WD My Passport Not Recognized on Mac

"I have a WD My Passport external which is not recognized on Mac, but I have stored many files on this external HDD. So can anybody tell me how to recover data from an unreadable external hard drive for Mac? I have some important excel files on this external, so I would appreciate it very much if anybody can recommend useful excel recovery software."

WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows PC for data transferring or backup. If a WD My Passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, you had better make it clear if the problem is caused by external HDD error or Mac OS crash.

Windows? -> [5 fixes] how to fix wd usb disk not showing up on Windows 10

Here are 4 fixes for you on MAC for fixing the wd disk not showing up problem.

#1 - Try it on another mac machine

You can connect the WD My Passport to another computer to see if it can work normally. Once you are sure that the WD My Passport is corrupted and becomes inaccessible, you had better stop performing any further data writing to this external.

#2 - Recovering files from WD My Passport that Is Not Readable on Mac

For an unreadable external hard drive data recovery, you need to rely on a professional data recovery program. Free mac data recovery tool such as Lazesoft Data Recovery for mac is a good solution for data recovery from any storage media including WD My Passport when it is not detected by Mac OS or other PC.

mac data recovery free

Also read: 5 free file recovery software for mac

Option: Recovering data from wd external hard disk with free data recovery software on Windows 10 - iCare Data Recovery Free.

preview found photo

#3 - Fix WD My Passport Not Showing UP on MAC with Disk Utility

Repair usb mac

Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac

#4 - Check Finder preference

Check wether the disk is selected under finder preference under General, and Sidebar.

Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac

Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work on Mac

Everybody knows that the most important thing is to restore all lost data when a WD My Passport drive is not recognized on Mac, but many people still like to know the reasons why an external hard drive stops working on Mac. Here are some possible reasons:

  • WD My Passport external contains too many bad sectors
  • The WD My Passport is infected with virus or Trojan
  • WD My Passport portable HDD file system is corrupted
  • WD my passport external hard disk is formatted wrong or needs updated drivers
  • More other reasons

Solution When WD My Passport Is Not Recognized due to Incompatibility issue

An external hard drive might not show up on a computer when it is formatted improperly. As you know, when you buy a new external hard drive, it usually has FAT32 or NTFS file system. Both of file systems are able to be recognized by Windows OS, but it might become unreadable when you plug an external hard drive that has FAT32 or NTFS file system to a Mac computer. Therefore, if a WD my passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, but it is able to be compatible with Windows OS, you only need to format it to HFS+ file system which is able to be recognized by Mac OS.

WD My Passport Does Not Show up due to Virus Attack

As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. However, sometimes, virus infection might corrupt the file system of WD my passport external hard drive and make it not show up when you connect the external to your computer. In this situation, you can recover all inaccessible data at first and then you can run antivirus software to scan the external hard drive and finally format the external into proper format.

WD My Passport External Is Recognized on Mac but becomes Inaccessible

Another situation is that the WD my passport portable hard drive can show up on Mac OS when you plug it to your computer, but the problem is that you are unable to access any data stored on this disk. In this situation, you can also check whether the external hard drive file system is compatible with Mac OS. If WD my passport external HDD has unknown file system, you can use iCare Data Recovery to recover files from inaccessible drive and then try to format the WD my passport external hard drive to HFS+ file system. If you want to use your external hard drive in Windows PC, you can connect it to a Windows PC and format RAW to NTFS file system.

It does not matter why a WD My Passport external HDD is not recognized, you have chance to recover files from WD portable hard drive which is not detecting as long as it is not physically damaged or overwritten.

Last updated on Nov 28, 2023

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Last updated on Nov 28, 2023

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