May 31,2019 • Filed to: Data Recovery Tips • Proven solutions

1. How To Use My Passport For Mac On Windows
2. How To Install My Passport For Mac
3. My Passport For Mac Instructions

Summary:

Many users asked me about the same problem: 'My Macbook can recognize my WD MY Passport, but when I want to open it and find some files, the system shows that the drive is unreadable. The files in the drive is important, do you know how to get the data back before I repair it.' Data loss problems are common in our daily life, find a suitable method to recover the data is very necessary for you. And you should know that to recover files from My Passport external hard drive is not a difficult task, this article will provide you the full guides to solve your problem.

Part 1. WD My Passport External Hard Drive Data Recovery for Mac

As long as lost files on your WD My Passport drive haven't been overwritten by new data and you drive can still be recognized as a drive by your Mac, you’re likely to restore all lost data with the help of a WD My Passport data recovery program such as iSkysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

I have the WD Passport Studio which has USB2 and FW800 and on my old PBG4 it could not deliver enough power to the drive on USB and it would click once every 1-2 seconds forever. That's why I bought the FW800 drive because I connect it on FW and have no power problems. In reading the manual it shows that you can format the drive to either MAC or PC, but doesn’t show a set up to use it on both system. Can somebody help me. Sure you can make the WD external drive to work for both Mac and PC. All you need to do is to format it to FAT32.

This powerful utility enables you to recover WD My Passport data lost for various situations and it'll do no harm to your drive. With its comprehensive recovery mode and simple operation, you can easily get back all kinds of files, such as photos, audio files, document files, videos and more. Besides, is compatible for all Mac models and Mac OS X versions including Yosemite, El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

iSkysoft Data Recovery

A Life Saver to Solve Your Data Loss Problems!

• It is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating system.
• It supports a large number of storage device type including hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.
• All major types of files can be recovered including music, images, video, documents, emails, and archives.
• It has a deep scan features for in-depth scanning of the hard drive for searching files to recover.

1. You'd need to use a Mac to reformat your WD My Passport in a file system that can be read by Windows. The Mac is needed to store your files from the external HDD until you've reformatted it for use with Windows OS, because this change will result in erasing all the data on the drive.
2. Can't get Windows to view my 1TB My Passport EXT HD. Neowin Treasury. Transfer ntfs files and save them and save your data from the mac partition and reformat drive to something windows.
3. Manufacturers and distributors have an old dirty trick of advertising a drive as exclusively PC or Mac compatible. Actually, most drives (by most I mean every single drive I've worked with) are compatible with Macs and PCs. The reason a disk may a.
4. If it has a letter, you can check by doing the following: If you are using Vista or higher, you will first need to open an elevated command prompt. From the Start Menu, under Accesories find Command Prompt and right click. Select Run As Adminstrator and accept the User Account Control prompt.

Part 2. How to Recover Data from WD My Passport Hard Drive on Mac (El Capitan, macOS Sirra and macOS High Sierra)

Steps on How to Recover Deleted Photos and Videos on WD My Passport Hard Drive

Step 1. Choose File Types to Start WD My Passport Recovery

After launching the tool on your Mac, you'll get 6 file type option tabs as follow. If you want to recover lost, deleted or formatted files from WD My Passport drive, you can select one or more file types. After that, try to click 'Next' button to continue.

Step 2. Scan Your WD My Passport Drive

Then your WD My Passport hard drive will be listed in the window. You can select it and click 'Start' to start scanning for lost data.

Step 3. Recover Files from WD My Passport Hard Drive

After scanning, found contents on your hard disk will be listed according to folders in the window. You can view original name or preview photos and documents to check whether the lost data are found or not.

Part 3. Tips About WD My Passport Data Recovery on Mac

WD My Passport external hard drive has been widely used all over the world. However, files on WD My Passport hard drive can be lost due to deletion, formatting, data transferring, virus infection, system error and some other reasons. If you have backup of lost files on somewhere else, you can retrieve them within seconds. Otherwise, you need WD My Passport data recovery software to solve your problem.

Since lost files can be easily overwritten by new data on your WD My Passport drive, please stop using it immediately when files are lost.

Summary: Have you received the error: 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer' on Mac? Don't worry, this article will focus on how to fix WD My Passport is corrupted or unreadable on Mac. To avoid the loss of important data, you'd better recover data from the unreadable WD My Passport with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows for data transferring or backup. It is popular for its auto backup and passport protection features, keeping your files and folders safe. However, there are times that the WD My Passport becomes unreadable or corrupted on Mac. You may be greeted with errors like 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer', which prevents you from accessing all data stored on the drive.

It's so frustrating when you meet this issue. If you are struggling to solve this issue, you will find a collection of verified troubleshooting steps.

Note: If you received the disk not readable error with three options: Initialize, Ignore and Eject, please don't select 'Initialize'. Initializing the drive will erase all of the data that is currently sitting on the drive, which makes it difficult to recover data.

Causes of WD My Passport not readable on Mac error

Let's at first take a look at the complaint from community.wd.com:

'My WD My Passport 2TB Portable External Hard Drive has suddenly become unreadable on my laptop (MacBook Pro Server with macOS 10.12 Sierra) and I have tried on a MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.13 High Sierra with the same results. Any suggestions to fix my unreadable WD drive?'

The good news is, even though you have been prompted with an error message, at least your WD My Passport drive is recognized. There are many reasons that can lead to a drive not being readable, but essentially this is because the internal file system is damaged. Some of the possible reasons for this error are described as follow:

• Mac malfunctions
• Outdated drivers
• Faulty connections
• Write-protected drive
• The WD My Passport is not formatted
• An internal file system error or bad sectors
• Virus/malware infection to your WD My Passport
• Incompatibility issue between your WD My Passport and Mac machine
• Accidental interruption or removal of your WD My Passport during transferring data

How to fix 'WD My Passport unreadable' on Mac error?

In most cases, the issue can be repaired with a simple initialize. But this operation will remove all data stored on this drive. Are there any other ways to fix WD My Passport unreadable issue on Mac? Of course, just try these solutions one by one:

Solution 1: Re-insert the WD My Passport

The first and foremost thing is to remove the WD My Passport safely from Mac and then re-plug it into the USB port properly. If the external hard drive mounts and appears on the left sidebar of Finder, then you can access the drive. However, if the WD drive still won't mount or the error persists, continue with the next method below.

Solution 2: Check the Mac computer

The next step is to check whether your Mac machine has a problem or not. Just connect a different storage device to your Mac. If this error still pops up, the problem may refer to your Mac machine, you can restart your Mac to see if everything works well. Otherwise, if you can see the other drive in Finder, the problem is associated with the previous WD My Passport.

Solution 3: Check if the WD My Passport is encrypted

The WD My Passport for Mac corrupted or readable issue can also happen if the drive is encrypted by BitLocker. By default, the Mac computers cannot recognize a BitLocker encrypted drive, which means you are unable to read or write BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac.

You can insert the drive in a PC and then turn off the BitLocker encryption so that it can be read on Mac. In addition, you can access a BitLocker encrypted drive with the help of a third party tool.

Solution 4: Update Mac drivers

Drivers enable one or more hardware devices to communicate with the computer's operating system. If drivers are out-of-date, a variety of issues will happen such as the disk not readable error. Apple handles all system and driver updates for your system. To check if any updates are available, please do the following:

1. Step 1: Go to Apple menu and select 'App Store'.
2. Step 2: Click on the 'Updates' button located on the top pane.
3. Step 3: Check available updates for your system and applications.

Solution 5: Repair the WD My Passport in Disk utility

Disk Utility is a built-in used to erase, format or manage internal disks and external storage devices. The most important feature of Disk Utility is First Aid, which helps detect and repair any issue with your disk. Here is how to run First Aid on your Mac to repair the unreadable WD My Passport:

1. Step 1: Open Disk Utility from your /Applications/Utilities folder.
2. Step 2: Select the unreadable WD My Passport in the left side bar.
3. Step 3: Select the 'First Aid' tab.
4. If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data and replace the disk. You can't repair the disk. Otherwise, continue to step 4.
5. Step 4: Click Run.
6. If Disk Utility reports that the disk appears to be OK or has been repaired, you're done. Otherwise, you have to back up as much of your data as possible.

Solution 6: Recover data and erase the WD My Passport

If the error still exists, you have no choice but erase the WD My Passport. But keep in mind that you will lose all data store on this disk. If you didn't back up important data, you should get lost data back with free Online data recovery software at first.

Step 1: Recover data from the unreadable WD My Password on Mac

If you are not sure which data recovery tool you can trust, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is highly recommended to recover data from the unreadable or corrupted WD My Passport. This free Mac data recovery can scan and recover data from unreadable SD cards, internal Macintosh hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, etc. iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery provides a complete Mac data recovery solution even if your Mac won't boot/turn on, your device is failing, inaccessible or has lost a partition.

Moreover, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery can also recover recently or permanently deleted files, recover data from formatted hard drives, recover data from unmountable hard drives, and recover data from inaccessible drives, etc. This software supports recovering documents, photos, videos, emails, and music files. It's fully compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

1. Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.

2. Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

3. Select the unreadable WD My Passport and click 'Next' to search for lost files.

4. Preview the searching results, choose those you want and click 'Recover' to get them back.

5. Go over to ensure all lost files have been successfully restored.

Step 2: Erase the unreadable WD My Password in Disk Utility

1. Open Disk Utility from /Applications/Utilities folder.

2. Click on View > Show All Devices in the menu bar.

3. Select the WD My Passport from the list of devices on the left pane and click the'Erase' button on the top.

4. Name your drive, select a file system format and then click 'Erase'.

Now that you've formatted the WD My Passport, the disk unreadable error will be resolved and the drive can be ready to use. Then you can copy the recovered data back.

Solution 7: Ask data recovery service for help

How To Use My Passport For Mac On Windows

However, if the solutions above don't fix the WD My Passport unreadable issue for you, or your WD My Passport even won't show up on Mac, it's probably the drive has been physically damaged. In that case, you should send it to a local data recovery service or replace it with a new one.

How To Install My Passport For Mac

Conclusion

My Passport For Mac Instructions

Hope these solutions have helped you fix the WD My Passport corrupted or unreadable issue. If you have any question about this article, stay in touch with us for further assistance. Specifically, we'd love to hear if you have other solutions for this issue.