Can't find files on WD My Passport for Mac

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

About 2 years ago I put nearly all of my files from MacBook Pro, onto my WD My Passport for Mac (model # WDBLUZ0010BSL-NESN), At the time I had Mac OS Mountain Lion. I then went into Apple Store and had them help me do the upgrade and I upgraded to Maverick. Fast forward to today- I need to put all recent files on my WD Passport because I’m a photographer and I need to add 9 more photoshoots right now to my Mac, however, I am out of space on my Mac, so I need to move folders of images onto the passport.

I plugged in my WD passport and it shows up on my desk top, just like it should. I cannot find any of my files on it though :(. When I double click on it to open it up, all I can see is EVERYTHING that is currently on my Mac. I have not updated my passport in 2 years, so there is no way that my 2018 files are on the passport, and this is how I know that the passport is not accurately reflecting back to me, it’s contents. I tried going to disk utility, and the passport shows up in the disk utility window. I can even see how much space is used up on the passport and how much space is left. I can see this the data tells me that there are something like 11,000 images (maybe more, I can’t remember exactly) on the passport.

Question is- how do I find these images?! I’m now on Mavericks operating system, and the WD Passport that I have, says on the box, that it is formatted for Mac OSX Lion or Mountain Lion. So, what do I do to retrieve my images now? AND can I still use this passport to store images on, or do I need to go buy a new one already?

Thank you for any help you can provide. I’m on a really tight deadline since this is my busiest season of all. I’m needing help ASAP.

-Melissa

3

You are still using Mavericks, right? And I guess your drive is MacOS Journaled formatted? As from your posts your ex-hdd doesn’t appears to be corrupt but you can run First-Aid repair on your drive. I know it might not be possible but do you have an option to connect your drive to another Mac system with a different macOS? There are a few data recovery tools which you can try for free. I recommend you scan your drive with one of such tool and see what it gives back to you.

4

I know this is late, but I have had the same issue and if others find this thread, I’ll give you the benefit of my experience, I am also a photographer with terabytes of photos backed up on two Passport drives (a 2TB Wireless and 4TB Passport for MAC). At times both my 2013 13" MacBook Pro running various OS over the years, would not see anything on the drive or would only see items on one of two partitions. And again today it happened with my brand new MacBook running OS Mojave. Freaks you out, however, if you eject and shutdown and/or restart your computer, then reconnect the drive, it usually shows up. Very disconcerting, and why I have everything backed up in three places.