My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up

'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. 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 operation to this external and then you can use data recovery software to get back lost data.

Look, I have already formated my passport for mac using HFS+, NTFS and FAT32 but when I connect it on a Windows Vista notebook, it detects the drive, but the icon doesnt appear. Its like: 'There IS a hard drive here. But I will not show you, da da da daaa!' I looked up many threads here, but no success. I am having WD My passport Ultra (1tb) and its not recognized in any USB 3.0 ports, after initial one time! If I try my HDD in any USB 2.0 ports its recognized instantly. I tried reinstalling drivers from device manager, but same problem. PS: In WIN 7 OS, it gets recognized in all USB 3.0 ports as.

Data Recovery When WD My Passport Is Not Readable on Mac

For an unreadable external hard drive data recovery, you need to rely on a professional data recovery program. iCare Data Recovery 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. You just need to plug the external to a PC, and this data recovery software will deep scan the external even if it cannot work normally. iCare Data Recovery is a read-only program which is compatible with Windows OS, so you should plug your external to a Windows PC in order to retrieve all lost data when the WD My Passport is not recognized on Mac. Now, you can follow the steps below to recover unreadable data:

Step1. Download and install iCare Data Recovery on Windows PC. Run the software and choose a proper scan mode.

Step2. Select the WD My Passport external and then wait the software to scan it.

Step3. When scanning is completed, you can preview found files and then save the lost data to another drive.

Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work 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.

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Time Machine system requirements

Before using Time Machine, you need an external storage solution, sold separately:

External hard drive connected to a USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt port on your Mac
Time Capsule or macOS Server on your network
External hard drive connected to the USB port of an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) on your network
If your backup drive isn't connected using one of these methods, Time Machine might not work. Check with the device manufacturer for compatibility and connection information.

If your setup meets these requirements, but you still can't use Time Machine, check these things:

Check your Mac

Make sure that your Mac software is up to date.
Restart your Mac and see if the issue continues.

Check your AirPort base station

If you're using an AirPort Time Capsule or a drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station, make sure that your AirPort firmware is up to date.
Restart your base station and see if the issue continues. To restart, unplug the base station from AC power for 5 seconds, then plug it back in.

Check your network connection

If you back up to a server, AirPort Time Capsule, or drive connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, make sure that your Mac is connected to the same network as your backup drive. You can select your wireless network from the Wi-Fi status menu.

Check your backup

If you back up to a server, AirPort Time Capsule, or drive connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, make sure that your current Time Machine backup doesn't have any issues that could prevent further backups:

While holding down the Option key on your keyboard, click the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, then choose Verify Backups.
If Time Machine finds an issue with your backup, it displays a message with details. Follow the onscreen instructions.

Check your drives

If you're using a drive connected to a port on your Mac or AirPort Extreme Base Station, make sure that the drive is turned on.
If you're using a USB hub or a similar device, try connecting the drive directly to your Mac or base station.
If you're backing up to an external third-party drive, check with the drive manufacturer to make sure the drive's firmware is up to date.
If you're backing up to an external drive, check the formatting of the drive. Time Machine requires that an external drive be formatted like a Mac startup disk: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT). If you select a differently formatted drive for use with Time Machine, your Mac automatically prompts you to erase it for Time Machine.
Reformatting a disk erases all data stored on the disk, so you might want to move important files to another disk first.

If your drive is already formatted correctly, turn off Time Machine, then check it for problems:

To check the drive of an AirPort Time Capsule, follow the steps to verify an AirPort Time Capsule drive.
To check an external drive connected to your Mac, open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Then use the First Aid feature in Disk Utility to verify your disk. Do this for your startup disk as well.