Connect your Western Digital My Passport drive to Mac computer, and let the OS detect and mount the drive for use. Now, a new hard drive icon will appear on the desktop. On macOS Dock, select Finder. When the Finder window opens, on the menu bar, select ‘Go’ and then ‘Utilities.’ After that, you will be able to see /Applications. My Passport Ultra for Mac is formatted for Time Machine and ready to deliver plug-and-play storage out of the box. With WD Discovery™ software, you can also work across both Mac and PC. We provide a downloadable HFS+ driver for Windows® 10, 8.1 or 7 to enable you to read and write to your My Passport Ultra for Mac drive without reformatting.

Summary: This article analyzes why the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting on Mac and how to fix this issue. If you worry about losing data from this hard drive, you can recover data with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery at first.

Overview of WD My Passport for Mac hard drive

The WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is specially designed for Mac mini computers, iMacs and MacBooks. This trusted portable storage always offers quick and easy way to expand the storage space of your computer and to store a massive amount of photos, videos, music and documents. The WD hard drive comes in some amazing features like cloud storage, password protection with hard drive encryption, and compatiblity with Apple's Time Machine backup software. But the problem is that no matter how powerful this hard drive is, it is possible that this WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting on Mac computer.

Here is one typical case from apple.stackexchange.com:

My WD hard drive (WD My Passport for Mac) didn't mount on my MacBook Air, not even in Disk Utility. I have 1 TB family photos on this hard drive, which are very precious for me. How to fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error? Any data recovery solution? Thanks a lot!

In fact, this is a common annoyance for many WD customers that the hard drive fails to mount in Finder or Disk Utility. If you are confronted with the same issue and haven't got an effective workaround to fix this unmounted drive on your Mac, check this page and learn why it happens and how to address this disk problem.

Why WD My Passport for Mac is not mounting?

This issue may be caused by various factors, such as virus infection, internal file system errors, sudden power failure, sudden power outage, unwanted interruption during transferring data, etc. For all kinds of reasons, your Mac won't recognize this hard drive and thus this external hard drive won't mount.As a result, you can't open this WD hard drive nor access your important files.

How to fix the unmounted WD external hard drive on Mac?

Step 1: Check whether the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is set to show up on Mac

Go to Finder > Preferences and confirm if the 'External Disks' under 'Show these items on the desktop' is selected. This will ensure if the external drives connected to this Mac are allowed to show on the desktop.

This operation will show up your WD My Passport drive on the desktop in most cases, but if it failed, you can move to the next point.

Step 2: Check if the WD Mac hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility

Wd My Passport Ultra For Mac 4tb

You can go to Utility and see if this hard drive appears in the left sidebar. If your WD hard drive for Mac is not mounting but grayed out in Disk Utility, you can right-click and select the 'Mount' button to mount it manually. However, if this external hard drive is corrupted, the 'Mount' button will not be available.

When these two checks didn't make any difference and the WD My passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting still, you need to check some hardware that get involved in the disk connection. Let's start with the basics by following the steps below.

Step 3: Check the power supply

It's well known that insufficient power supply or damaged USB ports could also lead to hard drive not mounting issue. Therefore, you should make sure the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive is getting the appropriate power. If the drive came with a Y-cable, use both USB connectors. Moreover, do not connect the drive through a USB hub, connect it directly to the Mac. Make sure the power adapter is connected directly to a wall outlet, not to an extension cord.

Step 4: Check the USB cable

Ensure the cable is properly connected to both the drive and computer. Then try connecting your WD My Passport for Mac hard drive with a new USB cable if you can fetch another one.

Step 5: Check the USB port

If the problem still continues, try using a different USB port. Perhaps your Mac has two USB port - the back and front ones. Assuming the external hard drive is plugged in the front USB port, try to insert the drive to the back USB port.

Wd My Passport Ultra Install For Mac

Step 6: Check for driver update

If the hardware seems to be OK, let's check the software that related to this disk problem - the driver. A driver is a software component that allows the operating system and a device to communicate with each other. If your driver files go missing, outdated, or turn corrupted due to any virus invasion or invalid operation, the hard drive attached to your Mac will faile to work, resulting in an external hard drive not mounting on Mac.

Step 1: Click the Apple icon and select 'App Store…'

Wd My Passport Ultra For Macbook Air

Step 2: Click Update (NOT UPGRADE!) to install a specific update or Update All to install all available updates.

But sometimes, a hard drive is not mounted because of internal disk errors like file system corruption, partition table lost, the directory is corrupted, etc. You WD hard drive will not be recognized by your Mac in these cases. Fortunately, you can fix the hard drive not mounting issue with the native disk repair tool, Disk Utility.

Step 7: Run First Aid to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting error

Disk Utility's First Aid is a Mac built-in tool to verify and repair minor problems of a hard disk. Whenever you have troubles with a hard disk, First Aid is your first solution.

Step 1: Go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility/, then click Continue.

Step 2: In the sidebar, select the not mounting WD My Passport for Mac hard drive.

Step 3: Click the 'First Aid' button.

Step 4: Click Run.

If Disk Utility reports that the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive appears to be OK or has been repaired, you're done. Otherwise, you have to retrieve as much of your data as possible.

How to fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error without losing data?

However, if First Aid is unable to fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error, the last solutions is to reformat the hard drive. But reformatting will delete all data stored on the hard drive, and most of the time, many important files are stored on the WD My Passport for Mac hard drive. If you haven't backed up important files, it's high time to recover data from the unmounted hard drive first.

Step 1: Recover data from unmountable hard drive with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery

As for Mac data recovery, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is highly recommended. iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is a free Mac data recovery software that can easily recover data from not mounting WD My Passport for Mac hard drive, recover data from unreadable hard drive, recover data from unrecognized hard drive, recover data from corrupted hard drive, recover data from unmountable hard drive, recover data from inaccessible hard drive, recover data from uninitialized hard drive, etc. on macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 Sierra and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Besides, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is also best APFS data recovery software that can recover data from formatted APFS hard drive, recover data from unmountable APFS drive, recover data from unreadable APFS hard drive, recover data from corrupted APFS drive, recover lost data from encrypted APFS volume, recover deleted/lost APFS partition, etc.

1. Free download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

2. Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery and select the unmounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive.

3. Click 'Next' to search for all lost files on this drive.

4. Preview the listed scanning results, choose files we want, and click 'Recover' button to get them back.

Step 2: Fix WD hard drive not mounting error by reformatting

After getting lost files back, you can fix WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting error by reformatting without worrying about losing data.

1. Launch Disk Utility from Utilities.

2. Select the unmounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive on the left part of the window.

3. Click the 'Erase' on the top of the Disk Utility window.

4. Complete the related information (name, format, scheme, etc.), then click the 'Erase' button.

Conclusion

This article mainly talks about a WD My Passport for Mac hard drive not mounting issue, analyzing why this issue occurs and how to repair this disk error without losing files on this drive. You can also easily recover data from external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery if the drive is corrupted due to virus attack, corrupted file system, power failure, etc.

For any questions or suggestions, please email us below. Thanks a lot!

WD My Passport Ultra USB-C Edition

Pros

• Easy to use
• Sleek design

A fantastic storage companion for MacBook users.

I’ve been a fan of Western Digital storage options for a very long time. A company I used to work for had to do daily backups and per project backups and we relied on Western Digital products to ensure that our data was secured. In all the time we used WD hard drives, I don’t think we ever had a drive fail. Now that I am working independently and I need storage solutions for my media backups, I immediately looked to Western Digital. I have a 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro, which only had USB-C ports on it so I was grateful to find that WD had a portable storage option for people in my situation — the My Passport Ultra USB-C edition.

DETAILS

The My Passport Ultra USB-C edition has the same compact design as classic My Passport drives from WD with the addition of a USB-C port. The case has been modified slightly from previous versions to include a metal cover. The drive is USB-C ready (as previously mentioned) and compatible with USB 3.0 (with the use of a provided adapter). The hard drive can act as an automatic backup drive and features password protection as an option. The hard drive can also be encrypted using 256-bit AES hardware encryption through WD Security.

Thanks to WD’s built-in software, WD Discovery, the drive also features social media and cloud storage import. This utility software can also help to manage your hard drive with WD Drive Utilities. Out of the box, the drive is Windows 10 ready, but it can be formatted to work with Mac computers, too.The My Passport Ultra USB-C is available in three sizes — 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. It’s very easy to use and has a 3-year limited warranty. There are two color options — Blue/Black and Silver.

USB-C version (blue) versus USB 3.0 version (white/gold)

Package Includes:

• My Passport Ultra Portable Storage
• USB-C™ cable with USB 3.0 adapter
• WD Discovery™ software* for WD Backup™, WD Security™ and WD Drive Utilities™
• Quick install guide

USER EXPERIENCE

The My Passport Ultra USB-C is an updated version of the My Passport Ultra (2017). The older version was only available with a USB 3.0 connection cable, which meant that users like me (with a USB-C MacBook computer) would have to use an adapter or dock in order to interface with the hard drive. The physical size of the hard drive hasn’t changed much model-to-model except that the corners are rounded on the 2018 model and it simply looks sleeker. Both models are formatted for Windows machines out of the box, but you can reformat using Paragon NTFS for Mac (included with the drive).

The My Passport Ultra USB-C is really an exceptional hard drive. It does a beautiful job of storing data and makes it really easy to keep a portable drive with me at all times. The one thing you really have to be cautious of is the fact that this is a mechanical hard drive and not an SSD. Because of that, the hard drive does not have any shock protection. If it is thrown around a lot, it will be more prone to fail. That said, because it is a ‘portable’ hard drive, I think that it’s probably a bit more svelte than other mechanical drives. To date, I’ve not had any issue with Western Digital’s portable hard drives being carried by hand during daily treks through the urban jungle or on a coast-to-coast airplane ride.

One of the first things I usually do with any hard drive I test out is to open up Disk Utility to see that the capacity of the drive matches what the box says. In this case, Disk Utility stated that it was a 2TB hard drive which matched up with the packaging. Because the drive is formatted for Windows and I use a Mac, I did end up using Paragon NTFS to erase and reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so I could use it freely with my MacBook Pro. After the formatting, the drive showed up as a 2TB drive, but space was shown as ‘free’ instead of used like it did when it was formatted as NTFS.

At this point, I ran two disk speed tests on the drive — AJA System Test Lite and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. The AJA test is unique because you get a sense for how specific video files will be processed using the selected hard drive. Typically, I get the same type of speed from both tests, but I like running them both regardless. With the AJA test, I selected 1080p (1920×1080) and 4K-Full (4096×3112). Each test returned approximately the same results with a read/write time of 124/122 Mb/s and 126/122 Mb/s respectively. With the Blackmagic Speed Test, I got a read/write result of 125/121.4 Mb/s. The Blackmagic test will show whether or not the speed of the drive tested will hold up with some common video formats.

The final test I ran on the My Passport Ultra USB-C was a file transfer test. I used a video file that was 2.36GB in size. Using the stopwatch function on my iPhone, I timed the transfer at 19.01 seconds. After converting the file size to MB, I calculated the transfer rate to be 124.1 Mb/s, which is in line with what I was seeing from the disk speed tests.

CONCLUSION

The WD My Passport Ultra USB-C is a solid hard drive for any user of USB-C compatible products. Not only does it have a stylish look to it, but it also functions exceptionally well. I believe that the investment in this product is well worth it. Even though it is still a mechanical hard drive, the cost difference between this drive and the SSD version is quite a lot (2TB My Passport SSD, $599.99 vs. 2TB My Passport Ultra USB-C $89.99). This hard drive is much more affordable and it does a great job as a backup drive.

Reformat Wd My Passport Ultra For Mac

NOTE: There is also a My Passport Ultra for Mac available. It’s designed to work with macOS out of the box without having to format it. That drive is available in 2TB and 4TB sizes, but is only available in silver.

Wd My Passport Ultra Reformatting For Mac Os X

For more information, visit wd.com.
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