External hard drive damaged from setting up new imac

Question

External hard drive damaged from setting up new imac

I just got a new 2021 iMac with m1 chip and I used my time machine backups from my WD passport external hardrive to set it up. Once the transfer of everything was finished I went to eject my drive and it disappeared. It won’t show up anywhere on the Mac not even disc utility or after a restart. I checked and show external drive is checked in preferences. I tried plugging it into my MacBook Pro and it’s greyed out in disc utility unable to mount and first aid failed.

The drive was completely fine before I used it on the new Mac. Any ideas what happened or how to fix it would be greatly appreciated!

* both computers I had it plugged into were running on BigSur

iMac 24″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 24, 2021 6:33 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

144,084 points

Oct 24, 2021 9:39 PM in response to nikifromclifton park

Please remember that WD enclosures are the Yugos of EHD's. Setting up the Mac did not kill it, lousy quality of the enclosure likely did it in. This time get yourself a good quality External Hard Disk such as a OWC Mercury Elite Pro.

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

144,084 points

Oct 25, 2021 7:18 AM in response to nikifromclifton park

Just that, cheap enclosures have little if no cooling and what kills electronics is overheating. WD has a long history of making fine hard disks but installing them in cheap enclosures to keep the price cheap. As with most things, you get what you pay for.

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Answer 3

Oct 25, 2021 6:53 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Sorry what do you mean by the enclosure is poor quality?

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Answer 4

Oct 25, 2021 5:31 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Ah I see. I was hoping maybe there was something I could do to fix it but it sounds like the drive is toast. I guess I’ll have to figure out how to get my files off it. Thanks for the info

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External hard drive damaged from setting up new imac

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