My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac

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The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go to. Apple (in the top toolbar menu) About This Mac Storage. See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop. Erase the hard drive’s settings/data. 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. This is only the second time I’ve ever used this, I’m just wondering what the.bleep. is the problem.

External hard drives are not only renowned for their data storing capability but also for their portability function. Whenever you connect your external hard drive to the USB port of your Mac computer, it shows up not only on the desktop but also in the Finder menu on the left-hand side under Locations or Devices.

Due to various reasons which are mentioned below, you might find your external hard drive not showing up on Mac. If you have saved all your crucial backup on the external drive, MacBook not recognizing external hard drive can lead to a data loss scenario.

In this article find out:

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Air

Why is my external hard drive not showing up Mac?

  • External hard drive corruption.
  • Physical damage to the external hard drive.
  • Faulty USB connector.
  • Problem with Mac USB ports.
  • Hidden external drive.
  • Improper formatting on the external hard drive.
  • Recent macOS Big Sur or Catalina update issue.

Before you move on to find proven ways to troubleshoot external drive not showing up on Mac, let us first know how to recover data from it.

How to Recover Data from External hard drive not showing up on Mac?

Download Remo Recover Mac, a user-friendly tool to recover data from internal and external storage devices like external HDD, SSD, USB, SD card, etc. The tool supports recovery of more than 300 file types such as photos, videos, PDF files, audio files, raw images, Office files. Using this tool, you can easily restore data from MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, WD MY Passport, Seagate external hard drive, and many more.

Steps to Recover data from External hard drive not showing up on Mac:

Download and install Remo Recover (Mac/ Windows)> Launch the tool and click on Recover Volumes/ Drives option > Choose Volume Recovery and select the external hard drive that is not showing up on Mac to restore data from it > Click on Advance Scan button to start data recovery process > After scanning completes, select the files which you want to recover from your external hard drive not showing up Mac > Finally, click Save button to restore the selected files to any location of your choice.

How to Fix External hard drive not showing up on Mac?

1. Connect the External Hard drive Properly

The first and foremost thing to do if your external hard drive not showing up on Mac is to check if the external hard disk is properly connected or not. Once, it is confirmed that the external hard drive is properly connected to your Mac device, then your Mac should easily recognize the external hard drive and the data saved on it.

If your Mac not recognizing external hard drive due to any hardware issues, you can plugin the unrecognized external hard drive into a different USB port of your Mac. It might look like child's play but inserting an external hard disk to another or healthy USB port can help you understand whether the issue is pertaining to the hard drive failure or USB cable.

2. Fix issues with the USB cable

Your external hard drive not showing up on Mac can be due to the USB cable or HDMI cable connecting the external hard drive to your MacBook Pro or Air.

  • Accessing data from an external hard drive on Mac is dependent on the USB cable. If the USB cable is not properly connected to your device then, Mac won’t recognize the external hard drive.
  • If your USB cable is damaged, then fixing it becomes a priority to access your external hard disk on Mac. Hence, make use of a different USB cable to connect the external hard drive to a Mac computer.

Quick Note: If your MacBook is having USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 ports, then use USB-C to USB adapter to connect the external hard drive to your Mac.

3. Reset Mac computer

Resetting a Mac machine can reboot a few system settings to its default and ensure any issue with respect to it is resolved. This can also help you fix the external hard drive not booting issue due to Mac operating system. To Restart your Mac;

Go to the Apple menu and click Restart. (or) Press and hold the power key until a dialog box displays and hit the Restart or press R key.

4. Change Preference Settings

One of the reasons why the external hard drive does not show up on Mac is due to Preference settings. If you have not allowed your Mac to access the external hard disk in the preference setting, then Mac won’t show up external hard disk on the desktop. To allow your Mac to show up the external hard drive, edit the preference setting using the below steps;

  • Open a Finder window.
  • Go to Preference and select General.
  • Under “Show these items on the desktop”, check the External disks option.

In most cases, this method will resolve your issue of external hard drive not showing up on Mac desktop or Finder menu.

If your Mac not recognizing external hard drive despite performing the above steps or if this preference setting is already set up, then move down to the below section.

5. Use different Mac or Windows PC

If you still find your Mac not recognizing hard drive then, try connecting the external hard disk to a different Mac system, sometimes there might be a problem with your Mac computer itself.

Connect your external hard drive to a different Mac to find out whether it is mounting on it or not. If the external HDD is mounting on the new or different Mac, then the problem is with your old Mac. In case, if the external hard drive not showing up on both Mac devices, then connect it to a Windows computer.

Quick Note: If your external hard drive is accessible on Windows 10 but not on Mac, then the external hard disk is formatted for Windows computers and not for Mac systems. Check out this article on how to make an external hard disk compatible with Mac.

6. Use Disk Utility

Once you find out that the Mac device is not responsible for the external hard drive not showing up issue. Follow the below steps to run the first aid utility to fix external hard drive corruption.

  • Navigate to Go > Utilities > Applications > Disk Utility
  • If your external hard drive appears in the Disk Utility, right-click on the drive and select Mount. This will make your external hard drive option available on the desktop and in the Finder menu. Thus, you can access all your files present on the external hard drive.

    (Note: If the Mac has already mounted your external hard drive (volume) then, the option Unmount will be displayed.)
  • If the drive is not accessible then, the Mount option will be greyed out.

    (Note: To repair your inaccessible or not showing external hard drive Run First Aid.)
  • Now, choose the First Aid option and click Run.

  • After running the First Aid, if the Disk Utility detects any issues or errors on the external hard drive then, click Repair Disk.
Passport

Using this method, you can easily repair minor corruption and access an unrecognized external hard drive on Mac. In case, if the first aid utility fails to repair the external hard drive or SSD, this indicates the following 2 reasons;

A) Your external drive is severely corrupt or broken: If First Aid Disk Utility fails to repair the drive, it could be due to the RAW or broken drive. The file system registry that holds the information of the data present on the drive gets broken or damaged then, Mac does not recognize the external hard drive.

B) The external hard drive file system is not compatible with Mac: External hard drive or USB is formatted using a file system that your Mac cannot read. For example, if an external hard drive is formatted using the NTFS file system then, no Mac computer can read or write the external hard drive. In the same way, if the external hard drive or USB is formatted with the HFS+ file system then, no Windows operating system can support it.

ExFAT and FAT32 are the two most common file systems that can be easily supported by both Windows and Mac operating systems.

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Operating System

Now, the last thing to do to fix the external hard drive not showing up on Mac is to format it using the compatible Mac file systems like exFAT, FAT32, HFS+, or APFS.

7. Format unrecognized External hard drive

Formatting the external HDD on Mac leads to a data loss scenario. Before you format your external hard drive to exFAT, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), FAT, or APFS file system, it is suggested to recover data from it using Remo Recover Mac.

Remo Recover (Mac/ Windows) is designed with advanced scanning algorithms to effortlessly recover files from corrupt, unrecognized, formatted, or inaccessible external hard drive on Mac. This tool is compatible with all the versions of Windows and Mac operating systems including the latest Windows 10 or Mac Big Sur.

To format external hard drive not showing up on Mac:

  1. Navigate to Disk Utility
  2. Select the external hard drive not showing up on Mac and click the Erase option
  3. Now, give a new name to your external hard drive (optional)
  4. Click the Format button to choose the format type you want to perform on it. (Select exFAT if you want to make sure it's compatible with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is probably the best option)
  5. Click on the Erase optionand wait until the Disk utility function removes all the files present on the external hard disk and then reformat it with the selected file system.

Conclusion

In most cases, editing the Preference setting to show the external hard drive on the desktop fixes the issue. However, if the external hard drive is corrupt then, you should repair it using First Aid utility or format it with compatible Mac file systems like exFAT or APFS.

Western Digital My Passport is a series of portable hard drives. Till now there are six types of My Passport drives available, Essential Edition, Essential SE Edition, Elite Edition, Essential for Mac, Studio Edition and the Essential SE for Mac. Due to their small size like passport and huge data storage capability, WD My Passport hard drive has become widely popular among business as well as general users. The Western Digital hard drive is a popular choice to take data backup, especially the integrated SD card slot, which make it a most preferred choice for professional photographers who need to quick back up their pictures and other media files.

However, these drives are prone to the chances of photo loss due to technical cause or human errors. After any data loss, it is compulsory to know the reason of cause so that next time it can be avoided.

Let’s have a look at the major causes that lead to the photo loss from WD external hard drive:

• Wrong Formatting:

At times, after connecting your My Passport hard drive to the Mac machine, it starts showing a message: “The drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?”. This message appears if the stored data become inaccessible and Mac machine is not able to read it. If you select ‘No’ option, then the files remains inaccessible on your drive, but if you select ‘Yes’ then unfortunately you will surely lose all your stored photos and other files, and your drive becomes free from errors or corruptions.

• Virus Attack:

It may be possible that your WD hard drive become the virus infected due to connection with virus infected Mac machine. There could be multiple reasons of virus infected machine, such as wrong file downloaded from the Internet, connecting a virus infected storage device, attaching virus infected emails, etc. The virus infections lead to corrupt WD hard drive, which make your stored files inaccessible and shows errors while accessing the files, as well as slows down the system’s performance.

• File Loss While Transferring:

At times, a sudden interruption during file transfer may lead to data loss. For example, if you are transferring files by using ‘CUT’ and ‘PASTE’ commands from WD hard drive to your Mac and suddenly you may encounter a sudden power surge, uncertain system shutdown and removal of WD My Passport then it will be a major cause of photo loss.

• Accidental Deletion:

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Computer

This is very common and often happen incident, where you might accidentally delete some of your important files from WD external hard drive and lose your data permanently. Since any external drive does not support Trash Bin, so deleted photos and other files will not be found out anywhere in the hard drive even if you want to restore them back.

After data loss from WD My Passport external hard drive due to any reason makes users regret. Therefore, taking backup of every important picture is probably the best and the easiest way to get back the lost photos. However, what if there is no backup, the only way to get back your lost images is to take the help of professional photo recovery software to recover all lost photos and other media files from WD portable hard drive. To retrieve photos from Portable hard drives, it is important that you intend to recover files right after the data loss issue has occurred, it is better not to access your external hard drive unnecessarily.

Passport For Mac

There are many photo recovery software available that support recovery from WD My Passport hard drives. You only have to choose a right utility according to your requirement and recover your lost photos as well as other media files. As these drives follow different hard drive structure for both Mac and Windows OS, therefore, make sure that you must have selected the right Photo recovery tool according to the compatibility with your operating system.

These professional utilities are easy to use; therefore, there is no need to be a technical expert to use them. Just download a perfect tool according to your requirement and follow the instruction provided. Make sure, you have chosen reputed photo recovery software, so that there is no risk of permanent data loss.

Tips to Avoid Data Loss:

• Try not to store complete data in a single location. In case you encounter any problem with your OS and due to which you are unable to start up the computer, then usually to will resolve after re-installing the OS. In this process all the data stored on system partition gets lost. Therefore, it is better to create at least two partitions if you have only one drive.

• Use genuine anti-virus program on your system. Additionally, try to avoid insecure websites and keep your anti-virus program updated. There is much malicious software available on the Internet, which may be risky for your data safety. These injurious programs include viruses, Trojans and worms with them, and during the installation process they secretly install all of these malware on your system.

My Passport Hard Drive Not Showing Up Mac Download

• Take regular backup of your important data. It is better to take backup of your important files instead of frequent backups.