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Question: Q: WD My passport not showing up on desktop when plug in I've just brought a 500GB WD portable hard drive but when i plug it into my mac it isn't coming up on the desktop. The hard drive itself is making a noise when its plugged in, but nothing else is happening.
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Consider donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation! They give you stickers! To start off, I have used this external hard drive on this computer before, probably a month or two ago. I tried to use it last week, and when I plugged it in, the computer made all the beep boops that it usually does when a USB device is plugged in; however, the drive is not showing up in File Explorer. I have tried it on my laptop with Windows 10, and it also doesn't show up. The only other computer that I could try it on that wasn't Windows 10 is a desktop with Windows Vista, and it worked!
I guess Vista is good for something. The drive shows up in Device Manager under both Disk Drives and Universal Serial Bus controllers. It also shows up in Disk Management in a box at the bottom as 'Disk 1', but it says the whole 1TB drive is unallocated. I also cannot assign it a letter from there.
![Showing Showing](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125498385/586769571.png)
The only thing that I can think of that has changed on both of my computers with Windows 10 is the anniversary update. I have searched forums, usually involving uninstalling and reinstalling drivers for it, but no dice. I'm sorry to hear about the issues with the drive. First, since the external is showing up in Disk Management, I'd suggest to boot with Linux Live CD and see if the external will be recognized. You can follow these detailed steps on how to boot in, as well as an additional information you can check. Once the data is removed, download and run an Extended test with our tool. I saw that you have already run some diagnostics with a third party app, but I'd like to see what the DLG will say since it's tuned to the specific firmware of the drive.
As for the Extended test option, if the program detectes anything wrong it will try to fix it automatically. Hope this helps and let us know how it went.:).
So as you probably noticed, I pretty much gave up a while back on this. I decided to try it again just now, and I actually got the drive to pop up in Windows Explorer! I booted to Ubuntu, which I still have on a flash drive, and I decided to format the external drive, choosing the NTFS option. This gave errors when I went to open it in Ubuntu after the format, but I decided to just try it in Windows anyways. So, I booted into Windows to check it out, and it worked!
Hopefully it stays working, and thanks for your help in the past!
Problem I was having:. After 8 months of owning a WD 3TB My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, one day the drive would not show up when I plugged it in to my MacBook Pro. Very important documents and photos on the drive with no backup.
After plugging in, light would be solid for a few seconds, then keep blinking. If I unplugged the drive it would make a very short screeching sound.
Drive did not show up on Disk Utility app on Macbook Pro but it did show up on System Information (an app found in the Utilities Folder).WD tech suggested I try plugging in to a desktop computer. So I plugged it into an old Mac Mini.
![Wd My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Desktop Wd My Passport For Mac Not Showing Up On Desktop](http://limcorp.net/images/2010/wd-my-passport-studio-drive-mac/wd-my-passport-studio-portable-hdd.jpg)
Drive showed up in Disk Utility but could not be mounted or repaired by Disk Utility. WD tech suggested I find a data recovery service or software. Did research on Reddit and saw that Disk Warrior was highly regarded. I purchased/ downloaded Disk Warrior (cost like $130- expensive but my data was important to me and prob less $ than a recovery service).Ran Disk Warrior and it fixed the problem (turned out to be a problem with the directory. Disk Warrior was a reassuring piece of software because it walked me through each step and assured me that it would do no damage to the data.
Took about 25 min and I had my important files back and the WD drive worked. Long story short, Disk Warrior worked and my drive shows up again. Now I will back my info up onto a drive that is not from WD. Sorry WD but how can I trust your drives after this experience?