Passport Ultra - reformated to use with Mac but now vanishes!

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
#1

sorry if this has already been answered anywhere, but I couldn’t find it.

Bought a new passport ultra and followed the instructions at Knowledge Base answer 3865 (as advised in user guide) to reformat for use with Mac. Also downloaded Mac utilities and securities installers - and ran them.

Now, when I plug in the drive, it appears in the left menu for about 2 seconds, then vanishes - and can’t be accessed - what do I do to rescue this? any ideas?

thanks in advance!

JacquiP

#2

Hi there,

Have you tried uninstalling the drive utilities to see if by doing this the drive stops diconnecting? Hope this helps.

#3

Hi

thanks for the suggestion - will try that tonight. how would I then reinstall the drive utilities without losing the drive again, as I assume these are needed? Also - the guidance doc mentions restoring the “disk image”. All I could find in the downloads were the “drive utilities” and the “security utilities” - am I missing something?

Incidentally - I installed the utilities installer software into the “applications” area on my MacBook - assuming that it will then install the correct utilities onto the “my passport” drive. Is this correct?  

sorry if these are really dim questions - never used an external drive before  . . .

#4

Any success? I just bought a 2TB Ultra, reformatted it to Mac, and now have the exact same problem with the Ultra connecting for a few seconds and then vanishing.

Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated.

#5

Didn’t work - no idea how I get the thing to work at all - shows up briefly with the name I gave it when I first set it up but then vanishes :-((

#6

I too am suffering from this. I actually bought a new drive because I figured the one I had was busted, and I get the same exact problem…

#7

Hi,

it seems I’ve got a similar issue.
I’ve bought a “My passport ULTRA 1Tb” to be used on both win and Mac, formatted in exFAT.
Well, when plugged into MAC I can read, copy and whatever but after 15-30 min it gives an error message and unplugs.
If I plug again it stays for 2-5 sec and then disconnects.
any solution?

#8

I deleted the utilities and did not re-install. I restarted and my drive reappears! Awesome suggestion, thanks!

#9

yeah! It worked fine for me as well! thanks