I have two WD external hard drives that I am using to keep family photos and some work on. When I went to plug both of them in suddenly they aren't being recognised on my Macbook Pro Retina 13" with OS X El Capitan. I have looked for them in the Disk Utility but nothing appears. I am running out of sp
MacBook Pro with Retina display, iOS 9.2.1
WD Passports, like other external drives sold as "portable" or "mobile" must get all power inculing that to turn the drive motor, from the computers USB ports. Many such drives, regardless of make, start to demand more power as the drive motor wears and that is more than a USB port can provide. The results is an unrecognized drive that dos not show up in Disk Utility
There are several option, one of which required erasing and reformatting the drive--that would be counterproductive.
You best action at this point is to get a POWERED USB hub, one that comes with its own power brick. Install the hub between the computer and the WD drives drives; the hub will bring enough power to the party to run the drives normally. Example here:
WD My Passport for Mac not being recognised
