I Can't Partition My Passport Ultra

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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 lost 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) won'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 your My Passport hard drive is not working for the same reason and you haven't got an effective workaround to fix this unmounted drive on your Mac, check this page. You'll know why it happens and how to mount the Western Digital my passport drive to access it again.

Why is WD My Passport for Mac not mounting?

WD hard drives, including My Passport and Easystore, not mounting on Mac result from various factors. The reasons could be 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 My Passport external hard drive on Mac?

The connected WD My Passport drive should be automatically mounted on the desktop, in Finder and Disk Utility. When it won't mount on Mac as you expect, you can try these methods.

1. Show the mounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive on Mac destop

Sometimes, the My Passport drive is recognized and mounted by the Mac, and you just don't see it. You can 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.

But if your WD My Passport drive is not even showing up, it's reasonable that you can't see it mounting on Mac. Then, you shoud check the connections and some hardware issues.

2. Mount the WD Mac hard drive in Disk Utility

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 and you need to try the next solution.

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

3. Run First Aid to fix WD My Passport for Mac not mounting error

First Aid is a Mac built-in tool to verify and check minor problems of a hard disk. Whenever you have troubles with a hard disk, First Aid should be a good disk repair tool.

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, this WD My Passport drive has been corrupted. You have to retrieve your data from this corrupted hard drive as soon as possible.

When those methods didn't make any difference and the WD My passport for Mac hard drive is not mounting still, you need to check some hardware issues that get involved in the disk connection.

Let's start with some basics factors.

4. Check the power supply of the WD hard drive

It's well known that insufficient or no power supply in 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.

5. Check the USB cable

When external hard drive is not showing up on Mac, 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.

6. Check the USB port of your Mac

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.

7. Check for driver update

If the hardware seems to be OK, let's check the software that related to this disk problem - the disk 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 WD My Passport drive will be not working, and the external hard drive won't mount on Mac.

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

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

Sometimes, WD My Passport for Mac driver, software, and WD disk tool are needed, especially when you want to open a WD hard drive that is locked. You can go to WD official website and download software for WD My Passport troubleshooting and for WD My Passport driver update.

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

However, if WD My Passport for Mac hard drive still won't mount on Mac, 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, how can you recover files from the WD My Passport drive? It's high time to recover lost data from the unmounted hard drive first.

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

As for Mac data recovery, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is highly recommended as it's a free Mac data recovery software. It can easily recover lost data from unmounted WD My Passport for Mac hard drive. This software can recover lost data from corrupted hard drive, unreadable hard drives, formatted hard drives, unrecognized hard drives, unmountable hard drives, inaccessible hard drives, and recover lost data from uninitialized hard drive. You can use this hard drive data recovery software 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.

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 'Scan' 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.

Hopefully, you'll get all your files off after the WD My Passport is not working nor mounting.

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. This will reset the WD My Passport external hard drive.

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. When WD My Passport for Mac is not working or corrupted, you can repair this disk error without losing files on this drive by the assistance of iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

For any questions or suggestions, please email us below.

Summary

This article exclusively solves WD My Passport external hard drive not accessible issue, and introduces EaseUS hard drive data recovery software to users, who cannot access WD My Passport external hard drive but desperately want to recover data.

WD My Passport Can't Access

'When I connected my 1TB WD My Passport external hard drive to my desktop, Windows 10 prompts me with an error message saying you need to format the disk before you can use it. I wouldn't do that because data is still there. I tried to eject the drive and reconnected it for the second time, but the error is still there. It seems that I can't access the WD external hard drive nor my data without formatting, can anyone help?'

If you're one of the Western Digital hard drive customers and happen to use the My Passport type, you must be interested in this post. A commonly seen issue with Western Digital My Passport hard drives is that sometimes, you cannot access the drive's data. The typical symptoms are, the power LED is on but the drive is not accessible. Meanwhile, you'll receive error messages like:

Requests to tech support regarding this profile will be cheerfully ignored. To open a.SYX file, the file must have.SYX appended to the file name and yes, it must be in all uppercase letters.This profile is an UNSUPPORTED extra. Midi player for mac os 10.11.

• You need to format the disk before you can use it.
• Drive X: is not accessible. Access is denied.

Besides the exact error messages, when you check the drive's status, you may see other different signs. For example:

• In Disk Management, The disk 0 or disk 1 shows as unknown, not initialized, or the type of file system is RAW.
• In the drive's properties, the hard drive shows 0 bytes used and 0 bytes free.

How to Access, View or Recover Data from Inaccessible WD External HDD

When WD My Passport shows you an error and you can't access the data, don't worry, as the files can be easily rescued. Just download EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover the data from a corrupted or inaccessible drive. It's the top-ranking hard drive recovery software that reduces the worry and risk of losing your data when disk storage devices, such as WD drives, cannot be accessed or opened.

Step 1. Choose the WD hard drive to scan.

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, locate the Western Digital hard drive and click 'Scan'. Let this program fully scan the WD hard drive and don't stop it in midway.

Step 2. Preview lost files in WD hard drive from the scan result.

You can choose to preview files like pictures, documents, videos or audio files from the scan result in 'Deleted Files', 'Lost Files'. Filter or Search also works to help you find lost WD hard drive files via file types, names and even extensions.

Step 3. Select and restore found WD hard drive files.

Choose the wanted files you'd like to restore and click 'Recover' them. Do not save the data to the original WD drive in case of further data overwriting.

How to Repair Not Accessible WD My Passport External Hard Drive

As explained, you cannot access an external hard drive for many reasons, for most of the time, the consequence results from either a hard drive connection problem or hard drive self corruption.

So, when you cannot open a connected drive as usual in Windows 10/8.1/8/7, first look over the data cable, is it loose? Data cables can degrade over time from bending and flexing. The connectors can get bent or the internal pins may corrode from contact with contaminates. To check the data cable, you can:

• Use a different data port
• Use a different data cable
• Use a different computer, if possible

Next, proceed with WD My Passport repair tools as recommended here if the data cable is perfectly intact.

What are the WD My Passport repair tools?

You can feel free to use many Windows inbuilt programs as perfect WD My Passport repair tools, including Windows Disk Management, Windows CHKDSK Comand Prompt, and Windows Troubleshooter. They are all supposed to tackle hardware device problems of not recognizing, not detecting, not working or not reading, etc. Make sure that you've extracted the data from the inaccessible drive with the help of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard before the repair process. This is the most guaranteed way to protect data from permanently gone.

1. Windows Disk Management

It's for performing a quick format, to solve most of the hard drive corruption problems, such as the file system is RAW. When a hard drive turns to RAW, it's not seen in the File Explorer, and it's a good idea to check if it's showing in the Disk Management. Otherwise, you need to convert the RAW external hard drive to NTFS or FAT32 so that Windows can read your WD My Passport normally.

Step 1: In Windows 10/8.1/8/7, press Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box, type diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.

Step 2: Right-click on the WD My Passport external hard drive, you'll see a context menu of many options, among which choose 'Format'.

Step 3: Follow the onscreen wizard. Choose a proper file system and complete the process of fixing a not accessible WD My Passport external hard drive with Disk Management.

If the issue persists, try changing the drive letter by following the steps below and check again.

Step 1: Choose 'Change Drive Letter and Paths..' this time.

Step 2: Among 'Add, Change, and Remove', click the 'Change' button, and then select a drive letter from the list. Click 'OK' to assign a new drive letter to the WD My Passport.

2. Windows CHKDSK Command Prompt

When hard drive becomes inaccessible and access denied, it's because bad sectors grew. To check and repair bad sectors that prevent users from accessing hard drive data, the CHKDSK command is a good choice. If you want to check for errors or repair the hard drive, always try the below command.

Step 1: In Windows 10/8.1/8/7, press Windows + X keys to bring up a context menu, and choose Command Prompt (Admin).

Step 2: Type chkdsk H: /f /r and hit enter.

H represents the drive letter of your WD My Passport external hard drive. Replace it with the correct drive letter of your own drive.

If you don't have any technical know-how and want to minimize data risks, using third-party software could be a better choice. The Command line is suitable for computer professionals since wrong commands can cause severe problems. Therefore, we strongly recommend you try an automatic command line alternative.

EaseUS Tools M is a practical computer fixing tool that is safe and light-weighted. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to solve your computer issues.

To fix file system error or disk error:

Step 1: DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for Free and install it.

Step 2: Open the software and select the 'File Fixing' option.

On the right pane, choose the drive and check off the box at the bottom - 'Check and fix file system error'. Then, click 'Fix' to start repairing the error.

Step 3: Wait until the operation completes. Wait until the operation completes. After the operation completes, click the 'View' button to check the drive.

3. Windows Troubleshooter

This troubleshooter checks for common issues and makes sure that any new device or hardware attached to your computer was installed correctly.

Step 1: In Windows 10/8.1/8/7, press Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box, and type control and hit Enter to open the Control Panel.

Step 2: Find Troubleshooting and click in.

Step 3: Click 'View all' on the left pane.

Step 4: Find and run 'Hardware and Devices'. Follow the onscreen instruction to til the end.