Charles updated on 2021/7/3 to Mac Data Recovery
"I just get a WD external hard drive. When I connect it to my Mac computer, it's not showing up and I cannot access the drive. How to fix the issue and make the WD external hard drive accessible again?"
If the WD external hard drive not showing up on Mac, there are some possible reasons. For example:
How to fix the issue? If the WD external hard drive is not showing up on your Mac, you can have a try with the following methods.
Normally, an external hard drive could be showing up in Finder if you connect it to your Mac computer. If the WD external hard drive cannot be recognized, the first thing you can try is to reconnect the drive. You can first change a USB port to have a try.
Also, if the cable is damaged, the connected drive cannot be recognized normally on Mac. You can change another USB cable to reconnect the WD external hard drive to have a try. If you connect the drive with a USB hub or external adapter, please connect the disk to the Mac directly to check if it works.
Sometimes, you can restart the Mac and check if the WD external hard drive could be recognized. Besides, please also connect the WD external hard drive to another Mac and check if it can be recognized on another Mac computer.
For an external hard drive, if there is a problem with the power supply or the power supply is not enough, it will cause issues and make the WD external hard drive cannot be found in any way.
How to solve the issue in such a case? You can just change a connector to have a try. If the issue persists, you can change a powered USB hub or adaptor to increase the power supply.
The system preferences of the Mac will also cause the issue that the WD external hard drive not showing up. For example, if you connect WD external hard drive with the same cable on another Mac and it can be recognized normally, you need to check the preferences of your Finder.
1) Start Finder from the Dock of the Mac computer.
2) Click Finder from the top menu bar and choose Preferences…
3) Under the General tab, please enable the option External disks.
After enabling the option, the connected WD external hard drive will be showing up on the desktop directly. If you want to make sure the WD external hard drive will also be showing up in the sidebar of Finder, please change to the Sidebar tab of the Finder Preferences window. Also, enable the option External disks.
If you can ensure there is no problem with the connection and Finder preferences, there would be issues with the WD external hard drive. To confirm it, you can check it in Disk Utility. If the drive could be recognized here, there should be some issues with the disk. That's why the WD external hard drive cannot show up in Finder or on the desktop. You can try First Aid on the drive to fix the issue.
1) Run Disk Utility from Applications -> Utilities.
2) Choose the WD external hard drive from the left sidebar.
3) Click the First Aid button at the top of the Disk Utility window.
4) It will take some time to finish the fix process. Once it's done, you can click the Done button to finish it.
After running First Aid for your WD external hard drive, you can reconnect the drive and check again. If the disk issues could be fixed successfully, the drive should show up.
The External hard drive can only be recognized and accessed if the files system is compatible with Mac. If the file system of the WD external hard drive is not supported by Mac, the drive will not show up on Mac. To make it work on Mac, you need to format it with a file system that can work on Mac.
Also, if the file system of the WD external hard drive is corrupted, the drive will not show up. If you try First Aid and cannot fix the issue, you can also reformat the WD external hard drive directly. You can format the drive directly in Disk Utility.
1) Run Disk Utilitys and choose the WD external hard drive.
2) Click the Erase button to format the hard drive.
3) Set the Name, Format for the external hard drive.
4) Click the Erase button to format the drive.
After formatting the WD external hard drive in Disk Utility, the drive will be compatible with Mac. It will show up and you can access/use the drive directly on Mac.
Please don't do further changes if you have important files on the WD external hard drive. Any further changes may cause further damage to the lost data on the hard drive. We suggest you download and use the software Donemax Data Recovery for Mac to recover the data from the drive.
The software is effective enough to recover data from crashed or unrecognized WD external hard drives. Also, the software is very simple and easy to use. Please do as follows to recover data from the drive with the software.
Step 1. Choose the WD external hard drive.
Connect the crashed or inaccessible WD external hard drive to the computer. Run the data recovery software and then choose the external hard drive from the device list.
Step 2. Scan the WD external hard drive.
The software will scan the external hard drive automatically after clicking the Scan button. It will analyze the disk and search for the lost data from the WD external hard drive.
Step 3. Recover the lost data from the drive.
After the scan is done, you can then preview and check the found files. Choose the wanted files and recover them to another drive.
Keep in mind that if you have important files on the crashed or not showing up WD external hard drive, please try to recover lost data first to avoid further damage to the lost data on the drive. After recovering the data successfully to another drive, you can then format or fix the drive for further use.
Charles
Contributing Writer
Charles, a technology writer and editor, focuses on writing articles about Mac data recovery, data erasure, disk clone etc for Donemax. He likes playing tennis and swimming. Charles also is a Apple fan, he is crazy about different Apple machines and is interested in testing software and applications on Mac.
Donemax Data Recovery for Mac
