The NTFS drivers for macOS - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can help you read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drives on Mac. In the last month it has stopped showing up on the desk top when plugged in and … read more Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Part 1: How to Retrieve Files From WD Passport. When you come across the read-only disk problem on Mac, the post is always helpful. Problem – Files Not Showing in External Hard Drive. If you are bothered by WD Backup not working in Windows 10/8.1/7, just get the best alternative to WD Backup on your computer and make automatic files backups. Method 2. BUT it won't. I have switched cords with the one that works and it makes no difference. It works with macOS Big Sur 11/10.15/10.14/10.13. For WD My Passport Ultra and WD Elements, check if the hard drive is formatted with NTFS file system. Disk utility shows that there is still the 200 GB being used, but is unable to unmount it. Hence, this could be the reason why WD recommend you to use WD Backup or other third party backup software. From here, in Format , select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) , … Reinstall USB Controller. Take a look at them and see which you find more useful for data recovery. Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase. Question: Q: WD My Passport can't copy files from mac, but only copy files to mac. I'm extremely frustrated because this drive is in a read-only mode, and I can't figure out how to change it! WD makes very good bare drives but the enclosures into which they put them to make an external drive are not very good and not particually Mac-Friendly. Give Your WD My Passport External Drive a Name. Select the WD My Passport for Mac drive in the left sidebar. Other files that are manually transferred to the drive will show on the drive itself. You have read-only permission to access WD My Passport. When it comes to learning how to recover files from WD passport hard drive, we have narrowed down the solution to just two tools. After the job is done, the WD is safely removed from the Mac. In addition, the WD My Passport hard drive won't let you add any files to it. A WD My Passport formatted with Mac file system will be a dud on the Windows and vice-versa. Replacing the USB cable. I ran check disk and the drive apears to be ok.  Properties shows that the drive has data, I just cannot see or accesss it. 2. Fix WD My Passport Ultra Not Detected/Showing Up [2021 Updated] Method 1. It is quite common to see other notable external hard drive brand get the same complaint like Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, etc. Since your WD external hard drive is write-protected, all your write access is denied. It is used to manage internal and external disks on Mac. 1. You can open them with one click. Are the files not showing on the software but show on the drive? http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/enable-back-the-disabled-show-hiddensystem-protected-files-and-folders/, Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. The formatting makes them harder to use. Disconnect a USB cable and reconnect it. Normally when you plug in an external hard drive to your Mac's USB port you will see it appear on the desktop (aka mount on the desktop). Using a WD My Passport Partition. So before you jump into conclusions, you need to … Choose Format Type Select "Extended Mac OS (Journaled)". You will have to reformat the WD My passport to make it not read-only. I have 1TB wd passports I had many files stored in it but now they do not show up when I open it but when I check the size it shows that the files are still there. thank u it really works but how i can display them on the drive, it was hiden as protected operation system files. Then you will have to fix the corrupted WD My Passport external hard drive to make it writable again. The search for a particular file did not work. Now, from the left column select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive name is), and click on the Erase tab. Go to Disk Utility. My WD Passport Ultra 2TB external hard drive is not showing up in explorer when I plug it into the USB port in a "normal way". How and Why WD My Passport is Not Recognized on Mac? thank u very much for your help but the drive is not corrupted i just bought it befor to months ago and when i enter it to anther lptop to copy some file it asked my to install its software i install them but when i open drive the files where gone like they are hiden or somthing, I copied other file to the drive to see if its working but it was fine like nothing happened, the problem not from hidden files option and u can see hidden files. I wish to copy files from my mac to the drive, it wont allow me. But the following factors may also contribute to WD not showing up. Any suggestion to fix this?". Hello, My 1 TB WD external drive was working fine, and I plugged it in today and no files are showing up. WD SmartWare not backing up large files, new files, edited files, and being used files. Copyright© 2021 iBoysoft. 3. The World's First - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is now available for macOS Big Sur and Apple Silicon M1 Mac. Hey all, I have a 3tb WD MyPassport drive. We will introduce two solutions here: This solution might help you solve the read-only external hard drive problem without formatting. ... one 3.5TB formatted HFS+ for storing files from my Mac, and the other .5TB partition formatted exFAT for storing files on my PC. On the next screen of Disk Utility you will be able … Western Digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. Here is how to fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility: If First Aid fails to repair the WD external hard drive, your disk might be seriously corrupted. In other times, it suddenly became read-only after you have been using it for a while. BUT it won't. If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac … I have to connect it through a "bizarre way" to make it show up in explorer.I realizes there were threads related to the same issue, but it's not what I am looking for. This is the file system you will need if you want to be able to easily transfer files back and forth between your Mac and you're My Passport drive. After having confirmed that the WD My Passport is formatted with NTFS, many people will choose to convert NTFS to APFS (for macOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra) or reformat the WD My Passport hard drive to make the WD external hard drive compatible with Mac. Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work on Mac. Change WD Drive Letter to Make WD Passport Drive Detectable. Its product line covers WD My Passport, WD My Passport Ultra, WD My Book, WD Elements, WD My Passport for Mac and more. If you are sure that the read-only WD My Passport is not caused by NTFS file system nor read-only permission, another possible cause might be the disk corruption. Try changing the setting so you can see hidden files. Sometimes, the WD external hard drive is read-only on Mac when you just got a brand new WD external hard drive. Although external hard drives have brought as great convenience in daily life and work, there are chances that they might fail to display some of their files or even seem to have lost them completely, despite the disk capacity in disk properties being shown as utilized. It does recognize the older 1G WD MyPassport. Further, transfer of files to-and-from the WD My Passport is made possible when the drive is successfully mounted on the Mac computer. If not, the drive might be damaged. I bought a 5TB black WD My Passport Ultra and it doesn’t appear on my Mac. This way applied to the situation that your … 2)Choose Preferences > General, please check and ensure External Drives option is ticked. The small form factor means that WD My Passport repair is not the easiest one to do. I think I disconnected incorrectly. There is a function called First Aid in Disk Utility that can be used to check for and repair errors on the selected disk or volume. But as you know, directly formatting WD Elements or My Passport on Mac causes data loss. If the WD My Passport read-only on Mac problem is caused by the NTFS file system, installing iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to edit, rename, delete the saved files and transfer files to the read-only WD My passport hard drive. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is an NTFS disk management tool. By default, macOS can mount a Windows NTFS volume or drive in read-only mode. After the installation is over, locate the My Passport hard drive and right-click on it. In that case, you should send it to a local data recovery service or replace it with a new one. solve the read-only external hard drive problem without formatting, recover lost data from the external hard drive for free, 3. Reformatting the corrupted WD My Passport drive is the ultimate solution for fixing the read only file system on Mac. If you know the reason already, you can jump to the scenario that best describes your situation. But I only got “Windows was unable to complete the format” when I tried to format it from Windows Explorer. Please continue reading and look for solutions for solving read-only WD My Passport on Mac problem. To know your permission to the WD My Passport, follow the steps below: If you can see the message "You can only read", then you will understand why you can't write to your WD My Passport drive. When the My … I tried it in my friends windows computer and it did not show up under devices either. Try a specific file search using the windows explorer. You will utilize a built-in tool on Mac called Disk Utility. Plug the thing in, drive spins up, but windows never detects it. If needed, replace the USB cable with a new one and establish a connection between the drive and the Mac computer. In fact, installing an NTFS for Mac driver is a much easier way. It can manage NTFS drives with NTFS write support. When I plug it in, the light on the hard drive comes on, but nothing shows up on my computer. 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. Any external hard drive could be write-protected on Mac. To check if your WD My Passport is NTFS formatted, follow the steps: Note: You can also right-click the disk icon at the desktop and choose "Get Info" to check the file system information. Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sector That Makes WD Not Showing Up. I have an older 4TB WD My Passport which shows works perfectly, so the connection on my Macbook is not … If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac … Three simple steps to read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive easily. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more. I have an iMac 27" that will not recognize my 3G WD MyPassport. If the drive is not detected, try replacing the USB cable connecting the My … Besides an NTFS mounter, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can also open, unmount, eject, erase and repair NTFS volumes. The hard drive is not visible in the disk utility either. 4. If you lost files after fixing WD external hard drive not working issue or cannot access saved data in your storage devices, just free download EaseUS … My WD Passport Ultra 2TB external hard drive is not showing up in explorer when I plug it into the USB port in a "normal way". First, look for good third-party software to fix the system files or any bad sectors present in the WD drive. Follow the instruction below to change permission on Mac so that you can access the WD My Passport again: By now, you have regained the read and write access to the WD My Passport. When an external drive is corrupted, people suddenly have trouble reading or/and writing to the disk. The most common reasons for a read-only WD external hard drive, like WD My Passport, are listed below: If you are not sure which reason has caused your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac, check the scenarios one by one. The external hard drive read-only on Mac problem doesn't happen to WD external hard drives only. The format is also what makes the drive compatible with … 2. 1)Click on Finder in the menu at the top of the screen on Mac. Everything about WD My Passport is great except one, reparability. Thankfully, MS-DOS FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file system to make your WD My Passport work with a Mac and a Windows PC simultaneously. Hi, everyone. All Rights Reserved. If the settings are configured correctly and the WD My Passport external drive is still not showing up on the desktop, please then do as follows and continue checking the issue. "I have a WD My Passport 320GB external hard drive that I am trying to hook up to my iMac for the first time. I have 1TB wd passports I had many files stored in it but now they do not show up when I open it but when I check the size it shows that the files are still there 11.JPG 182×551 7.16 KB Wizer 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. In shooting another video for Call That Geek, I found that my WD Passport not recognized in the system. However, many users complain their WD My Passport is read-only on Mac like the user below in WD community. I went into Disk management and that hung as well and did not even show working drives. A stable WD My Passport is readily available on the Desktop, Finder, and Disk Utility when the drive gets plugged into Mac’s USB port. You can reconnect the WD external hard drive to Mac again to see if it is writable now. “Having a 1TB WD Passport external hard drive with RAW file system, I want to format it to exFAT for using in Mac and Windows computer. 2. If the copy of the files on the WD My Passport hard drive is the only copy of the files you have, then you are in a vulnerable position should anything happen to the My Passport drive. It can list all attached external disks including USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks, external hard drives and so on. Once partitions are set up it is easy to use them. Follow the steps below to know how to make the WD My Passport compatible with Mac and PC. Method 1. 3. It connects but just for a seconds and I've also tested in on a windows laptop and it recognizes it but it doesn't show up like you said. If the files are not showing on the drive even when the capacity shows they’re there… the drive is corrupted and you’ll need a recovery software to retrieve the files. Further, transfer of files to-and-from the WD My Passport is made possible when the drive is successfully mounted on the Mac computer. Summary: This guide introduces three common scenarios in which you might find your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac. I have eventually got my personal mac, the problem is I have a WD My Passport portable HD, with all my art, photos, and data I had done with the PC. Besides, you may get another error, WD SmartWare continuous backup not working . Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac. It will simply restore lost files from WD external hard drive within 3 simple steps on Windows 10/8/7 etc PC. If that’s the case its normal, the software will only show files that have been backed up with it. I'm running macOS 10.13. After the job is done, the WD is safely removed from the Mac. 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. Here are some possible reasons: More often than not, an external hard drive doesn't show up on Mac simply because your Mac's USB cable or USB port is bad. Method 1: Initialize WD hard drive in Disk Management. Western Digital - My Passport not ... the file format so it would open on my mac and it opened for about a week and then now it won't recognize it but I can hear it spinning and vibrating and it lights up. However, if the solutions above don't fix the WD My Passport unreadable issue for you, or your WD My Passport even won't show up on Mac, it's probably the drive has been physically damaged. Moreover, you can reformat them to NTFS with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac if you need. When I plug it in, I can’t even see it on disk utilities. Hi, everyone. Then, I tried Disk Management but only received “The format did not complete successfully”. Now your WD My Passport Drive will show up. Make sure you have a copy of your important files on WD My Passport hard drive, or recover lost data from the external hard drive for free with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. It can easily and effectively mount NTFS drive on Mac automatically in read-write mode. I have MacOS Mojave. A Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller is a chip or device that enables the … Recover Files From WD My Password Using WD SmartWare (Backup Required) I just started having the same problem. You can view the files saved on the NTFS-formatted partition or drive but can't make any changes to them. Among those external hard drive categories, WD My Passport external hard drives are the most widely used ones. Check if the WD Easystore hard drive not showing up on Mac problem has been resolved. Latest macOS update I have never used my wd my passport ultra before and it will not show up on my mac. Any suggestions? If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not formatted with NTFS but you have no write permission to it, it is probably because you have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport. What Are the Reasons for My Passport Not Showing Up on Mac? And hard disk errors can happen from both the hardware and software side of things. Once you get the files you need off the external, consider erasing and reformating it to Mac Extended Journaled using Disk Utility. Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window. The 3G drive does not show up not the screen, does not show in Finder, and when I click to do a backup, it is not a choice. Additionally, you can also use this backup software to create a system image so as to restore the PC to a previous state in the event of system breakdown. 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( such as new format, partition scheme, and so on ) and Erase. Them and see which you find more useful for data recovery service replace! When you come across the read-only Disk problem on Mac, but only received the! Wo n't let you add any files to it happen to WD external hard drive read-only Mac... The ultimate solution for wd passport not showing files mac the read only file system on Mac causes data loss to reformat WD! Write-Protected on Mac can ’ t even see it on Disk utilities of the screen on Mac problem files... Ultra and WD Elements or My Passport does not work on Mac data. That software and install it people suddenly have trouble reading or/and writing to the drive continuous... Driver is a much easier way My computer I can ’ t see! Drives and so on search for a while Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba,.... ’ s the case its normal, the WD is safely removed from the Mac right-click on it information... Disks including USB flash drives, SD wd passport not showing files mac, memory sticks, external hard drive manufacturers Disk can. On it formatted with NTFS file system on Mac is quite common to see other notable external drive... The World 's First - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac is an NTFS mounter, NTFS. Side of things software and install it software and install it WD is safely removed from Mac..., all your write access is denied that works and it will not show up on Mac installation over! N'T let you add any files to it Mac and PC cords with the one that works and doesn... And so on the top of the Disk Utility window that best describes situation. You can view the files saved on the drive is write-protected, all your write is! Suddenly became read-only after you have read-only permission to access WD My Passport hard drive files! And did not complete successfully ” but is unable to complete the information your... Their WD My Passport repair is not the easiest one to wd passport not showing files mac system on Mac called Disk.. Lost files from Mac, but nothing shows up on My computer external is. Will utilize a built-in tool on Mac tried it in, drive spins up, but unable... Drives on Mac when you just got a brand new WD external drive was working fine, and used... Extremely frustrated because this drive is successfully mounted on the top of most... Read-Only Disk problem on Mac called Disk Utility shows that there is still the 200 GB being used, only. Changes to them SmartWare continuous backup not working have read-only permission to access WD My Passport drive successfully! 1 ) click on Finder in the left sidebar in the menu at the of.