You’re welcome. Hopefully a Virtual machine is what you will need to fix the problem. I figured you had older drives that work just fine. The drive in question just sounds dead to me, or going that direct. There is one last thing you can check, under system profiler look at USB, and see if your Passport shows up there, if it’s not even there, then I’d call it. The USB section of System Profiler, should at LEAST show it as a usb device, if it’s working at all.
I took a look, and this is what I found. I collapsed Apple T2 Bus and USB 3.1 Bus; each of those had all the devices I knew about.
But what is this USB 3.1 Bus all on its own? I have reconnected My Passport, and it is on, with the blue light on, but as usual, not in Disk Utility, etc.
I’ve not used any Macs newer than this late 2015 iMac, so I’m not experienced with the newer USB standards. I will leave you with one final suggestion. Have you tried a new USB cable between the drive and computer? Not likely the problem, but you never know. The cable may be able to power it. However, something may have happened to the data connection. If this doesn’t resolve it, or you don’t have a different cable to try. Then I’m pretty much out of suggestions for now.
Just a quick update. I’ve gotten a little further, but I am not quite there yet. I have installed the free VMware Fusion, and I have successfully used Ubuntu, but technically it isn’t completely installed in the virtual machine yet. There is some additional set up to go through to finish all of that still. But last night, while I was in Ubuntu, the My Passport started turning on like it was accessing data! That was the first time that has happened with this new iMac. I tried to use the Drive app built into Ubunto, but I was not able to successfully see the device. So I also tried to see the device from the Mac at this same time since the hard drive seemed to be reacting to some kind of connection; still no luck.
I will be receiving my CD/DVD/BD reader/burner today from Amazon, and then I should be able to successfully install Windows 7 from that CD into a virtual machine with VMware. Years ago, I definitely used My Passport with Windows 7 through Parallels on my old iMac.
Great to hear you’re making progress. I was thinking after we last spoke, I was testing drives the other day in a third party enclosure for desktop 3.5" drives. They quit mounting on the late 2013 MBP I was testing them on, and they wouldn’t show in Disk utility either. I power cycled the MBP and the drive started working again. If you haven’t power cycled your iMac in a while, worth a shot. Also look at resetting SMC, or PRAM. Because you have a newer machine with a T2, the process may be different from what I’m used to. Hope you get things resolved soon!
Thanks for the extra tips, I will have to look up a few of those things, I’m not familiar with those, although I think I did see a reference to T2 when I was looking at the system report to look at the USB settings?!
WOW! I just realized that my cable that connects my 3TB WD drive has the same connection as My Passport. So, I thought, great I guess I might as well try another cable, since that was suggested to be way back from WD Customer Support when I first reached out to them. And I just thought it probably wouldn’t be the issue, and that I didn’t want to order a new cable for a device that might no longer work with my new iMac.
Sure enough, as soon as I connected the drive with that cable, there it was! And all of my data was fine, just as I left it in 2015! I had just made a backup of my Music library. So LOTs of free space on my ‘old’ 750GB device.
But here is the kicker! That cable (the original one from My Passport), it WORKS with my 3TB drive! And I did retry it again with My Passport after that, but still no luck with that cable/device combination. So, now I have connected the 3TB drive to the USB port on my Linksys Router, and I’ve successfully connected to the drive from my iMac.
I have reformatted My Passport as APFS Encrypted, with 2 volumes, and my initial Time Machine backup is almost done.
I want to thank everyone who offered suggestions along the way. And I will forever be weary of cables going forward! LOL!
Until the next time…
I had the same connection problems. Hard Drive worked fine with usb c connector on my M1 MacBook Air but would not connect on my iMac running Big Sur.
Finally found the solution was a poor connection between the USB 3 adapter which appeared to be some raised pieces of plastic preventing the USB C connector from fully connecting. Just gave it a firmer push and the hard drive was recognised.
Whenever you connect an external drive to your mac, the storage drive may not show up on Desktop, Finder or even on Disk Utility due to various reasons:
- USB connectivity problem
- MacOS preference settings
- Partition map damage
- Device incompatibility
- Physical damage on a drive
However, to fix the issue, you can try the below methods:
- Check the USB connectivity
- Enable visibility of external hard drive
- Update macOS
- Repair external hard drive by using Disk Utility
- Repair external hard drive by using Terminal
- Erase the external hard drive
- If none of the above works, then the drive needs replacement
Further, you can also check the below link for steps to be followed in each method mentioned above:
Hope it helps!
