How to Use Western Digital My Passport on MacBook/iMac

Updated to Troubleshooting Tips by Robert on Dec 15, 2023 | Approved by Anthony Spadafora

Hard drives are important in our daily activities because they help us store a lot of data such as documents, photos, and videos as well as ease the files transfer from one Mac to another. Amongst the variety of external hard drives, Western Digital My Passport is an example of a reliable trustworthy external hard drive. As the name entails, WD is designed to have the size of a passport in order to increase portability and is produced in different styles of color to fit user demands. WD is a good hard drive and has features such as;

Part 1. How to Use WD My Passport on Mac
Part 2. Western Digital My Passport does not show on Mac
Part 3. Western Digital My Passport for Mac Data Recovery

Part 1. How to Use WD My Passport on Mac

For efficient transfers, it is recommended to format your WD drive to a format compatible with Mac which will be covered further in this tutorial. Transferring files between WD My Passport and Mac is a simple process. In order to perform a file transfer,

1. Plug the USB cable from WD my Passport drive to a free functional USB port on your Mac.

2. Enter My Passport by clicking on the icon present on the desktop.

3. You can copy and paste any file from your Mac to your Passport and vice versa.

4.When the transfer process is complete, drag the "My Passport" icon above the "Trash" icon then release your mouse button. This enables you to safely eject your WD My Passport drive.

Part 2. Western Digital My Passport does not show on Mac

Normally, after plugging your WD drive, it automatically shows up on your Mac. Sometimes, it does not show up due to a number of reasons such as

How to Fix Western Digital My Password Not Showing on Mac

If you have been wondering on how to make WD function on Mac, this section will let you know how to.

1. Show External Hard Drive icon on Desktop

Normally when a WD My Passport is connected to Mac, it automatically recognizes the device and My Passport gets mounted on the desktop immediately. This drive then appears on Finder in the left-hand column below devices. But as a result of problems such as corrupted files, the external hard drive doesn’t show up. In order to fix the external hard drive not showing,

1. Go to Finder and click on Preferences.

2. In the General tab, tick the External disks option to make sure WD My Passport shows up on the desktop.

3. Then go to the sidebar tab, tick External disks to ensure it shows up on Finder. You can equally choose the folders and devices which you want to be shown in the Finder Window’s left-hand column.

After doing this, the WD My Passport’s icon will appear on the desktop if it is properly connected to Mac through a working port.

2. Check out Western Digital My Password USB Cable Appears in Disk Utility or Not

After trying solution 1, if WD is not showing up on Finder still, you should check if it shows on Disk Utility. To ensure that WD My Passport is properly connected to Mac with a working cable and or port, you to have check if it appears in disk utility or it doesn’t(will be shown below). After checking, there are two different situations that may be at hand.

3. Perform a manual Mounting

Not every hard drive is automatically mounted in Disk Utility when detected. If you see your WD My Passport not mounting automatically, you can mount it manually in the following way;

1. Go to Application then proceed to Utilities.

2. Go to Disk Utility.

3. Click Show all devices in the view option.

4. Choose your WD my Passport drive and click on the Mount button located at the top of Disk. Utility Window or you can directly mount by clicking on the mount icon beside the drive.

4. Repair your WD My Passport drive using First Aid

If it your WD My Passport is detected but not recognized, it cannot be mounted and so it has to be repaired using First Aid which is a tool on Mac that analyzes and repairs basic problems of the hard drive. To perform a repair,

1. Proceed to Disk Utility and choose your WD My Passport.

2. Click on First Aid at the top of the Disk Utility window.

3. A message will pop up and click on Run to start the repair of an undetected external hard drive.

4. Once the repairs are finished, click on Done.

5. How to Format Western Digital My Passport to exFAT for Mac

Sometimes, First Aid won’t be able to repair grayed hard drives but this can be fixed by formatting WD My Passport to exFAT format for Mac. This is because, First Aid cannot fix a disk file system that has been damaged so formatting it to a new format makes a new file system which replaces the damaged file system. To format WD My Passport;

1. Go to Disk Utility.

2. Choose your WD My Passport in the left sidebar.

3. Click on Erase at the top of the Disk Utility Window.

4. A window will pop up requiring you to enter information concerning (new name, format (exFAT), and partition scheme).

5. Once all information is entered, click on Erase.

Please note that this will erase everything found on your WD My Passport drive hence backing it up before performing the process is recommended.

Part 3. Western Digital My Passport for Mac Data Recovery

If you have already erased your WD My Passport drive and lost all your information, you don’t have to worry because there is still a possibility of recovering all your information using special software known as iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac. This is the best online data recovery solution. The best free data recovery software for Mac is easy to use as no special training is required to use it. Also, it is very safe (Virus and risk-free) and effective for data recovery on Mac as it is compatible with many different types of files as well as with the different versions of Mac.

In order to recover data from your WD My Passport on Mac, When the download is completed install the software on your Mac. It is virus-free so it is safe.

1. By default, all the main file types will be chosen. If you want only a specific file type, you may unselect the others but if you want to recover everything, you should leave every file type selected and click on "Start" to recover files from external hard drive on Mac.

2. After clicking on the Start, all devices available on your Mac will be listed. From the list, choose your WD My Passport drive and click on "Scan". By default, it will start the normal scanning process.

3. After the normal scanning which takes a few minutes, you will see file types arranged on the left side of the window and the file on the other side of the window. When you click on a category of files on the left, the corresponding recovered files will show up on the right. If you find your files, select them and click on "Recover" so save them on the drive. If you do not find your files, you have the option to perform a deep scan which is located on the top left corner of the window. A deep scan is more effective although it takes more time than a normal scan.

This tutorial summarizes how WD works on Mac, how to use WD on Mac, and how to fix WD on Mac when it has issues.