

#1. Get Data Off WD External Hard Drive

Here are two ways that you can fully get files from your WD external hard drive:

1. Open and copy data from your WD hard drive to another storage device as a backup.
2. Recover lost files from WD drive with EaseUS file recovery software.

Note that, if you lost some valuable files during the process, don't worry. Professional file recovery software can scan and bring back your files in 3 steps:

Step 1. Choose the external hard drive

Since you're going to recover data from an external hard drive, you need to correctly connect the drive to your Windows computer.
Run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and choose the exact external drive where you lost data.
Click Scan.

Step 2. Check the scan results

The software will immediately start scanning the selected drive for all lost data. During the scan, you can see more and more data showing up in the results. The Filter feature is there for you to quickly locate the files of one kind, such as Pictures, Word/Excel/PDF documents, Videos, etc.

Step 3. Preview and recover data

Double-clicking a file will allow you to preview its content.
Choose the file(s) and click Recover.
Select a different drive to save the recovered files instead of the original one.

Remember to save the recovered files to another secure location and then move to the next guide to format your WD My Passport external hard drive to usable again.

#2. Format WD External Hard Drive to Usable

Here, you may also let EaseUS Partition Master help. It's easy and efficient in formatting a disk:

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.

Step 2. Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.

Step 3. In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.

Step 4. Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.

After this, you can save the data back to your WD external hard drive again.

Make Your WD External Hard Drive Show Up and Work Now

On this page, we explained why is WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up on Windows PC and provided 6 practical fixes for you to follow and make the drive show up again.

As a beginner, we suggest that you follow the whole guide one by one. These fixes also work to resolve the same issue on all brands of external hard drive, internal hard drive, USB, or SD card.

Now, it's your turn. Take steps to fix your not showing up WD external hard drive and make it work again without losing any data.

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