My Passport for Mac 4TB Files Disappear and Cannot Eject

Portable Drives My Passport
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I have a My Passport for Mac 4TB external drive that continues to have issues where the files will disappear, but my overall storage is still showing the space is being used. Also, it will not eject saying the one or more programs is using it. I have erased the drive and restored to Mac Journaled and even tried reformatting to exFAT and still encounter this issue. I’m not sure what program is currently “using,” the drive to not be able to eject. I do not have Time Machine set up on the drive and do not have any active virus software running in the background. Even Disk Utility cannot eject. I have reformatted this drive on a different MacBook and even on a Windows machine. I have performed a First Aid in Disk utility and checked for bad sectors on Windows and all came back with no issues.

I have seen similar post with this very subject and have yet found a fix. A common observation with my drive and other post is that this normally happens when you wake your iMac after it goes to sleep. The only fix that I have is to force eject the drive or restarting my iMac. Obviously both option are inconvenient and counter intuitive to having an external storage to either restart or force eject and re-plug the drive throughout the day.

I have found that other brand drives do not have this issue on my iMac. I have another WD external drive that does not have this issue or other branded external drives that work just fine. For some reason, it’s this specific branded Mac external drive that has this issue. I thought buying a branded Mac drive would be best for my Mac, but it obviously was a terrible choice. I’m hoping that somebody has found a fix to this as I have scoured the internet and have found no fix.

I’m currently using a 2017 iMac 5K on 10.16.7. The drive is currently plugged into the USC-C port, but also has a USB A adapter that still will have this issue.

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Hi @dingled
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:

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This issue might be due to Spotlight indexing the drive. To see if that’s the case, try adding the drive to the exclusion list in System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy—it could prevent Spotlight from keeping the drive active. Another helpful step is to boot your Mac into Safe Mode (hold Shift while restarting) and attempt to eject the drive there, as this mode can bypass some background processes that might be holding onto the drive. Also, try disabling the “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” option under System Preferences > Energy Saver, especially since the issue seems to occur after waking your Mac from sleep.

It might also be worth looking in Activity Monitor to see if any background apps or processes, like Finder or Spotlight, are accessing the drive. Quitting any such processes might allow it to eject properly.

If all fails, you could try recovering the drive’s data using Data Recovery Software for Mac. Start by creating an image of the disk, then reformat the drive, and recover your data from the disk image afterward using the software again. This approach can resolve the issue without risking your data.