I have figured out how to get mine to work. My MacBook Air would not let me do the partition (as per the WD Passport Ultras instructions on the site). So I plugged it in. Opened Time Machine. It asked if I wanted to reformat the drive and after saying yes, it did it for me and then I was able to back up my computer. YAY. I just got my Passport Ultra last night and so this is my first time using it. Hoping this will help someone else get theirs working.
Just updated WD utilities and all working fine 3 November 2015
Iām trying to reformat my External using Disk Utility, Iāve looked at videos on YouTube and Iām pretty sure in those videos they have an older OS for Mac. I currently have El Capitan, installed the update about a week ago. Did they change the way Disk Utility looks once you open it? I havenāt used it in awhile so I cant remember what it looks like, but it did look like the ones in the videos I watched. When I open it, the āpartitionā option is there, but wonāt let me click on it. I can only hit erase and go from there. Is it safe to erase everything on the external and reformat it that way? Thanks!
Hi, just encountered this problem myself. (Disk Utility āpartitionā was grayed out.) A poster above suggested opening Time Machine and choosing Passport for backup. You will be prompted to accept partitioning. Time machine will then do that. Seems to work for me.
I ended up just going with the erase option and it seemed to have done the trick. Itāll give you options on how you want to partition it as well
I am on El Capitan Beta 10.11.2 and I still have the same problem with My Passport for Mac. When I connect it the light blinks for a few seconds and the disk is shown in Finder but after a few seconds it goes off and no way to have it to life againā¦WD support was totally useless and ended after a few issues in replacing my Passport HD which after having received the replacement did not solve at all the problem. How is it possible that WD does not have the correct driver issued for Mac users of El Capitan??? anybody has any further suggestion?? Tnx
Help Please!!!
Iām telling you, I had the same problem. Pulling my hair out, but its that ā ā ā ā āWD drive utilitiesā application and all its evil parts
1)in User and groups/startup itemsā¦DELETE IT!!,
2)then again another bloodsucker in Library/launch daemons folderā¦vaporize anything āWDā¦ā immediately, in fact Iād uninstall the bloody app asap. It wouldnāt let me reformat the WD drive (using disk utility) nor would the duoās raid disks that I finally formatted stay mounted on the desktopā¦the 45 sec peekaboo. delete trash and uninstall this ā ā ā ā . Completely solved the problem. I gotta credit another poster on these forums, but had to register and lost the page he or she was onā¦grrrr. I have a MY BOOK thunderbolt duo and El Capitan OS 10.11.1
CURSES TO YOU WD for not even mentioning this easy fix due to your vile ā ā ā ā -poor app.
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chuck_E i canāt find the WD drive utilities; i may not have installed it to begin with but still have the problem(s).
also, i donāt want to reformat the external HDā¦we have 2TB of images on it so prefer to just get it working again as is.
I have the same operating system (El Capitan 11.10.1) and Finder wonāt recognize the My Passport for Mac that I just bought. I went to download new firmware and the latest version listed was for Snow Leopard, if you can believe theyāre so far behind. So beware. Iāll probably return it and go with another brand. Very disappointed in WD. They are several version of OSX behind in their software, too.
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I bought a WD My Passport for Mac last week. It stopped mounting after I used it for a few days with El Capitan. I called tech support and they said it was probably a bad drive. However my older My Passport for Mac stopped working the same day as well.
HEREāS THE SOLUTION!!!
I took both externals to a friendās house who hadnāt updated their Mac OS to El Capitan. I hooked up the externals and ERASED all of the WD programs that came with the externals. Both work on my computer with NO PROBLEMS!
Thanks for this tip. Now to find someone who hasnāt upgraded! Even my wife who hates change went with the upgrade.
Again the solution is to realize the conflict of Appleās āDisk Utilityā and the western digital crapware. To encrypt the WD drives Iāve had to use both apps but sequentially. For example, Just got a 4TB WD passport pro and outa the box it was in striped mode. Tried to erase and disk utility fails. Therefore, I quit disk utility, installed the WD crapware, erased the drive using OS X-ext journaled or whatever it is. I also had to partition under raid management the 4 TB drive into two 2TB drives. Donāt ask me why this worked but it does. So once iāve used the wd crapware to break drive up into 2 drives and reformatted (erased), i then completely uninstall the WD crapware, and extricate 2 remnants that donāt uninstall:
- system/library/LaunchDaemons/ā¦and delete anything that says WD in the name
- go up to apple bar upper left corner and click down to system preferences/Users & Groups/startup items/and select the WD item and delete by using the minus sign at bottom of that window. Then restart computer so they now have been unloaded permanently. Drive images will now appear and stay! the drives can now be encrypted using extended/journaled.
Again, donāt ask me why this worked, but it does. and thats several hours of trial n error. What a joke and what a waste of time. Reminds me of the old hard drive days where drives wouldnāt mount and you had to be a power user with knowledge of how to use command lines and mess around with primitive jumpers on the back of the drive. Canāt believe this is still an issue in this day n age. pfffft
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Hi All, I bought a WD My Passport Ultra. I was running on pre-El Capitan, I wanted to use Time Machine back up to use on a new macā¦I formatted the Drive (using WD Software, which I had to upgrade) before I upgraded to El Capitan, to make sure the it worked. Worked like a charm. I upgraded to El Capitan and the Drive would not work anymore, it would not last over a minute before disconnecting. I visited many forums, even went out to get a USB Port as some people advised this worked. Not at all. The solution, as confirmed by Chuck E, is to get rid of the WD software once I used the uninstaller for the software and restarted for the upteenth time today it finally worked. I formatted before the upgrade, but was also able to reformat once I upgraded ( I believed I had done something wrong, so redid it). As we speak 6GB out of 320GB backed up, without failing, Good Luck.
I finally was contacted by WD support and was suggested to delete their utilities software, restart the computer and format to EXFAT.
Did it and now works perfectly!!
I had the same problem! I solved it uninstalling the WD tools as many suggested here!
Thank you all!!! 
For information I have a macbook late 2008, upgraded with an SSD and 4gb RAM, OS X El Capitan. I have usb2 port and I use the external WD with the single cable (no double cable needed)
My hard lesson with Maverick is: DO NOT install any software coming with the disk, whatever the manufacturer is. Just rely on the OS Disk Utilities to do the formatting, ā¦ etc.
(I assume that the same thing happens again with the new El Capitan.)
I would not say that the disk software is crappy. But it may not be compatible with the future new OS. Apple may have done something that the disk manufacturers not aware of. If you do not want to run into potential problems in future OS upgrades, forget about the manufacturerās disk software. If you have install it, uninstall it COMPLETELY.
But unfortunately sometimes, you have to use the manufacturerās disk software to change the RAID mode. Two ways to handle it, change the mode on a computer which has an older OS. Or install the manufacturerās disk software, change the mode and uninstall the disk software completely.
IMPORTANT: backup the disk before you do anything, unless it is new.
If you want some information on how to uninstall WDās disk software, follow this long thread.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=0&tstart=0
Hi Everyone.
Iām having the exact same issue now with a WD 2TB Elements HD
Worked perfectly until I upgraded to El Cap moments ago.My Mac detects the HD,I can read all the files on it,I can copy & paste files from the WD HD to my Mac but I cannot copy/cut & paste files to the WD HD itself. I canāt even cut & paste files to my Mac.
I have 2 other very old WD 1 TB HDās (different model) & they are working fine. Why would the upgrade only effect the WD Elements HD that I only bought months ago?
I donāt have any WD software installed on my Mac,Iām running an NTFS driver so there shouldnāt be any compatibility issues. I would appreciate any feedback.
