I have a 1tb Western Digital Passport drive I’ve been using for years that suddenly stopped showing up. It works fine on Windows but doesn’t mount or show up in the disk utility on both my mac mini or my macbook air.
I thought maybe something had happened under windows that screwed up the format so I re-formatted it. I use NTFS to be able to work on both pc and mac. I just bought another drive which is formatted in NTFS to transfer my files before reformatting. The new drive has no problem, so it shouldn’t be the NTFS mac driver.
I know a number of people have expressed similar problem, but from what I’ve read, a number of them see the drive in the disk utility and don’t mention if it works or not on PC. My drive has no problem on any Windows computer, only doesn’t show up on macs. I see the new NTFS drive I just bought and have no problem with it on my mac. I tried formatting the WD Passport with Fat X as Fat 32 was not available, probably due to the size. Still nothing.
Western Digital site claims that either the cable or the drive must be faulty, but if that is the case, why does it work well on windows? It’s simply consistent with using it with mac computers.
I’m running out of ideas on what to do. If anyone has ideas on this particular case, please let me know.
I know that. But my passport doesn’t show up anymore at all. I don’t even see it in the disk utility. I can’t read it, which mac should be able to, even in NTFS.
Sorry, but I don’t understand your comment about checking one drive at a time. I only have an issue with 1 drive. The WD 1tb passport. It doesn’t appear on either my mac book air or my mac mini. It used to.
I am having the same problem. It suddenly stopped showing on my mac. But i it working on windows 10 ( running on vmware fusion ) . So it definetly is not bad cable or so on. Please help. It happend to me twice. Hoping for a solution. TY
I am having exactly the same problem and cannot suss it out at all. Happened yesterday. Been using the WD 1TB Passport on MacBook Pro for 4 years no problem. Also using it on new Mac Pro for 6 weeks now, no problem. And then yesterday saving a CAD file got the spinning colour wheel of death and that was it, WD Passport no longer talking to Mac Pro. Tried it on the MacBook Pro and the same problem. Hooked it up to my PC and it works fine. Like you it doesn’t show up in Disk Utility either and when plugged into either Mac the green light on it just flashes and the disk whirrs as though it’s trying to find the file table or something, but failing. Anyway I have managed to back up all the data via the PC to my WD Cloud drive. Next step will try reformatting it and see if it then works on the Macs again.
