Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac

 

Posted by Katrina to Home > Mac Data Recovery Tips on January 7th, 2019

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.

Sometimes, when you connect an external hard drive to your computer, you may find it fails to show up. The external hard drive not showing up problem occurs frequently on Windows PC or Mac, and it could lead to data loss. There are some useful fixes to the external hard drive not detected on Windows 10. WD My Passport - macOS Catalina set up Hi, I just bought WD My passport to use with my MacBook Air 2018 model which runs with macOS Catalina version 10.15.1 I have connected the device to my laptop but started reading posts here that my passport doesn’t work with Catalina. Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder on Mac is just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD external hard drive not showing up or not working. The hard drive has no drive letter. External hard drive not showing up also occurs when the partition on the external hard drive has no drive letter. To make the hard drive show up, you just run MiniTool Partition Wizard and add a drive letter to it. At the disk map, select the partition that has no drive letter and choose Change Drive.

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

Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac

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.

Showing

3. After the scanning process finishes, you can click the found files and preview.

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.

Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac Os

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?

Western Digital Passport For Mac

Still have questions?

Summary: this post aims to hep you solve external hard drive not showing up on macOS issue without much sweat.

- Hello. I have a problem my portable storage, it's not appearing at all in my mac. Not even in the disk utility. Other USBs and External Hard drives work, but this one does not and it happened just recently. someone here can help me get this to work? - CNET Forum
- I'm having problems with my external hard disk. It was working great all until I accidentally disconnected it without ejecting it. Now it won't show up anywhere on my Mac. It's not on Finder or Disk Utilities or even my System Finder. Any help I can get here will be great! - Apple Support

External hard drive counts for a lot for Mac users in daily. It helps to clean up Mac startup disk, speed up Mac computers, get rid of any further errors owing to insufficient space etc. Usually, no matter you choose USB, SD card, NAS or superdrive for Mac, when you plug in a portable hard drive to your Mac's USB port you will see it mount on the desktop. You can also see it in the Finder in the left-hand column under Devices. However, there are also times that your external hard drive won't show up on Finder or Disk Utilities. What do you do? Here gives you some solutions for reference and we'll feel glad if they are helpful for you.

Solutions to External Hard Drive Won't Show Up on Mac Problem

Actually, as we find the external hard drive not recognized on Mac, we care less about the reasons than how to get portable storage on Mac. If you have a rough understanding about main causes of external hard disk not detected, such as superdrive not working, NAS, SD card, USB not recognized, you're suggested to go directly to the below solutions to fix external hard drive not showing up on Macbook Pro/Air, iMac etc.

Make sure Finder will display drive icons.
Open a Finder window. Select Preferences and the General tab. Make sure the box next to External disks is checked.

Select External Drive.
Go to Disk utility and select the external drive from the left sidebar. Choose verify disc. It will find and correct minor errors.

Check USB Hub.
If you are connecting your hard drive with Mac using USB Hub, check the USB hub first.

Open Disk Utility.
If your external USB drive drive faded or greyed out and unmountable? Connect another external drive to computer. Check whether this external hard drive also not recognized. Do the proper eject from the Finder window list. Restart your computer and connect the external drive.

Navigate to Finder on MacBook/iMac.
If your external hard drive not showing up in Finder but visible in Disk Utility, go to Finder window and view below the favourite list. If the drive greyed Out? Select the drive. It might visible.

Mac

Restart your Mac and reconnect hard drive to Mac.
Shut down your Mac and then unplug the power cord and all USB connections. Then wait 30 seconds or 5 minutes before you plug it back in. Now you can turn on your Macbook Pro or iMac and plug the drive to the USB port and open Finder to check your drive.

Download and Install Some File System.
Some times this issue might happened because of the unsupported drive format. Install some file system integration like Fuse for OS X. Then restart your computer and check the issue 'DVD drive not working' fixed or not.

Connect again to Try.
Connect your Segate external drive or WD passport to Windows computer. Delete the partition and connect back to MacBook Pro.

Main Reasons You Might Want to Know

The external hard drive for Mac not showing up in Disk Utility or Finder may be caused by many factors. But all in all it's usually originated from drive issue, dead USB port, and partition issue. And now let's go into details.

• Drive Issues

1. External storage is attacked by virus.
One of the major reasons that your external hard drive not mounting on Mac is the virus threat. The moment your plug in your it to Mac, it spreads across the entire network of the drive resulting to a data loss. Virus such as Trojan gets to HDD via infected external HDD, networks and from media files. They are usually spread from one HDD to another if you share files.

Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac Pro

2. Portable hard drive gets corrupted.
You cannot be too careful to save the data on your external hard drive. Usually the media files on the hard drive may fail to appear when you open it owing to the system power failure or an incorrect ejection of HHD. That means there is a big possibility that it gets corrupted so that your Mac computer won't recognize your portable hard drive. In this case, you can try to format Mac hard drive or switch to another hard drive.

Wd My Passport Macbook

• USB Port Issue

Mac computer doesn't recognize external hard drive may also caused by the dead USB port. If your portable hard drive doesn't connect with Mac computer properly, of course, the it won't show up.

• Partition Issue

Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac Download

External hard drive not mounting on Mac problem may happened because of the partition issue. If you have patitioned a hard drive on Mac OS, there is a big possibility that it would not show up in the Finder. For example, your external storage is partitioned into three parts - but somehow you made one of the parts go away or stop showing up in the Finder. Disk Utility says it is mounted, and it doesn't appear to be marked hidden.

Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac

After you have fixed external hard drive not showing up in disk utility or Finder problem, you can utilize your external hard drive like Apple USB SuperDrive to play or burn CD and DVD on MacBook Pro/iMac. Yet, the $79 Apple USB SuperDrive can't help you play DVD on your iPhone 12 or iPads. In case you have the demand to play and watch DVD movies on iPhone iPad on the subway or on the way home, MacX DVD Ripper Pro will help you a lot. With it, you're allowed to 1:1 rip and copy DVD to MP4, MOV, H264, H265/HEVC, etc. or directly bacup DVD movies to iPhone with 350+ profiles provided, no matter your DVD is 99-title DVD, Disney oversized 75GB DVD or damaged DVD, AV DVD, etc.