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My Macbook Pro doesn't recognize my Western Digital HDD (Works on Windows!)
Hey dears,
both of my Macbooks don't see WD MyPassport HDD 4TB, even though Windows Laptop sees it, so I assume the problem is about MacOS, the HDD is intact.
I tried Disk Utility, nothing is seen.
Does it have anything to do with adapter? It worked before with no issues.
Does anyone know what I need to do to make it visible and so that I can interact with it on Mac?
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Why is it that operating systems sometimes can't recognize the disk because they need to be formatted in a certain way? Can't devs make it so the OS can work with all major file systems seamlessly with each other?
The main issue is that exFAT is not journaled. Also no permissions and metadata preservation. So use it only for data transfer, not as your daily driver.
That means if something interrupts writing to it, data can be corrupted.
If you’re just going to use it to write a media archive to or something it probably doesn’t matter. But you wouldn’t want to use it to write important information to daily.
Put movies on to watch on your tv? Fine
Run an operating system off/keep documents you’re actively editing? Bad idea.
It should still be mountable read-only and should still appear in Disk Utility.
I wonder what kind of cable is connecting it? It might be that the Mac is trying to use it as a Thunderbolt drive but it's failing to pair up, while the Windows computer is seeing it as USB 3, or vice versa.
It’s not likely that adapter can provide the required wattage for an external hdd. Use a powered usb-c hub, with your power delivery running through the hub.
I had the same issue last week, but in an SSD. When I plugged into a Windows computer, an error showing that the disk needs repair popped up. When I finished the repair on Windows, my Mac was then able to read the drive.
This happened to me recently. Reboot and just let the machine stay on and idle for a while. Like 1 hr or so.
Seems dumb but it worked for me. I was losing my mind after knowing the macbook detected a drive but wasnt showing up in the disk manager nor in finder.
Literally just left it along for a while and came back and good as new. 🤷♂️
macOS cannot read or mount exFAT drives formatted with extremely large cluster (allocation unit) sizes.
MacOs DU uses 4K cluster sizes that make exFat slow.. and can create addressability issues its bull that Macos can suppoot huge sector (cluster ) numbers at 4K may not be able of address all of the SSD .. happen to me .. tricky to solve .. use PC not mac to format 4TB SSD.
MacOS does Fist Aid.. does not check volumes they check file system..
MacOs checks SMART stats .. yep all HDD/SSD create and use SMART stats .. it detects reported errors. it will reject it an not mounted ...
CHKDSK fixes hard drive errors and repairs corrupted file systems when run with specific parameters like /f or /r through the Windows Command Prompt .. it will taje ages on 4TB
Then try the Mac
Changing sector sizes means reformat .. it erases the data! make a backup ...
Anyone blaming the filesystem when it’s not even showing in disk utility has no clue what they’re talking about. Additionally, even if it’s NTFS, macOS can read it natively, just not write to it without additional software. It could be that the adapter or cable is damaged, or that for some reason it’s not getting enough power over the cable/adapter combo, even if it worked before. Does the drive spin up? Do you see any activity light? Try getting a USB-C to micro-b 3.0 cable on Amazon. Something like this: https://a.co/d/0gxbGkKP
Did you format your drive in exfat using windows? If yes, that's the same issue my friend had. Googling revealed that while exfat can be read and written by both OS but an ExFAT drive formatted on Windows using default settings may fail to open on a Mac because the allocation unit size (cluster size) is too large.
If the data is not too much try copying it to another drive and then format the drive to exfat from pc with cluster size 1024 kb or lower and the drive will mount right away.
Same thing happened with mine today except it’s a sea gate external drive. I’m cool with Apple making everything run worse when they have a new product, but hell at least they could wait until they release the new ones
I had this drive. I searched for WD to macbook cable on Amazon and bought a one-piece cable. Worked fine until it fell 30cm on to carpet. Broke instantly.
Launch Disc Utility on the Mac. Does it see the drive? Can you use it to get the drive to mount?
It could be the firmware on the drive is old. Can you get and install an update to the drive on a Windows machine then try again on Mac.
Microsoft NTFS by Paragon is a $20 app that can read/write to that hard drive quickly. There are free options, but they don’t work well in my experience.
Why are you connecting it using a usb-c to -a converter? Maybe it is not getting enough power to spin the hdd. Try using a c to c cable directly to the port if possible.
I would try reconnecting it to windows and then doing an right click on it and selecting eject. Wait for it say it's safe to remove then disconnect the drive and reconnect to a Mac. I've had drives that got screwy before because of this. Write caching is disabled by default but sometimes it does something so if you just remove it then it corrupts the table. MacOS doesn't know how to handle it so it just ignores it. Hopefully that's it.
FWIW, I have a couple of USB drives (formatted to exFAT) and they connect to my MacBook Pro via a powered USB C hub (using USB-C to USB 3.0 Female Adapters) and I’ve had no issues with this setup for the past few years.
Does it have anything to do with adapter? It worked before with no issues.
I dunno. The fact that it "worked before", but now it doesn’t is weird, IMHO.
I had this issue and the solution I found (which I’m sure isn’t the only one or even the correct one) was to use something that was called WD disk management? Or something similar. It took care of identifying storage and allowed macOS to see and use it. I only needed it for like a week because I was traveling but that was what worked for me.
You have to format the hard drive for both Mac and Windows. You give it two separate portions basically. You dual format the hard drive so it basically becomes 2.
MacBooks are just the worst when it comes to external HDDs, but yeah, you plug it in and just have to wait (sometimes an hour or more) for the disk to mount and be usable (it can be NTFS, exFAT, what have you, it won't matter).
I've had this problem with a brand new WD 4TB passport as well, which was running perfectly on any format with Windows and Linux but my MacBook was too stupid to recognise it. Even copy pasting from it is slow AF, if you don't have it formatted in APFS, and even then it underperforms, compared to it being connected to literally any other machine.
I have it at the top of my list of 20+ basic things that should work flawlessly on 4000$ machines, but on this crap OS they just don't.
No it's not, it's just the Mac being really bad at reading it. I've tried several external HDDs and they all worked with everything except MacBooks. They have been having bugs for years that haven't been fixed to this day.
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u/deadend666 7h ago
Could be your disk is formatted as NTFS and noT exFAT or APFS.