Western Digital My Passport For Mac

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Western Digital My Passport For Mac Rating: 3,6/5 1586 reviews
  1. Western Digital manufactures two types of the WD My Passport hard drive. One has for Mac as part of the description and is preformatted to HFS+ (equivalent to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) File System. The other type is NTFS formatted and is simply called WD My Passport – no for Mac after the title.
  2. Hello all, Today I bought the 4tb “My Passport” from Best Buy. I came home to set it up and backup my computer (a 2015 MacBook Pro running El Capitan 10.11.6) Before I did anything to it, I read through the user’s guide and saw that I needed to format it to use with my MacBook.
  3. My Passport; My Cloud Home; My Cloud; My Book; Internal Drives / SSDs. Western Digital SSD Dashboard. Software for Mac Install WD Discovery for Mac. WD Drive Utilities for Mac. WD Security for Mac. WD Sync for Mac. WD Universal Firmware Updater for Mac. Product Firmware Product.

Amazon.com: wd my passport for mac. Skip to main content. Western Digital 4TB My Passport Ultra Silver Portable External Hard Drive, USB-C - WDBFTM0040BSL-WESN. 4.1 out of 5 stars 166. $112.58 $ 112. 58 $129.99 $129.99. FREE Shipping by Amazon. Only 5 left in stock (more on the way).

Feb 23, 2017  The drive is pre-formatted with HFS+J so it is ready to go for Mac Computers. You can reformat it with exFAT so it will work with both Apply and Windows computers. WD My Passport for Mac. For Windows computers, go to the Start menu and select Windows Update. Disk Drive Format. Your My Passport for Mac drive is formatted as a single HSF+J partition for compatibility with Mac OS X operating systems. If you want to use the drive with a Windows computer. Western Digital’s My Passport For Mac is a solid, compact, comparatively speedy little USB-only portable hard drive that also happens to be Time Machine–ready and designed for the Mac.

Summary: The WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder nor in Disk Utility? WD external hard drives won't work on Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover data from not showing up/not working WD HDD without data loss.

West Digital external hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements Portable, or WD Easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and music files, etc. What's more, they are widely known thanks to their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability compared with other external HDD.

However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport drive won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD external hard drive light is on but not work. Even worth, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

If the WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Finder, Disk Utility or on the desktop after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If your WD My Passport isn't showing files, how to access data? You'll get answers here.

Table of contents
1. Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
2. Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
3. How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
4. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?
5. Bonus tips

Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?

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.

  • Recent macOS update issue
  • System failure
  • Virus infection
  • Motherboard issue
  • WD My Passport drive damage or corruption

Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue

As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up on Mac. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport external hard drive and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.

2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other external 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 external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.

4. Connect the WD My Passport external hard drive to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport external hard drive undetectable.

How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?

If the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac still does not work or not show up in Finder/Disk Utility after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow your external hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.

Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.

Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.

Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD Passport hard drive for Mac in Finder.

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the My Passport for Mac external hard drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, 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.

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually Best laser printer for mac.

Sometimes, external hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the external 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 external hard drive.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Western Digital My Passport For Mac Cable

Step 2: Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.

Step 3: Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.

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

Method 2: Repair My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid

If you can't mount the WD My Passport external hard drive 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 your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive.

Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.

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Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac

If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.

The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover data from the WD My Passport portable drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Recover data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.

Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

Step 3: Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.

Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.

Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport external hard drive with no fuss.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive in the left sidebar.

Step 3: Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.

What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?

If Disk Utility can't show up My Passport for Mac external hard drive at all, it means the WD My Passport drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some physical problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.

Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport external drives for Mac

Apparently, most external hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport portable drive in good condition, you should pay attention to:

  • 1. Make sure that your WD My Passport portable hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
  • 2. Always safely and properly unmount the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
  • 3. 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.

Summary: Have you received the error: 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer' on Mac? Don't worry, this article will focus on how to fix WD My Passport is corrupted or unreadable on Mac. To avoid the loss of important data, you'd better recover data from the unreadable WD My Passport with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows for data transferring or backup. It is popular for its auto backup and passport protection features, keeping your files and folders safe. However, there are times that the WD My Passport becomes unreadable or corrupted on Mac. You may be greeted with errors like 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer', which prevents you from accessing all data stored on the drive.

It's so frustrating when you meet this issue. If you are struggling to solve this issue, you will find a collection of verified troubleshooting steps.

Table of contents
1. Causes of WD My Passport not readable on Mac error
2. How to fix 'WD My Passport unreadable' on Mac error?
3. Conclusion

Note: If you received the disk not readable error with three options: Initialize, Ignore and Eject, please don't select 'Initialize'. Initializing the drive will erase all of the data that is currently sitting on the drive, which makes it difficult to recover data.

Causes of WD My Passport not readable on Mac error

Let's at first take a look at the complaint from community.wd.com:

'My WD My Passport 2TB Portable External Hard Drive has suddenly become unreadable on my laptop (MacBook Pro Server with macOS 10.12 Sierra) and I have tried on a MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.13 High Sierra with the same results. Any suggestions to fix my unreadable WD drive?'

The good news is, even though you have been prompted with an error message, at least your WD My Passport drive is recognized. There are many reasons that can lead to a drive not being readable, but essentially this is because the internal file system is damaged. Some of the possible reasons for this error are described as follow:

  • Mac malfunctions
  • Outdated drivers
  • Faulty connections
  • Write-protected drive
  • The WD My Passport is not formatted
  • An internal file system error or bad sectors
  • Virus/malware infection to your WD My Passport
  • Incompatibility issue between your WD My Passport and Mac machine
  • Accidental interruption or removal of your WD My Passport during transferring data

How to fix 'WD My Passport unreadable' on Mac error?

In most cases, the issue can be repaired with a simple initialize. But this operation will remove all data stored on this drive. Are there any other ways to fix WD My Passport unreadable issue on Mac? Of course, just try these solutions one by one:

Solution 1: Re-insert the WD My Passport

The first and foremost thing is to remove the WD My Passport safely from Mac and then re-plug it into the USB port properly. If the external hard drive mounts and appears on the left sidebar of Finder, then you can access the drive. However, if the WD drive still won't mount or the error persists, continue with the next method below.

Solution 2: Check the Mac computer

The next step is to check whether your Mac machine has a problem or not. Just connect a different storage device to your Mac. If this error still pops up, the problem may refer to your Mac machine, you can restart your Mac to see if everything works well. Otherwise, if you can see the other drive in Finder, the problem is associated with the previous WD My Passport.

Solution 3: Check if the WD My Passport is encrypted

The WD My Passport for Mac corrupted or readable issue can also happen if the drive is encrypted by BitLocker. By default, the Mac computers cannot recognize a BitLocker encrypted drive, which means you are unable to read or write BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac.

You can insert the drive in a PC and then turn off the BitLocker encryption so that it can be read on Mac. In addition, you can access a BitLocker encrypted drive with the help of a third party tool.

Solution 4: Update Mac drivers

Drivers enable one or more hardware devices to communicate with the computer's operating system. If drivers are out-of-date, a variety of issues will happen such as the disk not readable error. Apple handles all system and driver updates for your system. To check if any updates are available, please do the following:

  1. Step 1: Go to Apple menu and select 'App Store'.
  2. Step 2: Click on the 'Updates' button located on the top pane.
  3. Step 3: Check available updates for your system and applications.

Solution 5: Repair the WD My Passport in Disk utility

Disk Utility is a built-in used to erase, format or manage internal disks and external storage devices. The most important feature of Disk Utility is First Aid, which helps detect and repair any issue with your disk. Here is how to run First Aid on your Mac to repair the unreadable WD My Passport:

  1. Step 1: Open Disk Utility from your /Applications/Utilities folder.
  2. Step 2: Select the unreadable WD My Passport in the left side bar.
  3. Step 3: Select the 'First Aid' tab.
  4. If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data and replace the disk. You can't repair the disk. Otherwise, continue to step 4.
  5. Step 4: Click Run.
  6. If Disk Utility reports that the disk appears to be OK or has been repaired, you're done. Otherwise, you have to back up as much of your data as possible.

Solution 6: Recover data and erase the WD My Passport

If the error still exists, you have no choice but erase the WD My Passport. But keep in mind that you will lose all data store on this disk. If you didn't back up important data, you should get lost data back with free Online data recovery software at first.

Western Digital My Passport Support

Step 1: Recover data from the unreadable WD My Password on Mac

If you are not sure which data recovery tool you can trust, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is highly recommended to recover data from the unreadable or corrupted WD My Passport. This free Mac data recovery can scan and recover data from unreadable SD cards, internal Macintosh hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, etc. iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery provides a complete Mac data recovery solution even if your Mac won't boot/turn on, your device is failing, inaccessible or has lost a partition.

Western Digital My Passport For Mac

Moreover, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery can also recover recently or permanently deleted files, recover data from formatted hard drives, recover data from unmountable hard drives, and recover data from inaccessible drives, etc. This software supports recovering documents, photos, videos, emails, and music files. It's fully compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

1. Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.

2. Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

3. Select the unreadable WD My Passport and click 'Next' to search for lost files.

4. Preview the searching results, choose those you want and click 'Recover' to get them back.

5. Go over to ensure all lost files have been successfully restored.

Step 2: Erase the unreadable WD My Password in Disk Utility

1. Open Disk Utility from /Applications/Utilities folder.

2. Click on View > Show All Devices in the menu bar.

3. Select the WD My Passport from the list of devices on the left pane and click the'Erase' button on the top.

4. Name your drive, select a file system format and then click 'Erase'.

Now that you've formatted the WD My Passport, the disk unreadable error will be resolved and the drive can be ready to use. Then you can copy the recovered data back.

Solution 7: Ask data recovery service for help

However, if the solutions above don't fix the WD My Passport unreadable issue for you, or your WD My Passport even won't show up on Mac, it's probably the drive has been physically damaged. In that case, you should send it to a local data recovery service or replace it with a new one.

Conclusion

Hope these solutions have helped you fix the WD My Passport corrupted or unreadable issue. If you have any question about this article, stay in touch with us for further assistance. Specifically, we'd love to hear if you have other solutions for this issue.