Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac. Step 2: Click 'Find Lost APFS Partitions' on the top right corner and then choose the uninitialized WD My Passport to scan all lost partitions on this drive. Step 3: Select the partition where you lost data and click 'Next' to scan all lost files on this partition. First power up your Mac. Look for your WD My Passport drive on Your Desktop 3. Start up the Disk Utility application. Pick your WD My Passport in the external hard drive list. Look to the top of your Disk Utility window and select Erase. Once youve done your formatting. When youre finished using your My Passport drive. The WD Passport ultra is not showing up on my PC and I couldn't access saved data either. Is there a possible way that can help me to repair the not detectable WD drive to work again? If you are having a similar problem on your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or other brands of external hard drive or devices, don't worry. Rebooted my Mac and tried connect the drive again, no helps. It was still greyed out in Disk Utility and finally, on Disk Utility, I right click on the greed out External, and selected image from, hit the cancel button on the popup, and all the sudden, it became alive. Not sure what is going on here, but I did not have to erase the drive.

“I have a 1TB WD Elements external hard drive and use it to store all my photos. Today, I connect it to my Windows 10 PC and will copy the photos from it to my PC, but the drive does not appear in This PC and I cannot access it. I reconnect it again and again, change to another USB port, try another USB cable, but still not work. Is there any any way to fix this issue? I really don’t want to lose all my photos.” - Cash

Actually, when you find your connected WD external hard drive won’t show up on your computer, you will change the USB cable, USB port and check the power adapter if it needs, etc. You also can check the software driver for the WD external hard drive. If it still can’t make your WD external hard drive be recognized by your computer, you can try the methods below to fix this issue. Of course, if you lose your files during the fixing processes, we will show you how to get the lost files back.

Page contents:

Fix 1. Create New Volume if it shows unallocated.

First of all, open Disk Management (Click This PC > Choose Manage > Click Disk Management) on your computer. If you find your WD external hard drives shows unallocated, just create a volume for it. Right click the Unallocated space and choose ‘New Simple Volume’, then follow the wizard to create a new volume. After that, open This PC (or My Computer) to check if the WD external hard drive is showing up.

Fix 2. Assign a new drive letter for your WD external hard drive.

In most cases, your WD external hard drive can’t be recognized by your computer is caused by drive letter conflict or having no drive letter. It is easy to fix this issue by adding a new drive letter for it. Open Disk Management, find the WD external hard drive and right click it, choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. If the device doesn't already have a letter, click Add and choose one. If it does, click Change and try another one.

Fix 3. Format the WD external hard drive using Disk Management.

If your WD external hard drive gets crashed or the file system of it is incompatible, you can format it so that it can be recognized by your Windows computer. Open Disk Management > Right click the WD external hard drive > Choose Format to format it.

Fix 4. Recover lost data from unrecognized or formatted/initialized WD external hard drive.

Data recovery software can help you recover files from your WD external hard drive whether you have formatted/initialized it or not. Now, follow the steps below to get all files back.

Step 1. Download a reliable WD data recovery program - such as Magoshare Data Recovery. It can help you find all existing files, hidden files, deleted/formatted and lost files from your WD external hard drive.

Step 2. Make sure the WD external hard drive has been connected to your computer and run Magoshare Data Recovery. Select the WD external hard drive to start data recovery.

Step 3. Click on Scan button, Magoshare Data Recovery will deeply scan the WD external hard drive and find every recoverable file.

Step 4. Once the scanning is completed, you can preview all recoverable files. Then select the desirable files and save them to your computer. Don’t save the recovered files to the WD external hard drive.

Why Isn't My Wd Passport Showing Up On Mac

Fix 5. Repair crashed WD external hard drive with AweEraser.

AweEraser is a safe, powerful and easy-to-use data erasure & disk management program. If you have installed it on your computer, you can use it to help you repair your crashed WD external hard drive.

1. Open AweEraser on your computer and choose Disk Tools. If you can see the WD external hard drive in the drive list, just select it then click on Repair button. This tool will scan the crashed WD external hard drive and help you fix minor logical errors. Mostly, it will fix the errors by formatting it.

2. If you are going to sell, donate or trade in your WD external hard drive, you can use Erase Hard Drive mode to help you fix the crashed WD external hard drive and permanently wipe all data from it so that no data can be recovered by the next owners.

Open AweEraser, choose data erasure mode - Erase Hard Drive. This mode will help you wipe and format your WD external hard drive. After erasure, all data on the WD external hard drive will be erased permanently, can’t be recovered by any data recovery method.

Select the WD external hard drive and click on Erase button. AweEraser will format and wipe the WD external hard drive. 100% safe.

Related Articles

'I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB portable drive for storing important personal files. Suddenly, the WD Passport ultra is not showing up on my PC.
How do I fix My WD Passport Ultra not showing up on my computer?'

When your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or external hard drive is not showing up, you can neither access nor use the drive on your computer.

But don't worry. Follow this guide, you'll learn the causes and fixes to the WD Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up error on your own.

Here is the complete guide to making your WD Passport external hard drive detected again:

PAGE CONTENT:
Fix 1. Add New Drive Letter
Fix 2. Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sector
Fix 3. Plug WD My Passport Halfway-in-USB
Fix 4. Try a Different USB Cable/Port or PC
Fix 5. Update WD External Device Driver & Reinstall BUS Controllers
Fix 6. Send Disk for Repair

Some of you may also want to learn what causes the wd external hard drive not showing up on the computer. Continue reading and check it out.

Why is My WD Passport Not Showing Up?

We consulted many experienced users and IT professionals, and we concluded the causes below. Check out why is your WD Passport Ultra external not showing up:

  1. 1. A faulty USB port/cable, or a damaged USB hub on PC
  2. 2. No drive letter is assigned to WD Passport drive
  3. 3. Corrupted file system or bad sectors makes WD drive unreadable
  4. 4. WD drive driver is out of date
  5. 5. Universal USB controllers drivers are outdated

These causes may also lead to some of your other devices malfunctioning, such as:

So how to fix these errors and make your WD Passport Ultra external hard drive show up on PC again? Follow through the tutorials below to get rid of this issue immediately.

Part 1. Check The State of WD External Hard Disk in Disk Management

Connect the WD external hard drive to your computer via the USB cable. Follow steps here to check the state of your WD external hard drive in Disk Management:

Step 1. Press Windows + R keys, type diskmgmt.msc in the Run box, and click 'OK'.

Step 2. In Disk Management, locate and check the state of your WD external hard drive.

Part 2. Fix WD My Passport External Hard Drive Not Showing Up Error

Check the state of your not showing up or not detected WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive and refer to the right fix to make your drive work normally again.

Fix 1. Add New Drive Letter to Make WD Passport External Hard Drive Showing Up

Applies to: Fix WD passport external hard drive not showing up due to the drive letter confliction.

If your WD displays as 'New Volume' with no drive letter in Disk Management, it won't show up in File Explorer. Don't worry.

You can change or add a new drive letter so to make WD passport detectable and accessible again in Windows PC:

Step 1. Press Win + R keys, type diskmgmt.msc in the Run dialog, click 'OK' to open Disk Management.

My Wd Passport Not Showing Up Mac Software

Step 2. Right-click on WD drive which fails to show up and choose 'Change Drive Letter and Paths...'.

Step 3. Click 'Add', set a new drive letter to assign to the WD external drive, and click 'OK'.

If the WD drive has already been assigned with a letter, click 'Change' to choose another letter for it. After this, restart your PC and check if you can visit the WD external hard drive in Windows File Explorer.

Fix 2. Fix Corrupted File System/Bad Sector

Applies to: Fix WD passport external hard drive not showing up due to file system error or bad sectors.

If the system files are corrupted or the WD device contains bad sectors, Windows disk management may detect it as '*Others' or RAW. Your computer may not even able to detect it from File Explorer.

EaseUS partition manager software with its Check File System feature can help. As long as your Disk Management can detect it, you can apply this tool to fix the corrupted file system and bad sectors on WD hard drive.

Follow to see how to fix corrupted system files and bad sectors on WD device:

After this, you can check the drive. If your files were missing, move to Part 3 and apply reliable data recovery software to bring back all your WD external hard drive data.

Fix 3. Plug WD My Passport Halfway-in-USB

This method is more like a temporary solution. According to a user's feedback on a forum, in this 'bizarre way', his computer successfully recognized the external hard drive. Here's how to do it.

Step 1. Plug the USB cable halfway through any one of your computer's USB ports.

Step 2. Wait for the WD hard drive to show up in File Explorer.

Step 3. When you see your hard drive, push the USB completely into the USB port.

It might be unreasonable, but quite a lot of people solved their problem with this trick. Have a try on it!

Fix 4. Try a Different USB Cable/Port or PC

When your WD hard drive neither shows up in File Explorer nor Disk Management, you can try to change the USB cable, try another USB port, or a new PC to see if the drive can be read or not.

Step 1. Switch a USB port/cable and replug it to your computer.

If the drive can be read via new a USB cable or on a new PC, then the drive is working fine. The problem is with the USB cable.

Step 2. Reconnect the WD drive via a new USB hub or to a new PC.

  • If the WD Passport drive shows up, it is the damaged USB hub that stops WD from showing up.
  • If the WD passport is not detected either on your current or the new PC, replace the WD drive with a new one.

Fix 5. Update WD External Device Driver & Reinstall BUS Controllers

When the WD Passport drive is not working, it might be caused by the outdated device drivers. So the best way is to update its driver via the following three paths:

#1. Download and Install WD Device Driver:

Step 1. Connect the problematic WD external hard drive to your PC.

Step 2. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.

Step 3. Find and expand Disk Drivers, Portable Devices, Universal Serial USB Controllers, or Other devices.

See if the WD external hard drive is shown as an 'Unknown' device.

Step 4. Right-click on Unknown or not working WD external hard drive, select 'Properties'.

Step 5. Go to the Details tab, set Property to 'Hardware Ids'.

Step 6. Right-click the top Value and click 'Copy'.

Step 7. Paste it into a browser and search for the correct device driver.

Step 8. Find and download the correct WD device driver and install it on your PC.

After this, restart your computer. And everything shall work fine with your WD My Passport Ultra drive.

#2. Update WD Device Driver from Device Manager:

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.

Step 2. Expand Device Manager and right-click the WD My Passport Ultra drive.

Step 3. Select 'Update driver'.

Step 4. Select 'Search automatically for updated driver software', wait for the process to complete.

#3. Uninstall/Reinstall USB Controllers

When the Universal USB Bus Controllers are outdated, it may also stop your WD passport from being detected or showing up. So you can try to uninstall and reinstall USB controllers:

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and select 'Device Manager'.

Step 2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers, right-click on USB controllers of the WD drive, and select 'Uninstall device'.

Repeat to uninstall each USB controller one by one.

Step 3. Restart the computer and Windows will automatically reinstall the USB controllers of your WD drive.

After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.

Notice:
If the WD external hard drive is still not showing up in both File Explorer and Disk Management after trying all these solutions, send your drive for repair as shown in Fix 3.

Fix 6. Send 'Unknown' & Not Detected WD External Hard Disk for Repair

If your WD external hard drive displays as 'Unknown' in disk management, the last thing you can try is to send the disk for repair.

You have two options for this issue:

  • Option 1. Beyond the Warranty: Send WD external disk for repair in a local repair center
  • Option 2. Within the Warranty: Send WD external disk back to its manufacturer

Part 3. Get Data Off WD External Disk and Format It to Work Again

If your WD hard drive shows up and you can access the disk again. Take the last guide in this part to fully protect your files and make the WD external hard drive viable for saving and editing data again.

#1. Get Data Off WD External Hard Drive

Here are two ways that you can fully get files from your WD external hard drive:

  1. 1. Open and copy data from your WD hard drive to another storage device as a backup.
  2. 2. Recover lost files from WD drive with EaseUS file recovery software.

Note that, if you lost some valuable files during the process, don't worry. Professional file recovery software can scan and bring back your files in 3 steps:

Step 1. Choose the external hard drive

  • Since you're going to recover data from an external hard drive, you need to correctly connect the drive to your Windows computer.
  • Run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and choose the exact external drive where you lost data.
  • Click Scan.

Step 2. Check the scan results

The software will immediately start scanning the selected drive for all lost data. During the scan, you can see more and more data showing up in the results. The Filter feature is there for you to quickly locate the files of one kind, such as Pictures, Word/Excel/PDF documents, Videos, etc.

My Wd Passport Not Showing Up Macbook

Step 3. Preview and recover data

  • Double-clicking a file will allow you to preview its content.
  • Choose the file(s) and click Recover.
  • Select a different drive to save the recovered files instead of the original one.

Remember to save the recovered files to another secure location and then move to the next guide to format your WD My Passport external hard drive to usable again.

#2. Format WD External Hard Drive to Usable

Here, you may also let EaseUS Partition Master help. It's easy and efficient in formatting a disk:

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.

Step 2. Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.

Step 3. In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.

Step 4. Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.

After this, you can save the data back to your WD external hard drive again.

Make Your WD External Hard Drive Show Up and Work Now

On this page, we explained why is WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive not showing up on Windows PC and provided 6 practical fixes for you to follow and make the drive show up again.

As a beginner, we suggest that you follow the whole guide one by one. These fixes also work to resolve the same issue on all brands of external hard drive, internal hard drive, USB, or SD card.

Passport

Now, it's your turn. Take steps to fix your not showing up WD external hard drive and make it work again without losing any data.

People Also Ask

For further issues related to the WD passport, check the questions and answers below. You'll get a satisfying answer:

1. WD My Passport not showing up on Mac

If you are having a similar issue that WD My Passport external or internal hard drive not showing up on Mac, you can try the following tips as listed here for help: (Some are similar as shown on this page)

  1. #1. Reconnect WD Passport to Mac
  2. #2. Change WD Passport drive letter
  3. #3. Remount WD Passport to Mac
  4. #4. Update WD Passport drive driver
  5. #5. Format WD My Passport on Mac

2. How to use WD Passport on Windows 10?

For a new WD Passport: Connect Passport to Windows 10 PC > Open Disk Management and Initialize Disk > Create a New Partition on WD Passport drive.

For a used WD Passport: Connect it to Windows 10 > Open it in File Explorer to use it. If you need more space, delete some useless files on it to free up space.

3. Why is my external hard drive not showing up?

Accordingly, many reasons may cause your external hard drive not showing up. Here is a list of major reasons:

  • The external hard drive is not connected to the PC correctly
  • Faulty USB cable or USB hub
  • External hard drive is not initialized
  • External hard drive is doesn't contain a volume
  • External hard drive has no drive letter
  • External hard drive contains file system error, bad sectors, or virus

For a resolution, follow to External/Internal Hard Drive Is Not Showing Up in Windows 10/8/7.