WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac? This tutorial will show you how to fix WD My Passport not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12. Sep 06, 2019 You plug in the WD My Passport Into Your Mac; You format your WD My Passport to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Next you format your WD My Passport drive to an ExFAT file system. After that you can use your WD Passport on both Mac and PC. And the whole thing takes only a few minutes to do.
WD My Passport Ultra 1TB drive not detected on PC, how to fix it
'I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB portable drive for storing movies, photos, and important personal files. This morning, WD My Passport suddenly became inaccessible, couldn't be detected by my computer.
The WD hard drive failed to show up on my PC and I couldn't access saved data either. Is there a possible way that can help me to repair the not detectable WD drive to work again?'
The WD hard drive failed to show up on my PC and I couldn't access saved data either. Is there a possible way that can help me to repair the not detectable WD drive to work again?'
If you are having a similar problem on your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or other brands of external hard drive or devices, don't worry. Here in the below, we'll show you how to fix and repair not detectable or unrecognized WD My Passport or other brands of the external hard drive to work again.
Quick Fix. Try a different USB cable or PC
When your computer cannot detect or read your WD hard drive, you can first try to change the USB cable and connect it with another USB port or new PC to see if the drive can be read or not.
1. If the drive can be read via new a USB cable or on a new PC, then the drive is working fine. The problem exists on the USB cable.
2. If the WD drive cannot be detected either, you can selectively follow below 3 methods to get problems fixed and repair the WD My Passport drive to work again.
Method 1. Change WD drive letter and path to make WD drive detectable
When your WD become inaccessible, you can follow the guidelines below to change WD drive letter and path to make it detectable and accessible again in Windows PC:
Step 1. Press Win + R to bring up Run dialog > Type: diskmgmt.msc to open Disk Management.
![Western Digital My Passport For Mac High Sierra Update Western Digital My Passport For Mac High Sierra Update](/uploads/1/2/6/5/126524899/103307265.jpg)
Step 2. Right-click on WD drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Step 3. Click Add and choose the drive letter beside Assign the following drive letter > Click OK.
If WD drive has already assigned with a letter, click Change to choose another letter for it.
If WD drive has already assigned with a letter, click Change to choose another letter for it.
Step 4. Then restart PC and you can check out whether the problem still exists or not.
Method 2. Fix corrupted system files and update device driver on WD drive
If the system files corrupted or the WD device driver is outdated, you won't be able to access the drive. Follow to see how to fix corrupted system files and update WD device driver now:
1. Fix bad sectors and corrupted system files on WD drive
Download EaseUS partition manager software to repair corrupted system files on WD hard drive or external hard drive.
Step 1: Open EaseUS Partition Master on your computer. Then locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose 'Check File System'.
Step 2: In the Check File System window, keep the 'Try to fix errors if found' option selected and click 'Start'.
My Passport For Mac Drivers
Step 3: The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it has completed, click 'Finish'.
2. Update WD device driver
1. Right-click on the Windows icon at the left corner and select Device Manager.
2. Find and expand Disk Drivers, Portable Devices, Universal Serial USB Controllers or Other devices to see if WD device is shown as Unknown device.
3. Right-click on Unknown device > select Properties.
4. Go to Details tab > Set Property to be Hardware Ids.
5. Right-click the top Value and click Copy.
6. Paste what you copy into a browser to search the correct device driver, find and download the correct WD device driver and install it on your PC.
7. Then restart your computer and everything shall work fine with your WD My Passport Ultra drive.
Method 3. Uninstall/Reinstall USB controllers on WD My Passport drive
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon at the left corner and select Device Manager.
Step 2. Find and expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click on USB controllers on your WD drive and select Uninstall device.
Step 3. Restart the computer and Microsoft will automatically reinstall the USB controllers software for your WD drive.
After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.
After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.
Extra Important Tips
If your WD hard drive shows up and can be detected normally again, please don't rush to use it. Please do these tips first:
- 1. Copy and backup important data from your WD hard drive to another storage device.
- 2. Format WD hard drive or external hard drive to NTFS for saving data again.
If the WD hard drive still doesn't show up or cannot be detected, some physical errors may have occurred to your device. Please try these tips for a guide:
- 1. Search and find some manual guide online to check the physical error on your WD hard drive.
- 2. Or you can take your WD drive to a local hard drive repair center for professional help. (If you are not professional, please try this tip.)
Posted by Katrina to Mac Data Recovery 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.
However, it 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
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 Data Recovery for Mac 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 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.
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.
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.
Hope this tutorial can help to fix WD external hard drive not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on Mac. 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?
My Passport For Mac 4tb
Still have questions?