My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

WD Discovery version 3.4.89 does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina. We are working to release a new version of WD Discovery that will support macOS 10.15. Unfortunately, we cannot provide an exact date as to when the version of WD Discovery that supports macOS 10.15 Catalina will be released and available for download. We appreciate your patience, understanding and apologize for any. WD - My Passport for Mac 2TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive with Hardware Encryption (Latest Model) - Blue. Is this model compatible with OSX Mojave and Catalina? Best answer: I used the drive to backup my MacBook Air running OSX Catalina.

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

West Digital hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements, 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 hard drives.

However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport hard 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 hard drive's light is on but not working. Even worse, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

  1. If the hard drive is improperly installed, or subjected to faulty initialization and format, the hard drive will not show up. The external hard drive does not appear. External hard drives may also not be included in the list, especially when the drive becomes corrupted or damaged. Hard drive won't appear in File Explorer, BIOS or PC.
  2. When I installed the Paragon NTFS for Mac and restarted my macbook the WD Passport drive seemed to mount and appeared for just a moment after logging back in and then it disappeared. Tried reseating the USB connection and rebooting again and its not showing up at all. Initially the drive mounted fine out of the box.

Deprecated: Function createfunction is deprecated in /home/clients/ce8dc658147c71f5a2ee69/web/index.php on line 7. Sep 09, 2021 Show the mounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive on Mac destop Sometimes, the My Passport drive is recognized and mounted by the Mac, and you just don't see it. You can go to Finder Preferences and confirm if the 'External Disks' under 'Show these items on the desktop' is selected.

If the WD My Passport hard 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 you can't see files on the hard drive on Mac, 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 hard 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

Oct 20, 2019 HFS+ and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system are one and the same thing. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system is how it’s referred to on your Mac. And you’ll see that name within your Mac’s menus. WD My Passport for Mac is made to be ‘plug and play’. Plug the external hard drive into your Mac. Turn OFF the My Passport Wireless. Insert the SD Card. Turn ON the My Passport Wireless. The My Passport Wireless will boot up, then will start flashing a White LED while the update is happening. Once the update is complete the LED will return to the normal ON state. List of all WD firmware and software available for download.

Why isn't My Passport drive 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 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 hard 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 hard drive not showing up. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport 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 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 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 hard drive undetectable.

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

If the WD My Passport 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 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 the connected 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 for Mac hard drive 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 My Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.

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

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the WD My Passport for Mac 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.

Microsoft office for mac 2019 catalina. Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually

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.

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

PassportMac

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.

My Passport External Hard Drive Not Showing

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

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

If you can't mount the WD My Passport 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 hard drive.

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

Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.

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 lost data from the WD My Passport hard drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is free hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover lost data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable 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 lost data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac

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

Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

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

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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 hard drive with no fuss.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac 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 My Passport for Mac external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, it means the WD hard 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.

Is Wd My Passport For Mac Compatible With Catalina Windows

Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport drives for Mac

Is Wd My Passport For Mac Compatible With Catalina Islands

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

  • Make sure that your WD My Passport hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
  • Always safely and properly unmount 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).

Summary: This article analyzes why the WD My Passport for Mac drive is not mounting/working on Mac and how to fix this issue. If you worry about losing data, you can recover data from the WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac at first.

Hi all, New to this community. I recently (yesterday) bought a new My Passport fo Mac 1tb. I plugged it in last night and it worked great, backing up my data via Time Machine. Unplugged it, and now when I plug it in nothing happens. My MBP won’t recognize it. Any ideas as to what happened? Thanks in advance! Turn On Your Mac And Log In. Plug in your WD My Passport’s USB cable into its Micro USB B port. Then plug the other end into a USB port on your Mac. The WD My Passport gets its power from the Mac and the drive’s LED light will start flashing as it powers up.

This page will analyze why WD My Passport drive won't mount on Mac, and provides 7 possible solutions to this issue.

  • 1. 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

What is meant by mounting a WD My Passport drive on Mac?

The WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is specially designed for Mac mini computers, iMacs, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. You can access My passport for Mac drives only when macOS recognizes the format of the drive. This process is called mounting.

However, once your computer fails to recognize that format (also known as file system), the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting on Mac computer.

Why is WD My Passport for Mac not mounting?

WD hard drives, including My Passport and Easystore, won't mount on Mac when the disk format is not recognized. Such error could be caused by virus infection, sudden power failure, sudden power outage, unwanted interruption during transferring data, etc. If the external hard drive won't mount, you can't open this WD My Passport for Mac drive and access your important files.

Here is one typical case from forums:

WD My Passport for Mac hard drive (2 TB) won't mount on my MacBook Air, grayed out in Disk Utility. I have 1 TB family photos on this hard drive, which are very precious for me. How to fix if WD My Passport for Mac not working on Mac? Any data recovery solution? Thanks a lot!

If you haven't got an effective workaround when WD My passport hard drive fails to mount in Finder or Disk Utility, this page will help. You'll know how to mount the Western Digital my passport drive on Mac again.

How to fix the unmounted WD My Passport hard drive on Mac?

The connected WD My Passport drive should be automatically mounted on the desktop, in Finder and Disk Utility. When it won't mount on Mac as you expect, you can try these methods.

1. Show the mounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive on Mac destop

Sometimes, the My Passport drive is recognized and mounted by the Mac, and you just don't see it. You can go to Finder > Preferences and confirm if the 'External Disks' under 'Show these items on the desktop' is selected. This will ensure if the external drives connected to this Mac are allowed to show on the desktop.

But if your WD My Passport drive is not even showing up, it's reasonable that you can't see it mounting on Mac. Then, you shoud check the connections and some hardware issues.

2. Force Mount the WD Mac hard drive in Disk Utility

You can go to Utility and see if this hard drive appears in the left sidebar. If your WD My Passport for Mac drive for Mac is not mounting but grayed out in Disk Utility, you can right-click and select the 'Mount' button to force mount the hard drive. However, if this external hard drive is corrupted, the 'Mount' button will not be available and you need to try the next solution.

But sometimes, you can't mount a hard drive on Mac because of internal disk errors like file system corruption, partition table lost, the directory is corrupted, etc. You WD My Passport for Mac drive won't be recognized by your Mac in these cases. Fortunately, you can fix the hard drive not mounting issue with the native disk repair tool, First Aid.

3. Run First Aid to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting error

First Aid is a Mac built-in tool to verify and check minor problems of a hard disk. Whenever you can't mount a WD hard drive or My Passport for Mac is not working, First Aid should be a good disk repair tool.

  • Step 1: Go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility/, then click Continue.
  • Step 2: In the sidebar, select the unmounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive.
  • Step 3: Click the 'First Aid' button.
  • Step 4: Click Run.

If Disk Utility reports that the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive appears to be OK or has been repaired, you're done. Otherwise, this WD My Passport drive has been corrupted. You have to retrieve your data from this corrupted hard drive as soon as possible.

When those methods didn't make any difference and the WD My passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting still, you need to check some hardware issues that get involved in the disk connection.

Let's start with some basics factors.

4. Check the power supply of the WD My Passport for Mac drive

It's well known that insufficient or no power supply in USB ports could also lead to hard drive not mounting issue. Therefore, you should make sure the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is getting the appropriate power. If the drive came with a Y-cable, use both USB connectors. Moreover, do not connect the drive through a USB hub, connect it directly to the Mac. Make sure the power adapter is connected directly to a wall outlet, not to an extension cord.

My passport external hard drive not showingMy Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

5. Check the USB cable

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Download

When external hard drive is not showing up on Mac, ensure the cable is properly connected to both the drive and computer. Then try connecting your WD My Passport for Mac hard drive with a new USB cable if you can fetch another one.

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Macbook

6. Check the USB port of your Mac

If the problem still continues, try using a different USB port. Perhaps your Mac has two USB port - the back and front ones. Assuming the My passport driveis plugged in the front USB port, try to insert the drive to the back USB port.

7. Check for driver update

If the hardware seems to be OK, let's check the software that related to this disk problem. Midi editor for mpd32 mapping mac. The My passport disk driver, a software component, bridges the operating system and the drive to communicate with each other. But the files of My passport driver could be deleted, outdated, or corrupted for virus invasion or misoperation.

So, when the WD My Passport drive is not working or the external hard drive won't mount on Mac, check the disk driver.

  • Step 1: Click the Apple icon and select 'App Store…'
  • Step 2: Click Update (NOT UPGRADE!) to install a specific update or Update All to install all available updates.

Sometimes, WD My Passport for Mac driver, software, and WD disk tool are needed, especially when you want to open a WD My Passport for Mac drive that is locked. You can go to WD official website and download software for WD My Passport troubleshooting and for WD My Passport driver update.

How to fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error without losing data?

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

However, if WD My Passport for Mac hard drive still won't mount on Mac, the last solutions is to reformat the hard drive. But reformatting will delete all data stored on the hard drive, and most of the time, many important files are stored on the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive.

Wd My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up In My Computer

If you haven't backed up important files, how can you recover files from the WD My Passport drive? It's high time to recover lost data from the unmounted hard drive first.

Step 1: Recover lost data from unmountable hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac

As for Mac data recovery, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is highly recommended as it's a free Mac data recovery software. It can easily retrieve files from WD Passport drives. This software can recover lost data from corrupted hard drive, unreadable hard drives, formatted hard drives, unrecognized hard drives, unmountable hard drives, inaccessible hard drives, and recover lost data from uninitialized hard drive.

You can use this hard drive data recovery software on macOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 Sierra and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

  • 1. Free download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
  • 2. Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac and select the unmounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive.
  • 3. Click 'Scan' to search for all lost files on this drive.
  • 4. Preview the listed scanning results, choose files we want, and click 'Recover' button to get them back.

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Download

Hopefully, you'll get all your files off after the WD My Passport is not working nor mounting.

Step 2: Fix WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting error by reformatting

After getting lost files back, you can fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error by reformatting without worrying about losing data. This will reset the WD My Passport hard drive.

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• Guide to reformat WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive

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Conclusion

WD My passport for Mac hard drives always offer quick and easy way to expand the storage space of your computer. It has amazing features like cloud storage, password protection with hard drive encryption, and compatiblity with Apple's Time Machine backup software, so that you can store a massive amount of photos, videos, music and documents.

Wd My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up

But the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting issue will call a halt on all these good things. You need to repair the WD My Passport for Mac that is not working or corrupted first, and recover data with the assistance of iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

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For any questions or suggestions, please email us below.

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