WD Mypassport works - just not on my macbook pro

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Level 1

4 points

WD Mypassport works - just not on my macbook pro

Hi All, I have a Western Digital 2TB external hard drive (My passport). About a few months ago I started having problems getting it recognized.

Sometimes it would show that two drives were visible. in the WD utility.

In frustration I attached it to my wifes new macbook air, and it works just fine. I erased the drive there and reformatted it, and pluged it in again, but helas, it does not work still.

Any ideas? A USB issue? Other things work on my USB port.

Before the High Sierra upgrade I was getting a corruption found on my macbook pro, but it is gone since the upgrade.

Thanks! M

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)

Posted on Nov 14, 2017 10:29 AM

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Answer 1

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Tesserax

Level 10

148,333 points

Nov 14, 2017 11:32 AM in response to micksieben

Not necessarily.

Let's see if your MBP can "see" this drive in System Profiler, as follows:

Click on the Apple logo in the left side of the macOS menu bar.
Select "About This Mac"
Select the Storage tab. Does the drive appear here?
Select the Overview tab.
Select System Report...
Under the Hardware category, select USB.
On the right side, look under: USB Device Tree. You may need to expand any of the entries listed under this category. See if the My Passport shows up here ... does it? (Below is a screen capture of my drive to compare against.)

p.s. I see JimmyCMPIT jumped in. I suggest that you try my response first and if the drive does NOT show up, to go ahead and try his suggestions.

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Answer 2

micksieben Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 16, 2017 6:27 AM in response to micksieben

Okay, I did everything I could.

Ran things in safe boot mode, reset pram, nvram, reset SMC
When I went into safeboot mode it said "it found corruption on the disk"
It asked to repair the disk from "recovery mode"
I then went into "recovery mode" and repaired it (the computers HD) I did not see the external WD drive.
I still do not see it listed under USB 3.0. And... when I restarted the computer

This warning appeared when I turned in on again.

Is this a macbook problem? This computer works fine in every other way, I just cannot get the WD drive to be recognized, or the WD drive shows it only some of the time. On my wifes computer it shows up and is fully functional.

M

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

148,333 points

Nov 14, 2017 11:00 AM in response to micksieben

For reference, I took a snapshot of the Disk Utility window when I connected one of my WD My Passport drives to the USB port of my Mac mini. It has a single volume, also formatted in HFS+. Would you please do the same for yours?

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Answer 4

micksieben Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 16, 2017 6:59 AM in response to micksieben

The error flickrs now all the time about the disk. I did not disconnect the disk improperly ever, but it might have been from the sleep mode on the computer.

This showed up briefly but disappeared.

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Answer 5

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,217 points

Nov 14, 2017 11:28 AM in response to micksieben

Shut down

Disconnect all external devices

reset the smc

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

reset the NVRAM

How to reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

then boot into safe mode

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

then reboot normally with devices disconnected, then connect the drive.

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Answer 6

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,217 points

Nov 14, 2017 10:34 AM in response to micksieben

Don't know but I just returned my 16TB WD My Book Duo which was supposed to be Time Machine on a MacPro and after two days with tech support I'm done with WD. They tried to make good after I posted my findings on their site; and found lots of others having issues with their products on Macs but their sudden attempt to reconcile was too little too late. Worked for a few days, crapped out. Going back to Seagate who now owns LaCie entirely.

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Answer 7

Tesserax

Level 10

148,333 points

Nov 14, 2017 10:34 AM in response to micksieben

When you plug the WD My Passport drive into your MacBook Pro (MBP), can you access it with the Disk Utility? Is this drive formatted with a single or multiple partitions? ... and in what format (HFS+, APFS, NTFS, etc.?)

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Answer 8

micksieben Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 14, 2017 10:45 AM in response to Tesserax

It does not show up in the sidebar. Oddly I see a "Apple UDIF read-only compressed (bzip2) Media" showing up in Disk Utility. Not sure what that is.

WD Discovery App is also not showing it.

It was formatted in the default HFS+

But again this shows up in my wifes WD utilities and her Disk Utility etc without problem...

It only has one partition, I have not done anything special to it.

M

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Answer 9

Tesserax

Level 10

148,333 points

Nov 14, 2017 11:12 AM in response to micksieben

Just to be sure. Go ahead and connect the drive on your wife's computer. You don't need to do a screen capture, but just check to see if the results come out similar to the one I provided.

If it does, then we know for sure that the issue is not with the drive itself, but possibly with your MBP and we can try some additional troubleshooting.

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Answer 10

Tesserax

Level 10

148,333 points

Nov 16, 2017 8:33 AM in response to micksieben

If there is nothing important on the USB drive, you can go ahead and select the Initialize option. This message would be typical if you insert a USB drive that is formatted in something that your Mac can't recognize and it is giving you the option to format it with Initialize...

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