WD Elements not showing in WD Drive Utilities

I have just bought an 8TB Elements drive from Amazon, and my previous WD externals have been able to be picked up by the Drive Utilities software. But when I plug this one in, it doesn’t show in Drive Utilities, despite otherwise working completely fine. I read on the download page for the software that WD Elements SE are supported by that software, as are WD easystore drives. Is there a way I can verify which one of these my drive is, as I know that the Elements and the easystore drives are pretty much identical. The fact that it isn’t recognised suggests to me that it might not be one of these models, but if it isn’t one of those models, what else could it be?

The possible causes for such an issue can be an incompatible file system, missing drive letter, disk driver issues, damaged partition issues on the hard drive. In a worst-case, the drive itself is failing.

You can try the below fixes to resolve the issue:

  1. Initialize the drive or drive partition
  2. Change/Assign drive letter
  3. Update Disk drivers
  4. Enable drive in BIOS

I have the same problem with the same drive, cant be a coincidence

Good news!!! Ive solved this. The recommendations are both right and wrong. I bought a new WD 5TB drive and shell protective case (case is not WD). The first thing I do is always format the drive on Mac… but WD drive utility and WD security could not see the drive. I formatted in every option possible… none worked, yet both apps recognised all my old drives with no issues!

I went to the WD download site and downloaded ‘WD Discovery’. This in-turn said the other two apps were old, and prompted me to update them directly from that app (yay, feeling secure). Once installed, tada, no problem seeing my drive and prompted straight away to add a password. Problem solved! Please spread the word WD, solutions there, just not on all these threads!

Drive Utilities does not, and never will recognize Elements Drives. If you check the list of drives recognized by Drive Utilities, you’ll notice that Elements drives aren’t on it ( except for the SE type as you mentioned ). I have 3 My Book Drives that Utilities recognizes and one Elements Drive that it does not. I don’t know why WD excluded this particular drive series, but the Dashboard software recognizes all of my WD products ( internal and external ), including a 10TB HGST UltraStar. Dashboard offers the same diagnostics as Drive Utilities, but unfortunately, doesn’t have a function to adjust the sleep timer.

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