[Solved] WD external hard drive wont mount on Mac

Summary: WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac? This tutorial will show you how to fix WD My Passport not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on macOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra

 Table of Contents:

• 1. WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac, how to fix?

Generally, when you connect a WD, Seagate, Toshiba, or Samsung external hard drive to Mac, it will be automatically mounted, then you can perform read and write operations on it. Alternatively, you can also select the disk and click on Mount to make it accessible by the operating system using Disk Utility.

However, hard drive problems may happen that your WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac, usually when you desperately need to access some data stored on it. Remain calm, all data on WD external hard drive is still there. This article will explain how to fix WD My Passport not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected.

WD external hard drive won't mount on Mac, how to fix?

First of all, if your WD external hard drive is listed on the left-hand side menu of Disk Utility, you can make sure it doesn't have any hardware problems. Why the WD external hard drive won't mount? It is because the file system of the disk has been corrupted, preventing the disk from being accessible on Mac. Just try these solutions below.

Solution 1: Run Disk Utility to repair the WD external hard drive

No matter what problems you are meeting on a disk, First Aid is your first choice to repair it.

Step 1: Launch Disk Utility.

Step 2: Choose the unmountable WD external hard drive.

Step 3: Select First Aid in the top center and click Run.

Solution 2: Reformat to fix WD My Passport not mounting

If Sometimes, the Disk Utility may not function as desired. In this situation, the only solution is to reformat the WD external hard drive. But reformatting will remove all data on the disk. In order to avoid data loss, you have to recover lost data from an unmountable external hard drive as soon as possible.

Step 1: Recover lost data from unmountable WD external hard drive on Mac

As the best Mac data recovery tool, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is able to recover lost data from unmountable, unreadable, corrupted, inaccessible external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, and memory cards, etc. It supports recovery documents, photos, music files, videos, and emails on macOS 12 Monterey/macOS 11 Big Sur /macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7 and works fine on M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max Mac.

1. Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.
2. Launch this program. Select the unmountable WD external hard drive and click Search for Lost Data. The program will start scanning this drive for recoverable files.
3. After the scanning process finishes, you can click Preview to check the found files.
   
4. Choose what you want to get back and click Recover.
5. Go through the recovered files and make sure all desired files are back. Do not save the recovery results to the same partition or drive that you scanned.

Step 2: Fix WD external hard drive not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on Mac by reformatting

1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
2. Select the unmountable WD external hard drive and click "Erase" on the top.
3. Provide a name and a format to erase the drive.
4. When finished, you can mount your WD external hard drive on Mac and use it again.

Also read: Other ways to erase the external hard drive on Mac

Hope this tutorial can help to fix WD external hard drive not mounting/showing up/recognized/detected on Mac. If your WD external hard drive is not recognized on Windows, it is also easy to be fixed. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Also read: Can't See External hard drive showing up on Mac, What to do?