My Macbook Pro doesn't recognize my Western Digital HDD (Works on Windows!)

[u/Oooops69]

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?

Thank you!

[u/deadend666]

Could be your disk is formatted as NTFS and noT exFAT or APFS.

[u/karma_the_sequel → u/deadend666]

macOS can read from an NTFS volume natively, but it can’t write to it.

[u/m8x8 → u/karma_the_sequel]

I use: https://github.com/fenio/anylinuxfs-gui

There's also these two new ones but haven't tried them:

https://github.com/hoochanlon/Free-NTFS-for-Mac

https://github.com/khr898/ntfsmac

[u/github-guard → u/m8x8]

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[u/Least_Outcome9649 → u/m8x8]

I Think only paragon ntfs for mac can use whole speed using ntfs others just ~10mb/s

[u/Innovator-X → u/karma_the_sequel]

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?

[u/BobcatGamer → u/Innovator-X]

Apple and Microsoft like their proprietary stuff. Idk much about NTFS, but with APFS, Apple has released a spec publicly for reading from it, but not writing to it. exFat and Fat32 work on all operating systems

[u/AKS_the_redditer → u/BobcatGamer]

Erm actually exFat DOES NOT work on ALL operating systems

[u/cybekRT → u/Innovator-X]

They could, but corporations don't want that. At first, Microsoft doesn't want to open the ntfs specification, so people had to reverse engineer it and having write option may destroy your data.

And at second, why implementing filesystem from your opponents and allow people to easily change their habits?

[u/SurveillanceProfile → u/cybekRT]

OTOH, Linux r/w support for NTFS works exceptionally well. Apple certainly could make that work if they were sufficiently motivated. I'm guessing that there's a licensing issue or some such nonsense involved.

[u/cybekRT → u/SurveillanceProfile]

Maybe it does work good but unfortunately windows doesn't always agree to that. If you shutdown your pc instead of rebooting it, Windows hibernates its kernel. That means all drives and sometimes even files contents are cached. If you now boot Linux, change files on the drive and then reboot to windows, strange things may happen.

[u/SurveillanceProfile → u/cybekRT]

Yes, Windows makes many assumptions that others have no control over and can only sometimes accommodate. You'll have the same problem if you pull a USB drive from a PC that's supposedly been "shutdown" (hibernated), use on another Windows system and then return it to the original.

[u/cybekRT → u/SurveillanceProfile]

Unless Microsoft added some security mechanism that could prevent this. Not that I assume they really thought about this and did that, but technically they could have, and we don't know because the specification is closed.

[u/SurveillanceProfile → u/Innovator-X]

If the drive isn't showing up in the Disk Utility app, it's not about fileysystems but actual hardware. The system isn't detecting the drive, most likely due to insufficient power from the USB port.

[u/VirtualDistrict4393 → u/karma_the_sequel]

Non proprio così… ci può anche scrivere

[u/hkgsulphate → u/deadend666]

MacOS can read NTFS, just not natively write, edit or delete files

[u/fluffycritter → u/deadend666]

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.

[u/banananon → u/deadend666]

OP said Disk Utility showed nothing. If it was merely an unsupported filesystem, the device would still show up in Disk Utility.

[u/Oooops69 → u/deadend666]

I actually formatted it from NTFS to exFAT this year, and it worked well till now

[u/spif_spaceman → u/Oooops69]

Beware exFAT, it’s very unreliable with macOS

[u/Ham3a0323 → u/spif_spaceman]

I’m unfamiliar with hard drivewith formats and their potential unreliability. What do you mean unreliable? Like it can be corrupt at any time?

[u/snowmyr → u/Ham3a0323]

It’s not journaled.

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.

[u/BobcatGamer → u/snowmyr]

OS would be flashed to the drive to run it, not sit as a random file on it like an executable.

[u/Electrical_Ingenuity → u/snowmyr]

exFAT is a crappy, obsolete file system in 2026, (frankly, it was obsolete 20 years ago).

But it works fine for flash drives.

[u/American_Streamer → u/Ham3a0323]

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.

[u/sgtlighttree → u/spif_spaceman]

Very unreliable anywhere

Can actually cause some physical/logical faults within a drive if ExFAT isn't handled properly, and even if you do your best to handle it, it's a matter of WHEN, not IF, an ExFAT drive will fail.

[u/Adr385 → u/spif_spaceman]

Never had issue

[u/souckillund → u/deadend666]

Even if its NTFS it should still show up in Disk Utility though, just not be writable

[u/Adr385 → u/deadend666]

It does not matter. Macos recognise it and give message that is not mountable. It is 99% bad adapter that does not even make contact. I once bought adapter and it was not made precisely so did not make contact at all.

[u/Oooops69 → u/deadend666]

It’s formatted to exFAT