• Wd Elements Hard Drive Mac Os Read Only File System
• Wd Elements Hard Drive Manual
• Wd Elements Mac Read Only

by Justin Kenny, updated on 2016-02-23 to Storage Device Recovery

Western Digital (WD) Elements Portable Hard Drive is a very popular kind of portable hard drive. With big capacity and fast data transfer speed, this portable hard drive is widely used for data storage & transfer. But data loss can happen on any kind of device including WD Elements Portable Hard Drive of course. There are many reasons behind data loss, but in most cases the data has not been lost permanently. Once you find the right solution, you can completely recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive.

Select WD Elements on the left side of the window. Right click and choose 'Erase' from the pop-up menu. Create a name and choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' assuming you have a current vision of OS-X. It will reformat the drive in about a minute. I followed these directions, and it was effortless. I am using this as a Time Machine backup disk. Need to reformat WD hard drive for Mac If you connect your WD hard drive without reformatting, you’ll be unable to copy files to the disk as Mac read only supports NTFS file system. In such a case, it’s necessary to reformat WD hard drive to make it compatible with Mac operating system.

Data Loss Scenarios on WD Elements Portable Hard Drive

• Lose data on WD Elements portable hard drive due to deletion.
• Format the WD Elements portable hard drive by accident.
• The WD Elements portable hard drive is infected by virus.
• File system crashed on WD Elements portable hard drive.
• Lose data due to improper operations like pulling out WD Elements portable hard drive when it is transfer data with computer.
• Unexpected power off.

WD Elements External Hard Drive Data Recovery Solution

Data recovery service is not a bad idea when you want to recover lost data. But this kind of solution is very expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, other people will see your recovered files and information. The best solution for recovering lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive is file recovery software. Powerful file recovery software can let you easily and safely recover lost WD Elements data on your own. With file recovery software, you can conveniently recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive by yourself.

DoYourData file recovery software is one of the most powerful data recovery software that can help users recover lost data from hard drive and storage media. It is fully capable of recovering deleted or lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive. It offers both quick scan and deep scan mode to scan your WD Elements portable hard drive to find every recoverable file. Follow the steps to recover your WD Elements device data using DoYourData.

Step 1: Download and install DoYourData on your PC or Mac.

DoYourData offers reliable WD Elements external hard drive data recovery software - Do Your Data Recovery. It is fully compatible with Windows OS and Mac OS. You can run it to recover lost data from WD Elements external hard drive on PC and Mac.

Step 2: Connect your WD Elements portable hard drive to your computer.

Connect WD Elements external hard drive to your computer via USB cable. Do Your Data Recovery will quickly recognize the WD Elements external hard drive, it also can recognize an unrecognized WD Elements external hard drive. Just select the WD Elements external hard drive to start data recovery.

Step 3: Select file types you want to recover.

By default, Do Your Data Recovery will recover all types of lost files from your WD Elements external hard drive. You can click File Types to filter file types before it scans your WD Elements external hard drive.

Step 4: Scan your WD Elements portable hard drive.

Just click on Scan button to scan the WD Elements external hard drive. You also can stop or pause the scan process to recover lost files.

Step 5: Preview and recover the files.

After scanning, you can preview all recoverable files. Then select the wanted files and save them. If the quick scan can’t find all lost files in your WD Elements external hard drive, just try advanced recovery mode to find much more lost files.

WD Elements Data Recovery Tips

• Please don’t write to your WD Elements portable hard drive before you get all files back from it.
• Please don’t install DoYourData on your WD Elements portable hard drive.
• Please don’t save the recovered files on your WD Elements portable hard drive before recovering all files.
• If you can’t find your files after quick scan, just try deep scan mode.

DoYourData can help you easily recover deleted, formatted or lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive including WD Elements 500GB, WD Elements 750GB, WD Elements 1TB, WD Elements 1.5TB, WD Elements 2TB etc. DoYourData also can recover lost data from other kind of devices, such as hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, SD card etc.

Wd Elements Hard Drive Mac Os Read Only File System

Related Articles

Easily recover lost data from HDD, SSD, memory card, camera, USB drive, RAID, Server, and other storage device.

Hot Articles

Summary: This post shows how to access a WD hard drive when it's not recognized by Mac. To fix WD external hard drive not recognizing error without data loss, you can recover lost data from the unrecognized hard drive for free with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

Just like Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac, Western Digital hard drive not recognized on Mac is another frequently asked question in Apple related forums.

So, if you are wondering:

• Why is the Mac not recognizing my WD hard drive?
• How can I make the unrecognized WD hard drive work on Mac again?
• Can I fix this issue without losing my important data?

You are in the right place for a solution!

How Mac recognizes a WD external hard drive?

The process of Mac recognizing an external hard drive is a little complicated even though you can't see it. Specifically, when you plug a WD hard drive into a Mac computer, macOS would be notified. Then macOS will call all related hardware and software to read, recognize, and show this hard drive on the Desktop and in Finder, so that finally you can access your data on the drive on your Mac computer.

So, we usually simplify this process in 4 steps:

1. The WD hard drive is supplied with power.
2. macOS reads partition information of the WD hard drive.
3. macOS recognizes the file system of each volume.
4. Users access data on the WD hard drive.

However, if any part of this process goes wrong, Mac won't recognize your WD hard drive. As a consequence, you can't access, copy, write to or transfer data stored on it.

Guide to Fix Mac not recognizing WD hard drive

So, based on the process of Mac recognizing a WD hard drive, we need a thorough check to know which part makes the WD hard drive not working on Mac, and then fix it in the following part.

Quick fixes of WD hard drive not recognized on Mac error

A proper connection is the most basic condition that Mac can access the WD hard drive. Or else the external hard drive would not even show up in Disk Utility. When your Mac can't recognize an external hard drive, you can always do the following quick fixes at the very beginning.

• Make sure the WD hard drive is externally plugged into a wall outlet if it's a WD desktop hard drive like WD Elements Desktop and My Cloud.
• Connect the WD hard drive USB cable directly to the computer and do not use a USB Hub.
• Try a different USB cable and port for power and data supply, especially if the My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility.
• Try a different USB-C adapter to connect the WD hard drive if your Mac only has the Thunderbolt 3 port.
• Try to connect the WD hard drive with a different Mac computer to check if the WD hard drive can be recognized on that Mac.
• Try to plug the WD hard drive in to a PC to check if the file system of the WD hard drive is not compatible with Mac.

The WD hard drive lights on but is not recognized by Mac still? Wait! Do you allow your Mac to show the recognized WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop?

Show the WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop

Sometimes, you think WD hard drive is not recognized by Mac because the WD external hard drive isn't showing up in Finder or on the desktop. However, the fact is that the WD hard drive is detected by macOS and it is not set to show up on Mac.

In this case, you can show the WD hard drive by changing the settings:

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General, make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. This will make the WD hard drive show up on the Desktop.

Step 2: Select Sidebar tab on the top, make sure the 'External disks' option under Locations is also ticked.

The WD hard drive is not working on Mac still?

Well, it seems that Mac really can't recognize the WD hard drive. We need to take advantage of some tools for further check.

Update incompatible WD Apps with WD Discovery

Western Digital has multiple self-developed software, including WD Drive Utilities for Mac, WD Discovery for Mac, and WD Security for Mac. Possibly, your Mac doesn't recognize the WD hard drive because the WD software is not compatible with your macOS.

In this situation, you can simply update those WD programs through WD discovery.

Check if the WD hard drive is password locked

If you are using WD hard drives like My Book Drive and it is not recognized by Mac now, you can check if the hard drive is password protected. It's because macOS won't read the partition information and mount the volumes if the WD hard drive is password locked.

You can download and install WD discovery to unlock the WD hard drive if a password has been set to protect the hard drive.

The WD hard drive is not encrypted? Then the reason for Mac not recognizing the WD hard drive is that macOS fails to access the partition and file system information.

Repair the unrecognized WD hard drive in Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a built-in disk management and repair tool on Mac computers. When a WD hard drive is not recognized or not working due to inner disk errors, you can try to repair the unrecognizable WD hard drive with Disk Utility.

Tips: Before you try to repair the WD hard drive in Disk Utility, if the WD hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but not mounted, you can select the Mount option first then the WD hard drive will be mounted on the Desktop.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Disk Utility.

Step 2: Click 'View' and choose 'Show All Devices'.

Step 3: Select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.

Step 4: Click on First Aid on the top. Wait while First Aid verifying and fixing possible errors of the WD hard drive.

If First Aid can't repair the WD hard drive, or Disk Utility doesn't recognize the volumes of the drive, probably, the WD hard drive could be corrupted caused by bad sectors.

Use WD Drive Utilities when WD hard drives not working on Mac

If a WD hard drive won't work normally on a Mac due to bad sectors or other parameter errors, you can use WD Drive Utilities for Mac to have a diagnosis what happens to your hard drive. It's because WD Drive Utilities is a specialized utility for WD hard drives to check for potential drive failures, slow disk performance, and bad sectors.

Step 1: Install WD Drive Utilities on your Mac and then launch it.

Step 2: Plug the unrecognizable WD hard drive into the Mac.

Step 3: Click on 'Diagnose' and choose 'Run Quick Drive Test' to check the WD drive completely.

Fix the unrecognized WD hard drive by reformatting

If the unrecognizable WD hard drive can't be repaired by WD Drive Utilities, the file system of the WD hard drive might be seriously damaged or corrupted. In this case, you have to reformat or erase this WD hard drive. Before that, it's necessary to recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with free hard drive data recovery software for Mac, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, to avoid data loss.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is professional in external hard drive data recovery on Mac. It supports Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, and hard drives of other manufacturers. This data recovery software can recover lost data when hard drive is unrecognized, unmountable, unreadable, corrupted on Mac. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can recover lost data from Macintosh hard drive, USB drives, Pen drives, SD cards, memory cards, CF cards as well as other storage devices.

Tutorial to recover lost data from unrecognizable WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac and reformatting

Step 1: Recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

To recover your important photos, videos, music, documents, emails from this unrecognizable WD hard drive, you can free download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.

2. Scan for lost data on the WD hard drive.

When the data recovery software is launched, you will see your unrecognizable WD hard drive in the interface. You need to select this corrupted WD hard drive and then click the 'Scan' button to scan for data on this drive.

3. Preview and recover files.

When WD hard drive is corrupted, you can't access your data on this drive. But you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to preview the data on the drive, which will help you make sure your files are not corrupted before you finally click 'Recover' to recover them.

Step 2: Fix WD hard drive not recognized error by reformatting.

1. Go to Disk Utility and select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.

2. Click on Erase on the top.

3. Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process.

After reformatting WD hard drive process finished, you will hopefully see the WD hard drive recognized and showing up on Mac correctly.

Wd Elements Hard Drive Manual

However, if the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, the great chance is that the WD hard drive is physically broken. As a result, Mac can't read and recognize it. In this case, we advise you to check if the serial number of the WD hard drive is still in warranty so that you can ask for a repair or replacement service.

Wd Elements Mac Read Only

WD provides no-limited warranty unless your WD hard drive was purchased from an authorized distributor or authorized reseller like Amazon. So, if your WD hard drive is dead for disk corruption, please free free to contact their support team for warranty status review and product replacement.

Conclusion

Whenever a WD hard drive being unrecognized on Mac, data rescue should come first. After recovering data from the unrecognized hard drive with free data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, you can then try to fix the error in different ways without worrying about data loss. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac also helps recovering data when USB flash drives, Toshiba external hard drives, or other external hard drives that are not showing up on Mac.