WD My Passport Ultra 1TB drive not detected on PC, how to fix it

The solution is to user the diskutier from the command line - Start the terminal.app enter the following to Format the corresponding disc(e.g. /dev/disk6) in “Mac OS Journaled” (e.g. JHFS+) and give the volume the name “Emptied” diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Emptied /dev/disk6 Explanatory.

'I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB portable drive for storing movies, photos, and important personal files. This morning, WD My Passport suddenly became inaccessible, couldn't be detected by my computer.
The WD hard drive failed to show up on my PC and I couldn't access saved data either. Is there a possible way that can help me to repair the not detectable WD drive to work again?'

If you are having a similar problem on your WD My Passport Ultra hard drive or other brands of external hard drive or devices, don't worry. Here in the below, we'll show you how to fix and repair not detectable or unrecognized WD My Passport or other brands of the external hard drive to work again.

Quick Fix. Try a different USB cable or PC

When your computer cannot detect or read your WD hard drive, you can first try to change the USB cable and connect it with another USB port or new PC to see if the drive can be read or not.

1. If the drive can be read via new a USB cable or on a new PC, then the drive is working fine. The problem exists on the USB cable.

2. If the WD drive cannot be detected either, you can selectively follow below 3 methods to get problems fixed and repair the WD My Passport drive to work again.

Method 1. Change WD drive letter and path to make WD drive detectable

When your WD become inaccessible, you can follow the guidelines below to change WD drive letter and path to make it detectable and accessible again in Windows PC:

Step 1. Press Win + R to bring up Run dialog > Type: diskmgmt.msc to open Disk Management.

Step 2. Right-click on WD drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Step 3. Click Add and choose the drive letter beside Assign the following drive letter > Click OK.
If WD drive has already assigned with a letter, click Change to choose another letter for it.

Step 4. Then restart PC and you can check out whether the problem still exists or not.

Method 2. Fix corrupted system files and update device driver on WD drive

If the system files corrupted or the WD device driver is outdated, you won't be able to access the drive. Follow to see how to fix corrupted system files and update WD device driver now:

1. Fix bad sectors and corrupted system files on WD drive

Download EaseUS partition manager software to repair corrupted system files on WD hard drive or external hard drive.

Step 1: Open EaseUS Partition Master on your computer. Then locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose 'Check File System'.

Step 2: In the Check File System window, keep the 'Try to fix errors if found' option selected and click 'Start'.

Step 3: The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it has completed, click 'Finish'.

2. Update WD device driver

1. Right-click on the Windows icon at the left corner and select Device Manager.

2. Find and expand Disk Drivers, Portable Devices, Universal Serial USB Controllers or Other devices to see if WD device is shown as Unknown device.

3. Right-click on Unknown device > select Properties.

4. Go to Details tab > Set Property to be Hardware Ids.

5. Right-click the top Value and click Copy.

6. Paste what you copy into a browser to search the correct device driver, find and download the correct WD device driver and install it on your PC.

I absolutely hate that. If I leave my desk for longer than that, I have to let it time out because if I log out, and then try to log back in later, I end up being logged in as a temporary user instead of as my profile. Microsoft remote desktop os x. If any one app is maximized, my dock and menu bar disappear, and I have to minimize the apps to see those. So if I leave my desk, I let it time out and when I come back and log in again, the apps are still open (I can see this in the RDS icon menu) but I can’t get the apps to pull up on the screen. My work has the remote computers set to time out after about 20 minutes of inactivity for security purposes.

7. Then restart your computer and everything shall work fine with your WD My Passport Ultra drive.

Method 3. Uninstall/Reinstall USB controllers on WD My Passport drive

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon at the left corner and select Device Manager.

Step 2. Find and expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click on USB controllers on your WD drive and select Uninstall device.

Step 3. Restart the computer and Microsoft will automatically reinstall the USB controllers software for your WD drive.
After this, you shall be able to visit and access saved data on your WD Passport Ultra drive normally by then.

Extra Important Tips

If your WD hard drive shows up and can be detected normally again, please don't rush to use it. Please do these tips first:

1. 1. Copy and backup important data from your WD hard drive to another storage device.
2. 2. Format WD hard drive or external hard drive to NTFS for saving data again.

If the WD hard drive still doesn't show up or cannot be detected, some physical errors may have occurred to your device. Please try these tips for a guide:

1. 1. Search and find some manual guide online to check the physical error on your WD hard drive.
2. 2. Or you can take your WD drive to a local hard drive repair center for professional help. (If you are not professional, please try this tip.)

Summary: This guide introduces three common scenarios in which you might find your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac. If the WD My Passport read-only on Mac problem is caused by the NTFS file system, installing iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to edit, rename, delete the saved files and transfer files to the read-only WD My passport hard drive.

Western Digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. Its product line covers WD My Passport, WD My Passport Ultra, WD My Book, WD My Passport for Mac and more. Among those external hard drive categories, WD My Passport external hard drives are the most widely used ones. However, many users complain their WD My Passport is read-only on Mac like the user below in WD community.

'I have a WD My Passport 320GB external hard drive that I am trying to hook up to my iMac for the first time. I'm running macOS 10.13. I'm extremely frustrated because this drive is in a read-only mode, and I can't figure out how to change it! Any suggestion to fix this?'

--A user from WD Community

If you are looking for solutions for solving read-only WD My Passport on Mac problem, you have come to the right place. This post will explain three common reasons why your WD My Passport is not writable and corresponding fixes.

Why is the WD My Passport read-only?

Sometimes, the WD external hard drive is read-only on Mac when you just got a brand new WD external hard drive. In other times, it suddenly became read-only after you have been using it for a while. The most common reasons for a read-only WD external hard drive, like WD My Passport, are listed below:

• Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted.
• You have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport hard drive.
• Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted.

If you are not sure which reason has caused your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac, check the scenarios one by one. If you know the reason already, you can jump to the scenario that best describes your situation.

Scenario 1: Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted

By default, macOS can mount a Windows NTFS volume or drive in read-only mode. You can view the files saved on the NTFS-formatted partition or drive but can't make any changes to them. In addition, the WD My Passport hard drive won't let you add any files to it. To check if your WD My Passport is NTFS formatted, follow the steps:

1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities.
2. Click the WD My Passport (you may have changed its name) at the left sidebar. The file system information will be displayed on the right.

Note: You can also right-click the disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info' to check the file system information.

After having confirmed that the WD My Passport is formatted with NTFS, many people will choose to convert NTFS to APFS (for macOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra) or reformat the WD My Passport hard drive to make the WD external hard drive compatible with Mac. In fact, installing an NTFS for Mac driver is a much easier way.

Solution: Install an NTFS for Mac driver to make WD My Passport writable

We will introduce an NTFS for macOS drivers - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. It can help read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drives on Mac.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is an NTFS disk management tool. It can manage NTFS drives with NTFS write support. It can easily and effectively mount NTFS drive on Mac automatically in read-write mode. It works with macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8.

Three simple steps to read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive easily.

Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your Mac.

Step 2: Connect the NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive to Mac.

Step 3: Write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive after the drive has been mounted successfully.

Besides an NTFS mounter, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can also open, unmount, eject, erase and repair NTFS volumes. It can list all attached external disks including USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks, external hard drives and so on. You can open them with one click. Moreover, you can reformat them to NTFS with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac if you need.

Scenario 2: You have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport hard drive

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not formatted with NTFS but you have no write permission to it, it is probably because you have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport. Since your WD external hard drive is write-protected, all your write access is denied.

To know your permission to the WD My Passport, follow the steps below:

1. Right-click the WD My Passport disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info'.
2. Check the information at the bottom under the Sharing & Permissions tab.

If you can see the message 'You can only read', then you will understand why you can't write to your WD My Passport drive.

Solution: Change read-only permission on the WD My Passport drive

Follow the instruction below to change permission on the WD My Passport on Mac:

Step 1: Click on the lock icon at the right corner in the Get Info window.

Step 2: Enter password if asked.

Step 3: Check the 'Ignore ownership on this volume'.

Step 4: Click on the gear button and choose 'Apply to enclosed items…'.

Step 5: Click 'OK' when you are asked to confirm the operation.

Step 6: Click the 'Read Only' in Privilege column and select 'Read & Write'.

By now, you have regained the read and write access to the WD My Passport.

Scenario 3: Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted

If you are sure that the read-only WD My Passport is not caused by NTFS file system nor read-only permission, another possible cause might be the disk corruption. When an external drive is corrupted, people suddenly have trouble reading or/and writing to the disk. Then you will have to fix the corrupted WD My Passport external hard drive to make it writable again. We will introduce two solutions here:

• Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac
• Reformat the WD My Passport on Mac

Solution 1: Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac

This solution might help you solve the read-only external hard drive problem without formatting. You will utilize a built-in tool on Mac called Disk Utility. It is used to manage internal and external disks on Mac. There is a function called First Aid in Disk Utility that can be used to check for and repair errors on the selected disk or volume.

Here is how to fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility:

Step 1: Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.

Step 3: Click on First Aid and click on 'Run' to repair the WD My Passport drive.

Step 4: Click 'Done' after the operation completes.

If First Aid fails to repair the WD external hard drive, your disk might be seriously corrupted. You will have to reformat the WD My passport to make it not read-only.

Solution 2: Reformat the WD My Passport on Mac

Reformatting the corrupted disk is the ultimate solution for fixing the read-only WD My Passport drive. Follow the steps below to know how to make the WD My Passport compatible with Mac and PC.

Step 1: Make sure you have a copy of your important files on WD My Passport hard drive, or recover lost data from the external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

Step 2: Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 3: Click on the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.

Step 4: Check Click 'Erase' on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 5: Input a name.

Step 6: Choose FAT or exFAT as format for convenience because either of them is compatible with both Windows and macOS. Of course, you can choose another file system that best meets your needs.

Step 7: Choose 'GUID Partition Map' as Scheme.

Step 8: Click on 'Erase' button.

You can reconnect the WD external hard drive to Mac again to see if it is writable now.

Conclusion

The external hard drive read-only on Mac problem doesn't happen to WD external hard drives only. It is quite common to see other notable external hard drive brand get the same complaint like Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, etc. When you come across the read-only disk problem on Mac, the post is always helpful.