• My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Windows
• My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Pc

I have reached out to WD Customer Support and exhausted all troubleshooting suggestions with them. Since my device reached End of Support in 2013, there really isn’t anything more they can do. Maybe someone else has seen this issue and might be able to help! I’m pasting below all of the troubleshooting steps I performed based on my interactions with WD Customer Support.

• Use Disk Utility on Mac to Repair WD My Passport Not Showing Up Consider Mac Disk utility as the medical help that offers the preliminary first aid to a corrupted WD passport without formatting it. In addition, disk utility incorporates disk management that serves as a repair tool to remove the inner disk errors and other bugs from your.
• Sep 09, 2021 If the WD My Passport for Mac drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not. Everything has flaws. At times, WD My Passport won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD hard drive's light is on but not working.
• In general, when a stable WD My Passport gets plugged into Mac, the drive will be readily available on the Desktop, Finder, and Disk Utility. Then it is possible to has full read-write access to the WD My Passport. However, there are times when your My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder or greyed out in Disk Utility. Why does this happen?

WD My Passport not showing up. I had a backup on my hard-drive which I wanted to delete (300GB), so I moved to the trash. Deleting most files seemed to be okay, however, it then got to the applications folder and other system related stuff. This took forever and kept freezing my macbook, which I needed for work.

Since I submitted my Incident, I have upgraded my iMac to macOS Big Sur version 11.3. And the issue remains the same.

There is no error to capture in a screen shot, because the device is not recognized at all. When connecting it to the iMac, it spins on, like it should, and the tiny light comes on, but nothing happens on the iMac to actually recognize the device.

I am including a screenshot of Disk Utility, where you can see that nothing appears for the device. You can that a different Western Digital device is connected correctly, it is a 3TB device that is formatted as 2 volumes, one for regular use, and one used specifically for Time Machine Backups. Please note that I have connected the 3TB device into the same USB port on this iMac as the one I have currently plugged the My Passport into, and the USB port functions correctly with the 3TB device.

The My Passport drive was accessible and functioning properly approximately 2 months ago on my old 2009 iMac running OS X El Capitan. I just recently tried to connect it to my new late 2020 iMac, and it will not connect, just like many others who I’ve read that are having the same connectivity issues since using macOS Big Sur.

There is no physical damage to the My Passport device. And as stated above, it connected properly to my old iMac. I have not tried another USB cable, because 1) it is a special cable that is needed to connect this My Passport device, and 2) it worked just fine with my old iMac.

I went through all of the steps that were possible in the article/link you provided. I will provide a response for each step listed in the article. 1) There is no power adapter, it gets its power from the USB cable connected to the iMac. 2) As stated above, I did not change out the cable because it is not a standard USB cable and the device worked fine on my old iMac. 3) I have tried multiple USB ports on my new iMac and the results are the same, and other devices function properly in each of those USB ports. 4) I turned off the iMac, let it restart, waited a full hour, and then retried connecting the device, and it still did not work. 5) As I already stated, it worked on my old iMac. I do not agree, that there is any issue with my new iMac, every other device, including a Western Digital 3TB device, all work correctly. I am not contacting Apple about this issue, this is a Western Digital My Passport issue. 6) Since it showed up correctly on my old iMac, the device has not failed.

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:

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.

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.

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

My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Windows

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.

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.

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

My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Pc

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.