Passport Not Showing Up On Mac
Suddenly this was not detected and following is happening after connecting in my laptop (Win 7 64 bit OS) a) Light appearing on the drive. B) Hearing sound from the drive. But not detected. Please help me on. Sep 08, 2019 Connecting up the WD Passport Drive on Mac. So I have a My Passport drive that I had back before my mac computer killed itself. It has pretty much every bit of information I really hold dear, and on any mac computer I can find everything on it. Trying to use it on my girlfriend’s computer is a completely different matter. It doesn’t register that the drive even exists, though the device connected noise sounds. It doesn’t give me.
This page is all about unresponsive beeping hard drives, explaining the fault in more detail and exploring the data recovery options available. We use a WD My Passport hard drive as an example but the information on this page applies to any beeping hard drive, not just WD.
- Dirty or loosely connected USB ports can create short currents, external hard drive's not showing up on Mac and struggling to read data. It’s common for a connector to get a bit wonky if you’ve used it for a while — the power contacts won’t align correctly.
- System persisted in not reconizing the WD my passport. After extensive research on the Web, it was found to be a power supply problem. When the SS ports were tested, the the voltage was dropping below the required amount to run the My passport. A mobile AC powered USB 2.0 hub was connected to the unit, and My Passport was reconized on the first.
- Reformat it to MAC, and transfer all the files. My hard drive isn’t showing up at ALLL now. After trying and trying finally an icon pops up on the desktop. There’s no yellow USB icon anymore labelled “My Passport” but a silver USB with what looks like a.
“I have a WD My Passport Ultra 2TB portable hard drive, which I have been taking back and forth to a clients site. Last week the drive when plugged into a USB port has begun to make 7 beeps, then 3 beeps followed by 3 beeps and a pause before repeating itself.”
This sounds very much like your My Passport hard drive has suffered some form of mechanical failure. Although portable hard drives are built to be more rugged and withstand more knocks than the 3.5″ hard drives that go into desktop machines, it’s important to know that all HDD hard drives are mechanical devices with moving parts. If they get knocked, dropped or similar they will eventually fail.
The ‘Standard’ Mechanical Failure
When most hard drives develop mechanical failures the result is a repetitive ticking noise that comes from the hard drive when it is first powered on, and the drive will not be detected. This is the hard drive trying to pass a self test before letting the computer take control of it. Each time the drive ticks it is actually resetting the position of it’s read/write head before initiating the self test again. In cases like this it is the actual read write heads of the hard drive that have failed. These will need to be replaced with a working set of heads before the drive will start to function again properly.
The Beeping Hard Drive
In your case there is a complication. Your hard drive may still have head damage, but there is another problem. Beeping hard drives usually indicate one of two things: Either
Beeping Hard Drive from Chris Seeley on Vimeo. Here’s an example of a beeping hard drive that arrived at the Data Clinic offices for data recovery. In this example the beeping is relatively quiet, some hard drives are much louder than this, but the problem are the same.
(1) The read write heads have stuck to the platter surface and this is preventing the hard drive platter from rotating. This is commonly referred to as static friction or ‘stiction’. Retrieving the data from hard drives with stiction involves freeing the heads from the disk surface without damaging either the heads or the platter and is a delicate operation. Many a hard drive’s data has been permanently lost through the the incorrect removal of stiction. Stiction problems should always be handled by skilled data recovery companies, do not let a well intentioned friend or a PC shop like PC World anywhere near a hard drive with stiction.
(2) The knock or fall has caused the motor inside the hard drive that rotates the platter to seize or become stuck. This used to be a very common problem with Toshiba laptop (2.5″) hard drives several years ago and bizarrely placing the hard drive on it’s side and starting the drive up would often relieve the problem. These days it’s not so easy. Depending on the model of hard drive there are two options, either replacing the spindle motor, or swapping the platters to another hard drive. Both these options are extremely difficult procedures. In the UK, Data Clinic and a couple of other companies are the only one’s that have the capability of doing this. Once again, don’t let a well meaning friend, local IT ‘expert’ or computer shop anywhere near a hard drive with a problem like this.
More information on mechanical hard drive faults can be found on this web site here and in a Q&A here.
Unresponsive Hard Drive? – Need Help?
If you have a hard drive that has stopped working for any reason and you want to get the data off of it, give us a call or fill out the enquiry form to your right. We’ll get straight back to you, or find your nearest Data Clinic data recovery location instead.
'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.
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.
#3 - Fix WD My Passport Not Showing UP on MAC with Disk Utility
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
Passport Not Showing Up 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 Aug 30, 2021
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Last updated on Aug 30, 2021
Wd Passport Not Showing Up On Mac
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