Plugged WD Passport into WD MyCloud HD, now Passport isn't mounting on Mac

[mattycyo]

Hey there, I’ve got a few different external HD’s and have been trying to back them up to my 2TB WD MyCloud HD. Since plugging my small Passport HD into the MyCloud, my Mac is no longer recognising it. I can still get to the data by plugging it into the MyCloud HD but this renders it useless to me as a portable HD.

Any thoughts on this. I actually had to other external HD’s completely fail on me at the start of the year at exactly the same time after I had plugged them into the MyCloud HD for the same reason.

Please help as I can’t lose the data again on this current portable HD. Thank you!

[cpt_paranoia]

When you unplugged it from the MyCloud, did you eject it first, using the Dashboard control panel?

[mattycyo]

Thanks for reply. I didn’t use the application but rather connected to hard drive through Finder on the Mac itself. I did eject the portable HD this way though.

Even if I didn’t do this properly and this is what has corrupted the portable HD, wouldn’t this then mean I wouldn’t be able to read it at all? As opposed to now only being able to get to data when it’s attached to the WD MyCloud HD.

Thank you for the help.

[cpt_paranoia]

but rather connected to hard drive through Finder on the Mac itself. I did eject the portable HD this way though.

I’m not sure Finder will eject the disk from the MyCloud; I think you’d have to do that via the Dashboard. Ejecting from Finder probably only disconnects the disk from Finder.

You didn’t mention still being able to read data when it’s attached to the MyCloud; this leads me to wonder if it was formatted as ext4 somehow. I don’t think the MyCloud has a ‘format USB drive’ function.

The other possibility is that you used the ‘lock function’. See Chapter 13 of the User Manual on using USB drives with MyCloud:

“If a WD external drive has been locked, when it is attached to the WD My Cloud device, it maintains that security and can be unlocked or relocked using the Dashboard.”

[cpt_paranoia]

BTW, if you get your drive going again, it may be quicker to transfer files from your HDD via your Mac; the USB port on the MyCloud is pretty slow.

This method is the one recommended by WD for bulk file transfer from USB HDD to MyCloud.