WD Passport 2626 appears in some Macs, not in others

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I setup a WD Passport 2626 4TB external disk on an iMac and formatted in Mac Extended Journaling. All good. Then I tried to move to another Mac (a Mac mini), and the WD Passport disk did not appear in disk utility (no external disks).

I then tested on 5 Macs. Two Macs running MacOS 10.13.6 worked fine (an iMac and Mac mini). The three other Macs (Mac mini with os 12.1, and MacBook Pro 12.1, and a Mac mini running 10.15.7) did not work. The WD Passport did not appear in the disk utility for these computers.

I changed the disk format from Mac Extended to AFPS (tried case sensitive/encrypt, and also just basic AFPS). No change in results.

This external disk is required on one of the Mac minis where it is not recognized by disk utility. Any thoughts to how to resolve this ?

2

Hi @pfoley,

Thanks for reporting the issue.

Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

Whenever you connect an external drive to your mac, the storage drive may not show up on Desktop, Finder, or even on Disk Utility due to various reasons:

  1. USB connectivity problem
  2. macOS preference settings
  3. Partition map damage
  4. Device incompatibility
  5. Physical damage on a drive

However, to fix the issue, you can try the below methods:

  1. Check the USB connectivity
  2. Enable visibility of external hard drive
  3. Update macOS
  4. Repair external hard drive by using Disk Utility
  5. Repair external hard drive by using Terminal
  6. Erase the external hard drive
  7. If none of the above works, then the drive needs replacement

Further, you can also check the below link for steps to be followed in each method mentioned above:

Hope it helps!