My Passport Goes Blank After Computer Sleeps

After going to sleep and trying to access my 4TB passport in Finder, the folder is completely empty and cannot eject unless I force eject or shut down the computer. I didn’t have this issue with my 1TB drive.

This is becoming a problem because my editing software can’t access the files in the drive unless I force eject and plug back in (computer won’t allow me to eject normally) or completely restart the computer. It’s becoming a hassle.

If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this it would be sincerely appreciated.

So far I have disabled “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” on my computer settings and have also disabled my passport from going into sleep. Issue still persists.

August 2022: Just come across this old post as have just had the same issue with a WD Passport Ultra 1TB on a Mac running Monterey 12.5.1. Finder shows there is data on the drive but nothing visible. Disk utility can’t unmount the drive to repair it. Have run Disk Drill to make a Byte for Byte copy on an external drive but the image won’t mount. Currently trying to do a file recovery using Disk Drill

So did the content show up again once you force ejected the drive and remounted? I am a bit concerned as have over a dozen WD Drives from 1TB to 14TB as moved away from Seagate as was having issues.

Replying to my own question, I was worried that if I force ejected the WD Passport it would not mount again. I gave it a go and the drive has now mounted showing the files. Am currently backing up to anther WD drive.

The Disk Drill file recovery did don’t find a single file. I would be interested to find out what happened and is this a glitch or is the drive about to fail?