Hi, I have a WD Passport (2011) that I was using for backups. It was working fine not too long ago, but suddenly stopped being able to mount to my computers. I thought it was Big Sur at first after I upgrade laptops, so I tried it on my old laptop with Mojave, and it still won’t mount. I’m trying to just erase/reformat it at this point. But because it won’t mount, I can’t. I tried going through the terminal to see if it could erase/reboot it that way, but that didn’t work either. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Hello,
Please refer to the following KBA article;Error
and we would recommend you perform a diagnostic test over the drive to determine the optimal health of the drive
Please refer to the following KBA article for performing a diagnostic test on the drive: How to Install and Use WD Security and WD Drive Utilities Features
Caution: Erasing the drive will remove all its data. Please ensure to recover data before erasing the drive.
Thanks, @Logan.S Logan.S! I’ll give these a try. I feel like I’ve tried to do this before, and I still couldn’t access it. My guess is that the external hard drive is corrupt and done.
@DonaldKepler I don’t mind if all the data is removed at this point. I have a backup elsewhere. I just hope that all the data is removed before I get rid of the drive.
@Logan.S Unfortunately, I tried everything on that link and nothing worked. The external drive started to make a weird, consistent chirping sound. Any thoughts on that?
Could possibly be physical damage or some component failure. Is your hard drive greyed out in the disk utility panel? Can you share the screeshot?
I think I am having buyer’s remorse about using the “My Passport for Mac” (2T) based on comments I see in WD community. Maybe I need to get an external hard drive that is not SSD to ensure that I have access to the data. I want to back up data and be able to restore it to computer if needed via Time Machine. I don’t want to use other back-up methods or software. Any suggestions as to what product may be right for me?
@DonaldKepler It won’t mount at all, so there’s no gray out or any icon that pops up. When I plug the hard drive in, you can hear it running. But it does make a weird beeping/mechanical interval sound. Seems like the likely scenario are that it has some hardware issues.
When you connect an external hard drive on Mac, it will show up on Desktop, Finder, and Disk Utility. But sometimes the external drive won’t appear on any of these places. To fix the issue, you can try the below methods:
- Change MacOS settings
- Reset Mac firmware settings
- Fix external hard drive connectivity issue
- Troubleshoot external hard drive
- Recover data from non-mounting external mac hard drive using reliable data recovery software
Further, I suggest you to check the below link for detailed steps to be followed in each method above.
Hope it helps!
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mine has failed as well. probably because i forget to eject it sometime. i’ve tried every way i know to erase the data on it and start over, but no such luck. i think i will just look into backing up my data on our server at work instead of an external drive.
Hi Chanandler, I had a mounting issue with my external drive too and tried many options to solve it, the only solution that worked for me was to login in my own mac as guest and then plug my drive. It suddenly was recognized and appeared on my desktop. Then I wen’t back to my main profile or admin profile and it showed the drive too. As simple as it sounds, but it made the trick for me.Good luck!
