External Hardrive not detected by PC after connecting to MAC

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danteleo

Honorable
Jul 11, 2013
9
0
10,510
I connected my WD MY PASSPORT External Hard drive to my teacher mac about 4 months and saved a powerpoint file from her mac to it and ever since I did this my computer (Or any macs) can detect the hard drive. When I plug it in it shows up under "Devices and Printers" as My Passport with an image of the hard drive as it should but does not show up under "My computer" or under "Disk Management". I know the hard drive is still working perfectly because I can hear it spinning and the light is flashing as it should. I have also tried hooking it up to multiple macs and pc's and none detect it.
I do not mind losing all of my data, and I am willing to try anything to fix this! Can post more info if needed!
(Also I am on Windows 7)
-Thanks so much, Danteleo
 
Solution
D_Know_WD
Hi there danteleo,

Was the drive formatted for use on both MAC and Windows OS machine(file format such as Fat32)? Also, is the drive recognized by Device Manager/Disk Management when connected to other computers.
You can start by uninstalling the drive(Deveice Manager) -> unplug -> reboot system -> plug it again and wait to automatically install drivers.
Another simple troubleshooting step is to change the USB cable.
If this does not help and you don't really need that data stored on the drive, you can just use WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and reformat the drive.

WD's DLG too: http://goo.gl/5mxpKD

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Hi there danteleo,

Was the drive formatted for use on both MAC and Windows OS machine(file format such as Fat32)? Also, is the drive recognized by Device Manager/Disk Management when connected to other computers.
You can start by uninstalling the drive(Deveice Manager) -> unplug -> reboot system -> plug it again and wait to automatically install drivers.
Another simple troubleshooting step is to change the USB cable.
If this does not help and you don't really need that data stored on the drive, you can just use WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and reformat the drive.

WD's DLG too: http://goo.gl/5mxpKD

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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Solution
A

andriuspt

Honorable
Mar 13, 2013
2
0
10,510
Hi danteleo,

Had exactly the same problem with "WD My Passport 1TB". Spent a ton of time on this, searched a lot everywhere but all these "uninstall driver", "reinstall driver" and similar suggestions did not help...
And finally found solution. Here is an operation that helped:
1. Right-click on Computer icon and then left-click Manage.
2. Left-click on Disk Management in the left pane.
3. Right-click on the colored bar for the external hard drive you want to fix and choose Delete Volume.
4.You will be warned that deleting the volume will erase all data on the disk. If there is nothing on the drive that you want, click on Yes (otherwise I don't know how to help you).
5.The bar should now be black and show the drive as unallocated. Right-click on the disk listing choose New Simple Volume to format the drive.

This helped me and now I can use my external drive as usual. Good luck!
 
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R

raymond.onibalovich

Feb 27, 2018
1
0
10
this not the answer but i am just sharing my experience. my day to day computer is a Windows 8.1 based PC. After a while I got a MacPro with Yosemite OS as a second computer. My client gave me their files on WD external HD 1tb. I connected this WD external HD to my Windows PC and emerge the files on it. After that i reconnected this external from my Windows PC and i connect to my MacPro. MacPro showed nothing on it and i ran several procedures found on internet to be able to read files on the external HD. Skip, skip, skip and finally all the files written on this external HD can be written on the MacPro. On the other day, i connected this external HD to my Windows PC and.... IT CANNOT BE READ. As i am not an IT expert, i connect this external HD to my MacPro, copied all files to MacPro. I connected Flashdisk to MacPro, copied all files on that [files once on external HD before]. Connect this Flashdisk to Windows PC [this PC can read anything on the flashdisk despite it once connected to my MacPro]. That's it. Pls anybody expert on this explain it to me :??:
 
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