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. Because WD My Passpor. Download a third-party software to repair corrupted files in the WD My Passport drive. Make sure to download the software from a trusted source. Launch the software and right-click on the drive. Then, select Check the File System option. Click on the Start button to fix the detected issues. After the repairing process is complete, click Finish. To Eject your WD My Passport drive from your Mac. You do this by right clicking on your WD My Passport icon on your desktop. Then you select Eject from the menu. Right Click to Eject External Drive. Everything about WD My Passport is great except one, reparability. The small form factor means that WD My Passport repair is not the easiest one to do. And hard disk errors can happen from both the hardware and software side of things. So before you jump into conclusions, you need to understand the root of the problem.
Hard drives are important in our daily activities because they help us store a lot of data such as documents, photos, and videos as well as ease the files transfer from one Mac to another. Amongst the variety of external hard drives, Western Digital My Passport is an example of a reliable trustworthy external hard drive. As the name entails, WD is designed to have the size of a passport in order to increase portability and is produced in different styles of color to fit user demands. WD is a good hard drive and has features such as;
- Transferring files from My Passport to Mac and vice versa
- Performing an auto backup
- Can be encrypted to protect with a password
- Easy to use
- Outsmarts other hard drives with unique features such as the ability to connect to popular social media and cloud storage services permitting you to import your information to WD my passport
Part 1. How to Use WD My Passport on Mac
For efficient transfers, it is recommended to format your WD drive to a format compatible with Mac which will be covered further in this tutorial. Transferring files between WD My Passport and Mac is a simple process. In order to perform a file transfer,
1. Plug the USB cable from WD my Passport drive to a free functional USB port on your Mac.
2. Enter My Passport by clicking on the icon present on the desktop.
3. You can copy and paste any file from your Mac to your Passport and vice versa.
4.When the transfer process is complete, drag the 'My Passport' icon above the 'Trash' icon then release your mouse button. This enables you to safely eject your WD My Passport drive.
Part 2. Western Digital My Passport does not show on Mac
Normally, after plugging your WD drive, it automatically shows up on your Mac. Sometimes, it does not show up due to a number of reasons such as
- 1. faulty cable: You may connect your WD to your Mac with a cable that is damaged and as a result of that, your device does not show up on your Mac as expected.
- 2. damaged USB port: At times, the port of your Mac can be the issue and a simple change in the port can solve the issue.
- 3. incorrect format of the drive: Some drives are formatted in such a way that they can only be used on windows, others can only be used on Mac and some can be used on both. To look for the format,
- Go to the Apple logo on the toolbar menu.
- Proceed to “About This Mac”.
- Go to storage and from there you can check the drive information.
- Easy to use
- 4. System failure can also result to your WD My Passport not showing up.
- 5. Malware infection: A malware problem such as a virus attack may be the cause of the problem.
- 6. Corrupted WD My Passport: This happens when the system cannot finish writing data to a file and this can result to the drive not showing up.
- 7. Motherboard Problems too can lead to the issue.
How to Fix Western Digital My Password Not Showing on Mac
If you have been wondering on how to make WD function on Mac, this section will let you know how to.
1. Show External Hard Drive icon on Desktop
Normally when a WD My Passport is connected to Mac, it automatically recognizes the device and My Passport gets mounted on the desktop immediately. This drive then appears on Finder in the left-hand column below devices. But as a result of problems such as corrupted files, the external hard drive doesn’t show up. In order to fix the external hard drive not showing,
1. Go to Finder and click on Preferences.
2. In the General tab, tick the External disks option to make sure WD My Passport shows up on the desktop.
3. Then go to the sidebar tab, tick External disks to ensure it shows up on Finder. You can equally choose the folders and devices which you want to be shown in the Finder Window’s left-hand column.
After doing this, the WD My Passport’s icon will appear on the desktop if it is properly connected to Mac through a working port.
2. Check out Western Digital My Password USB Cable Appears in Disk Utility or Not
After trying solution 1, if WD is not showing up on Finder still, you should check if it shows on Disk Utility. To ensure that WD My Passport is properly connected to Mac with a working cable and or port, you to have check if it appears in disk utility or it doesn’t(will be shown below). After checking, there are two different situations that may be at hand.
EITHER
Your WD My Passport has been detected but it is grayed out, that is it is not mounting.
OR
WD My Passport has been detected but is not recognized and is not showing up at all.
3. Perform a manual Mounting
How To Use Wd My Passport
Not every hard drive is automatically mounted in Disk Utility when detected. If you see your WD My Passport not mounting automatically, you can mount it manually in the following way;
1. Go to Application then proceed to Utilities.
2. Go to Disk Utility.
3. Click Show all devices in the view option.
4. Choose your WD my Passport drive and click on the Mount button located at the top of Disk. Utility Window or you can directly mount by clicking on the mount icon beside the drive.
4. Repair your WD My Passport drive using First Aid
If it your WD My Passport is detected but not recognized, it cannot be mounted and so it has to be repaired using First Aid which is a tool on Mac that analyzes and repairs basic problems of the hard drive. To perform a repair,
1. Proceed to Disk Utility and choose your WD My Passport.
2. Click on First Aid at the top of the Disk Utility window.
3. A message will pop up and click on Run to start the repair of an undetected external hard drive.
4. Once the repairs are finished, click on Done.
5. How to Format Western Digital My Passport to exFAT for Mac
Sometimes, First Aid won’t be able to repair grayed hard drives but this can be fixed by formatting WD My Passport to exFAT format for Mac. This is because, First Aid cannot fix a disk file system that has been damaged so formatting it to a new format makes a new file system which replaces the damaged file system. To format WD My Passport;
1. Go to Disk Utility.
2. Choose your WD My Passport in the left sidebar.
3. Click on Erase at the top of the Disk Utility Window.
4. A window will pop up requiring you to enter information concerning (new name, format (exFAT), and partition scheme).
5. Once all information is entered, click on Erase.
Please note that this will erase everything found on your WD My Passport drive hence backing it up before performing the process is recommended.
Part 3. Western Digital My Passport for Mac Data Recovery
If you have already erased your WD My Passport drive and lost all your information, you don’t have to worry because there is still a possibility of recovering all your information using special software known as iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac. This is the best online data recovery solution. It is easy to use as no special training is required to use it. Also, it is very safe (Virus and risk-free) and effective for data recovery on Mac as it is compatible with many different types of files as well as with the different versions of Mac.
In order to recover data from your WD My Passport on Mac,
1.Download iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac
When the download is completed install the software on your Mac. It is virus-free so it is safe.
2. Choose the Files to Scan
By default, all the main file types will be chosen. If you want only a specific file type, you may unselect the others but if you want to recover everything, you should leave every file type selected and click on 'Start' to recover files from external hard drive on Mac.
3. Select your WD My Passport
After clicking on the Start, all devices available on your Mac will be listed. From the list, choose your WD My Passport drive and click on 'Scan'. By default, it will start the normal scanning process.
4. Preview and recover your files
After the normal scanning which takes a few minutes, you will see file types arranged on the left side of the window and the file on the other side of the window. When you click on a category of files on the left, the corresponding recovered files will show up on the right. If you find your files, select them and click on 'Recover' so save them on the drive. If you do not find your files, you have the option to perform a deep scan which is located on the top left corner of the window. A deep scan is more effective although it takes more time than a normal scan.
How To Disassemble Wd My Passport For Mac Catalina
This tutorial summarizes how WD works on Mac, how to use WD on Mac, and how to fix WD on Mac when it has issues.