In this case, we advise you to check if the serial number of the WD hard drive is still in warranty so that you can ask for a repair or replacement service. Select the external hard drive, then click Scan to start scanning for lost files. The situation will erode your calmness especially when you have extremely important files in the unrecognized external hard drive. Thankfully, there is an app for that. 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. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Setapp lives on Mac and iOS. Support APFS, encrypted APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT and exFAT file system. It helps to verify and repair a range of issues related to startup HD and external drive problems. Powerful enough to retrieve long-lost, mistakenly deleted files from Macs, external hard drives and USB drives and camera cards. More often than not, an external hard drive doesn't show up on Mac simply because your Mac's USB cable or USB port is bad. If you’ve got a battery that you can’t remove: For Macs with removable batteries, you need to switch them off, remove the battery, then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. Try another port on your Mac. This problem may occur when your hard drive is not receiving enough power from the port. From the above description, we can see several factors can cause the hard dive or external hard drive not showing up issue. It’s annoying, especially when you need to transfer something right then. As a result, Mac can't read and recognize it. If your drive is having problems, you can try to fix them yourself with First Aid and therefore get access to your files. Select the WD unmountable external hard drive and click the. Provide a name and a format to erase the drive. This problem may occur when your hard drive is not receiving enough power from the port. However, sometimes, an external hard drive doesn't show up. Update macOS 4. If that is exactly what is happening to your WD external hard drive, follow the quick fixes and effective methods below to make the drive show up again. It doesn’t seem to recognize it. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available from Setapp, along with dozens of Mac apps that will make your life easier. Then use a different port to connect the external hard drive. Get your Windows computer connected to seagate external drive or WD passport. 2. Solution 2: Show WD external hard drive in the Finder. Resolve external drive not showing up mac with this best method of Power. Mount the external hard drive. After doing all these basic checks, if the WD hard drive doesn’t show up on Mac still, you can try out the following solutions one by one. Methods 4: Update WD hard drive device driver If your WD hard drive is even not showing up in Windows 10 Disk Management, you could consider whether there is something wrong with the WD hard drive device driver. Click Start > Type: devmgmt.msc in the Search box and hit Enter. I have a WD 2TB Hard drive. Disk Drill can help to identify and restore this information. iPhoto, Words). I'm using Mac OSx Yosemite Version 10.10.2 and the last time i conntected my WD External Hard Drive was just 5 days ago and I disconnected correctly etc. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. You can find Console under Applications > Utilities > Console. However, if the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, the great chance is that the WD hard drive is physically broken. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD My Passport for Mac not showing up or not working. On the following screen click on Disk Management. Transferring can be done the same way – with FAT32, or via network. If the setting is somehow changed, the WD hard drive will stop showing up on the desktop. You can also mount cloud storage as local drive on your Mac. WD Elements Mac Not Recognized. If, however, you still don’t see any volume to the external drive then you may need to try some of the steps above again or read the Disk Drill Scanning FAQs. If you don’t have a drive to install Linux to, use virtual machine as an interface for it. Use the following Terminal command to enable Disk Utility’s debug menu and see all partitions: Attach your Ext2/Ext3 drive and locate the device name via Disk Utility. Solution 1: Show WD external hard drive on the desktop By default, your Mac is supposed to display the icons of all external disks on the desktop. Windows uses NTFS file formats, while Macs, up until the introduction of Sierra, have used HFS+. Here’s how to mount drives with FUSE: And that’s not the only case where Terminal helps you access external drive. You’ve Plugged In And WD Elements Not Showing Up On Mac? Once it's got its Letter, it WILL show up in Windows Explorer. However, if somebody chooses to hide some items, he or she can set up not to show them in the sidebar of the Finder. What’s your file format? There could be a few reasons why a USB flash drive isn’t making an appearance. Case 1: I have a WD My Passport portable USB hard drive which one of my computers can't detect when plugged in. While your Seagate, Western Digital, PS4, or Buffalo external hard drive connected to the Windows or Mac computer, the device did not show up. Drag them to another location, such as your desktop or a folder on your Mac. Change USB port/cable to detect WD external hard drive. After erasing the disk, detach and reattach the hard drive to the Mac. Latest macOS update; What happens here is when you update your macOS to the latest build or release, issues of incompatibility could arise. The detected and mounted internal and external disks will be shown up in the Finder. First, you have to figure out the mounting problem is caused by physical damages or logical errors by checking the disk in the Disk Utility. As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. If you…, If you’re working on improving the way your business runs, you’ve likely adopted a variety…. 4. Then format your drive as NTFS. The common issue is Ext2- and Ext3-formatted drives are not readable on macOS. In this case, the data on the unbootable Mac … Click on the external drive that you are trying to recover files from. You were expecting to see the drive icon on the desktop. Summary: In this blog, we’ll share different methods to address the ‘external hard drive not showing up on Mac’ issue on macOS Big Sur, Catalina and other lower versions. Then users can access the disk on the desktop directly. Select the unmountable WD external hard drive and click "Erase" on the top. Preview the searching results, choose the files you need, and click Recover to get them back. To set up your WD Elements drive to work on your Mac you’ll need to format it for Mac. Now it should show up on the right hand side and you can assign it a drive letter. Hard drive data recovery software for Mac like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can easily achieve the task. Remove the partition and reconnect to MacBook Pro. Faulty USB cable or port. Quick fix WD external hard drive not showing up/unrecognized/responding error 1. To mount a drive, open Disk Utility and look for the external hard drive in the list. Especially if System Information does recognize the USB or hard drive, but continues to hide it from you, disconnect the drive and try to find it using the Terminal, which you can find in Applications > Utilities. The software will give a real-time list of discovered files. Work on macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and earlier OS X versions to OS X 10.7. If your drive is powered on but still isn't appearing in File Explorer, it's time to do some digging. Repair external hard drive by using Disk Utility Check the USB connector — does it look damaged or misshapen in any way? 1. I have to connect it through a "bizarre way" to make it show up in explorer.I realizes there were threads related to the same issue, but it's not what I am looking for. After recovering important files from the WD hard drive, it is time to reformat it. But the following factors may also contribute to WD not showing up. Hopefully, the hard drive has shown up now. To do this, shut down or restart your Mac, switch it back on and immediately press these four keys together for at least 20 seconds: Option, Command, P, and R. It should look as though your Mac has started again; if it has, release the keys when you hear the second startup chime. Recover Data from Hard Drive Not Showing up. Solution 1: Show WD external hard drive on the desktop. Another option for reading Ext2/Ext3 disks is mounting disk with Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE). You’ll find my article on how you format the WD Elements hard drive here . Enable visibility of external hard drive 3. The methods we’ll cover are: 1. Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) if your Mac shuts down when you plug in an external hard drive. However, you can easily change the setting back. Then users can access the disk on the desktop directly. My WD Passport Ultra 2TB external hard drive is not showing up in explorer when I plug it into the USB port in a "normal way". Mount the Drive in Finder If you think the drive works fine, let us see if we can manually attach it to MacOS. By connecting Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon to your computer, you get more space for securely accessing and sharing files. 584165. its weird. First Aid tool will check the disk for errors and then attempt a repair as needed. when i attached my new hard drive to mac it works properly… but when i attached to windows its not showing… but showing on devices manager. Stay in the Disk Utility window, follow the easy steps to finish fixing the not showing up WD external hard drive. Show on my macbook Pro and I hear it spinning but does n't on... Tab you can easily achieve the task under Applications > utilities > console check on your Mac back on you. With it connect the external hard drive not showing up on Mac by reformatting formatted or been used a. 'S time to do some digging Google drive, it is time to do nothing USB. 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