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Summary: This post shows how to access a WD hard drive when it's not recognized by Mac. To fix WD external hard drive not recognizing error without data loss, you can recover lost data from the unrecognized hard drive for free with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

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Just like Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac, Western Digital hard drive not recognized on Mac is another frequently asked question in Apple related forums.

So, if you are wondering:

• Why is the Mac not recognizing my WD hard drive?
• How can I make the unrecognized WD hard drive work on Mac again?
• Can I fix this issue without losing my important data?

You are in the right place for a solution!

How Mac recognizes a WD external hard drive?

The process of Mac recognizing an external hard drive is a little complicated even though you can't see it. Specifically, when you plug a WD hard drive into a Mac computer, macOS would be notified. Then macOS will call all related hardware and software to read, recognize, and show this hard drive on the Desktop and in Finder, so that finally you can access your data on the drive on your Mac computer.

So, we usually simplify this process in 4 steps:

1. The WD hard drive is supplied with power.
2. macOS reads partition information of the WD hard drive.
3. macOS recognizes the file system of each volume.
4. Users access data on the WD hard drive.

However, if any part of this process goes wrong, Mac won't recognize your WD hard drive. As a consequence, you can't access, copy, write to or transfer data stored on it.

Guide to Fix Mac not recognizing WD hard drive

So, based on the process of Mac recognizing a WD hard drive, we need a thorough check to know which part makes the WD hard drive not working on Mac, and then fix it in the following part.

Quick fixes of WD hard drive not recognized on Mac error

A proper connection is the most basic condition that Mac can access the WD hard drive. Or else the external hard drive would not even show up in Disk Utility. When your Mac can't recognize an external hard drive, you can always do the following quick fixes at the very beginning.

• Make sure the WD hard drive is externally plugged into a wall outlet if it's a WD desktop hard drive like WD Elements Desktop and My Cloud.
• Connect the WD hard drive USB cable directly to the computer and do not use a USB Hub.
• Try a different USB cable and port for power and data supply, especially if the My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility.
• Try a different USB-C adapter to connect the WD hard drive if your Mac only has the Thunderbolt 3 port.
• Try to connect the WD hard drive with a different Mac computer to check if the WD hard drive can be recognized on that Mac.
• Try to plug the WD hard drive in to a PC to check if the file system of the WD hard drive is not compatible with Mac.

The WD hard drive lights on but is not recognized by Mac still? Wait! Do you allow your Mac to show the recognized WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop?

Show the WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop

Sometimes, you think WD hard drive is not recognized by Mac because the WD external hard drive isn't showing up in Finder or on the desktop. However, the fact is that the WD hard drive is detected by macOS and it is not set to show up on Mac.

In this case, you can show the WD hard drive by changing the settings:

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General, make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. This will make the WD hard drive show up on the Desktop.

Step 2: Select Sidebar tab on the top, make sure the 'External disks' option under Locations is also ticked.

The WD hard drive is not working on Mac still?

Well, it seems that Mac really can't recognize the WD hard drive. We need to take advantage of some tools for further check.

Update incompatible WD Apps with WD Discovery

Western Digital has multiple self-developed software, including WD Drive Utilities for Mac, WD Discovery for Mac, and WD Security for Mac. Possibly, your Mac doesn't recognize the WD hard drive because the WD software is not compatible with your macOS.

In this situation, you can simply update those WD programs through WD discovery.

Check if the WD hard drive is password locked

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If you are using WD hard drives like My Book Drive and it is not recognized by Mac now, you can check if the hard drive is password protected. It's because macOS won't read the partition information and mount the volumes if the WD hard drive is password locked.

You can download and install WD discovery to unlock the WD hard drive if a password has been set to protect the hard drive.

The WD hard drive is not encrypted? Then the reason for Mac not recognizing the WD hard drive is that macOS fails to access the partition and file system information.

Repair the unrecognized WD hard drive in Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a built-in disk management and repair tool on Mac computers. When a WD hard drive is not recognized or not working due to inner disk errors, you can try to repair the unrecognizable WD hard drive with Disk Utility.

Tips: Before you try to repair the WD hard drive in Disk Utility, if the WD hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but not mounted, you can select the Mount option first then the WD hard drive will be mounted on the Desktop.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Disk Utility.

Step 2: Click 'View' and choose 'Show All Devices'.

Step 3: Select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.

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Step 4: Click on First Aid on the top. Wait while First Aid verifying and fixing possible errors of the WD hard drive.

If First Aid can't repair the WD hard drive, or Disk Utility doesn't recognize the volumes of the drive, probably, the WD hard drive could be corrupted caused by bad sectors.

Use WD Drive Utilities when WD hard drives not working on Mac

If a WD hard drive won't work normally on a Mac due to bad sectors or other parameter errors, you can use WD Drive Utilities for Mac to have a diagnosis what happens to your hard drive. It's because WD Drive Utilities is a specialized utility for WD hard drives to check for potential drive failures, slow disk performance, and bad sectors.

Step 1: Install WD Drive Utilities on your Mac and then launch it.

Step 2: Plug the unrecognizable WD hard drive into the Mac.

Step 3: Click on 'Diagnose' and choose 'Run Quick Drive Test' to check the WD drive completely.

Fix the unrecognized WD hard drive by reformatting

If the unrecognizable WD hard drive can't be repaired by WD Drive Utilities, the file system of the WD hard drive might be seriously damaged or corrupted. In this case, you have to reformat or erase this WD hard drive. Before that, it's necessary to recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with free hard drive data recovery software for Mac, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, to avoid data loss.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is professional in external hard drive data recovery on Mac. It supports Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, and hard drives of other manufacturers. This data recovery software can recover lost data when hard drive is unrecognized, unmountable, unreadable, corrupted on Mac. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can recover lost data from Macintosh hard drive, USB drives, Pen drives, SD cards, memory cards, CF cards as well as other storage devices.

Tutorial to recover lost data from unrecognizable WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac and reformatting

Step 1: Recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

To recover your important photos, videos, music, documents, emails from this unrecognizable WD hard drive, you can free download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.

2. Scan for lost data on the WD hard drive.

When the data recovery software is launched, you will see your unrecognizable WD hard drive in the interface. You need to select this corrupted WD hard drive and then click the 'Scan' button to scan for data on this drive.

3. Preview and recover files.

When WD hard drive is corrupted, you can't access your data on this drive. But you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to preview the data on the drive, which will help you make sure your files are not corrupted before you finally click 'Recover' to recover them.

Step 2: Fix WD hard drive not recognized error by reformatting.

1. Go to Disk Utility and select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.

2. Click on Erase on the top.

3. Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process.

After reformatting WD hard drive process finished, you will hopefully see the WD hard drive recognized and showing up on Mac correctly.

However, if the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, the great chance is that the WD hard drive is physically broken. As a result, Mac can't read and recognize it. In this case, we advise you to check if the serial number of the WD hard drive is still in warranty so that you can ask for a repair or replacement service.

WD provides no-limited warranty unless your WD hard drive was purchased from an authorized distributor or authorized reseller like Amazon. So, if your WD hard drive is dead for disk corruption, please free free to contact their support team for warranty status review and product replacement.

Conclusion

Whenever a WD hard drive being unrecognized on Mac, data rescue should come first. After recovering data from the unrecognized hard drive with free data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, you can then try to fix the error in different ways without worrying about data loss. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac also helps recovering data when USB flash drives, Toshiba external hard drives, or other external hard drives that are not showing up on Mac.

External hard drives have become increasingly popular among PC or laptop users for its large storage capacity, reliability, efficiency and cost. Among the many brands, Western Digital (WD) is one of the leading in the industry. It may be your go-to hard drive but your data is not completely safe and there may be instances when you face data loss issues even on WD drives. In this guide, you will learn how to recover data from WD hard drives under all circumstances of data loss and also some great tips on avoiding such problems in the future.

Quickly Recover WD hard drive data with Remo Recover Software

If you have encountered such a situation on your Western Digital hard drive, you are in the right place. Remo Recover can help you be prepared for any data loss related issue in WD and other hard drives.

Remo Recover, the most sought out tool for WD data recovery. Be it corruption or damage, drive turned RAW or inaccessible, formatting or just deleted data, this tool saves your day by recovering all the files you thought were permanently lost. Work flawlessly on all latest versions of Windows or Mac! Check out the free trial now!

Remo Recover tool performs Western Digital data recovery by scanning the entire hard drive and recovering files in quick steps. It identifies and recovers up to 300 file types including email archives, documents, zip archives, audio files, data files, image files, application files, spreadsheets, backup files and all other file types from WD drive, based on their unique signatures.

Remo Recover supports all models of WD hard drives like My Passport Go, My Passport SSD, My Passport Ultra, My Passport, My Passport X, WD Elements SE, WD Elements Portable and many more.

In addition to data recovery from WD external hard drive, Remo also supports other brands such as Kingston, LaCie, Seagate, Buffalo, Toshiba, etc. Also, it supports data recovery from flash memory drives, iPods, HDD’s and SSD’s (with SATA, SSD, IDE & SCSI interfaces).

Situations where Remo Recover can be used for WD data recovery

Remo Recover Windows Pro can be used to recover data from WD hard drives in all instances of data loss such as:
Accidental errors: Remo Recover can be used in case of unintentional formatting of Western Digital/WD drives, errors during disk management tasks like partitioning, resizing partitions or to recover deleted files from external hard drive etc.

Bad sectors on WD drive: Remo can be used to create disk images if bad sectors are present on your WD hard drive which can be later used to recover WD data from disk image.

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Formatting: Using Remo Recover, it is possible to recover data after formatting a WD drive. For instance, when you connect your WD drive to the system, a popup window shows up with the message: 'The drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?' and you click “Yes”.

From corrupt/RAW/inaccessible drives: Remo Recover can also recover data from WD drives not recognised/inaccessible or RAW WD drives.

To recover deleted and lost files: Remo Recover can be used to recover deleted files and folders on WD hard drives. Or when files are lost during transfer, lost during Cut & paste operations etc.

Virus/malware attacks: When files are missing/lost due to virus attacks, you can use Remo Recover to recover them.

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Steps for Recovering Data from Western Digital Drives with Remo Recover

Step 1: Download Remo Recover hard drive recovery software on your system and go through with the installation process completely. Then get started with the WD data recovery process.

Step 2: Launch the software by double clicking on it from the icon created on the desktop and select Recover Partitions option

Step 3: In the same screen, choose the WD drive to initiate scanning and click Scan

Western Digital Mac Software

Step 4: Select a partition from the list of partitions displayed after scanning the WD drive and click Scan again

Step 5:Preview the recovered files using Preview option and choose a location to save them.

Step 6: Finally, select the files you need and Save them to any desired location

Some useful tips when dealing with WD hard drives

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• Use a good anti-virus program to scan your WD hard drive regularly and keep it free from any kind of virus/malware
• ALWAYS make use of “Safely Remove Hardware” before removing WD hard drive from the computer
• ALWAYS use trusted third party applications for creating partitions on Western Digital hard drive
• AVOID using your WD hard drive after a data loss situation to avoid overwriting of files and increase success rate of WD data recovery
• For best results, the recovered files should be saved in a location different from where it was recovered. Ideally, it is best to save the recovered files on a different drive

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