WD external HD won't mount on desktop; changed itself to NTFS

(Unable to create an official support case. When trying to submit – “An error was encountered during knowledge base search.” Both in Safari and Firefox. Is this their way of cutting back on official support?)

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 2TB external hard drive. Have been using it on my MacBook Pro a long time.

Suddenly it doesn’t appear on my desktop or in Finder. But it does appear in Disk Utility, although grayed out – see attachment.

Then I noticed (in DU) that the format says “Windows NT File System (NTFS)” – see attachment:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8tx7i4i9zti8trb/wd%20hd%201.jpg?dl=0

I did nothing. It has always worked fine on my Mac laptop. Did it just magically reformat itself to Windows format? Is there anything I can do?

Details:

2TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II (the big fat silver one from years ago)

Using 12v power supply; works fine for other WD drives

See attachment for more drive details:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/stwq38ltbd46c7l/wd%20hd%202.jpg?dl=0


Mid 2010 MacBook Pro Intel

OSX 10.9.5


  • The drive is spinning inside the enclosure
  • Tried connecting directly to a different wall socket, no power strip
  • Tried several new and proven cables – mini USB and Firewire, even both at same time
  • Tried using different USB ports
  • Tested the HD on a different Mac computer running a different OS – Mountain Lion
  • WD SmartWare is not installed
  • Only big software change is going from Mountain Lion > Mavericks. But as stated, doesn’t work on either.

Thank you.

Hi markgrant, welcome to the WD Community. If you are unable to create the case from the support portal you can also call tech support directly and they can create it from you. Have you tried connecting the My Book to a Windows PC? 

http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

I’m having same problem w/new 3TB mybook. won’t appear in finder or D/Utility.

Hi again markgrant, do you need to recover your files? If recovering your files is not necessary, I recommend you to try downloading the latest WD Drive Manager (Mac) 3.1.0 and try formatting the My Book. If you need to recover your files I recommend you to contact WD support for further assistance. You can also contact any of the WD data recovery partners, some of the offer a free evaluation of your drive. 

WD Support

http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

Data recovery partners

http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?wdc_lang=en