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.

Western Digital offers an expansive portfolio of technologies, storage devices, systems and solutions for businesses and consumers alike. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital®, G-Technology®, SanDisk® and WD® brands. WD Elements / WD easystore; Embedded & Removable Flash; WD ReadyView. Western Digital SSD Dashboard. Software for Mac GoodSync for WD. Install WD Discovery for Mac. WD Drive Utilities for Mac. WD Security for Mac. Product Firmware Product. If your product is. Feb 07, 2013  Question: Q: Format a Western Digital Elements for MAC and PC I have a new Western Digital Elements and I need to format it for Mac and PC. I have a G-Tech drive (which has content from an FCP edit) and I need to make a duplicate of the content onto the Western Digital so that the client who has a PC can open the files. Remo Recover tool performs Western Digital data recovery by scanning the entire hard drive and recovering files in quick steps. It identifies and recovers up to 300 file types including email archives, documents, zip archives, audio files, data files, image files, application files, spreadsheets, backup files and all other file types from WD. Nov 12, 2019  Similarly to the Elements, it comes in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB. There is no option for a 5TB. On the other hand, there are different versions. The Passport Ultra has a different design, the Passport Go is ready for Windows and Mac but doesn’t have hardware encryption, and the Passport SSD is ready for Windows and Mac and has hardware encryption.

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.

Western Digital Elements Mac Software Downloads

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.

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 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.

Western Digital Elements Software Mac

Summary :

Western Digital provides users with backup software to help them backup files. But it can only be used to back up files. Is there any alternative to Western Digital backup software? This post will show you how to use WD backup software and how to use its free alternative.

Western Digital is a famous hard drive manufacturer and data storage company around the world. It has produced a lot of storage devices and products.

And Western Digital also provides users with the WD backup software as long as users have purchased the Western Digital hard drives, such as WD My Passport Go SSD. As a matter of fact, Western Digital provides users with two pieces of WD backup software which respectively are WD backup software and WD SmartWare Software.

However, both of these two pieces of Western Digital backup software can only help you to back up files, photos or documents. What can you do if you want to back up the whole hard drive, partition or the operating system?

Or if the WD backup fails to work, how can you back up files to safeguard your data and files?

To solve the above situations, you can try an alternative to Western Digital backup software.

An Alternative to Western Digital Backup Software

As we have mentioned in the above part, the Western Digital backup software can only help you to back up the files. If you want to back up the operating system, partition or the whole hard drive, you may need an alternative to the Western Digital backup software.

Thus, the best backup software - MiniTool ShadowMaker is strongly recommended.

Western Digital Mac Software

MiniTool ShadowMaker is a piece of professional backup software. Not only can it help to back up the files, but also it can back up the disk, partition, and even the operating system.

Apart from the backup feature, MiniTool ShadowMaker also offers other features to help you to keep data safe, such as the File Sync, Clone Disk.

How to sync files so as to keep data safe in Windows 10/8/7? Try to use the best file sync software – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

So, just get the alternative to Western Digital backup software immediately to back up your Western Digital hard drive.

The Western Digital backup software alternative - MiniTool ShadowMaker provides two features to backup the Western Digital hard drive. They are Backup and Clone Disk. At first, we will show you how to back up the Western Digital hard drive with Backup feature.

How to Back up WD Hard Drive with Backup Feature?

At this part, you can refer to the detailed guide on how to back up the Western Digital hard drive with the Backup feature of MiniTool ShadowMaker.

Step 1: Install and launch MiniTool ShadowMaker

1. Install the Western Digital backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
2. Launch it.
3. Click Keep Trial to continue.
4. Choose Connect in This Computer to enter its main interface.

Step 2: Select the backup source

1. After entering its main interface, please go to the Backup
2. Click Source module to continue.
3. Choose Disk and Partitions to go on.
4. Please choose the Western Digital hard drive to continue.
5. Click OK.

Step 3: Choose the backup destination

1. Click Destination module to continue.
2. In the popup window, you can see there are five paths for you to choose.
3. Choose a destination based on your needs and click OK to continue. It is recommended to choose an external hard drive.

The WD backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker provides some advanced settings for you to back up files, folders, disk, partition and the whole operating system.

• The Schedule setting can help user to set the Western Digital backup on a regular basis. You can set in on daily/weekly/monthly/on event. Please see: 3 Ways to Create Automatic File Backup in Windows 10 Easily
• The Western Digital backup software provides users three backup schemes and the Incremental backup scheme is chosen by default. You can click Scheme button to change.
• MiniTool ShadowMaker also enables you to set some advanced backup parameters through the Options button.

Step 4: Start to backup

1. After you have selected backup source and destination, you can click Back up Now to perform the Western Digital backup immediately.
2. Or you can choose Back up Later to delay the backup and restart it in the Manage

When all steps are finished, you have successfully backed up the Western Digital hard drive with the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

Of course, MiniTool ShadowMaker also provides another feature for you to perform Western Digital backup. It is the Clone Disk feature.

It is a powerful feature, enabling users to back up Western Digital hard drive without data loss.

In the following content, we will show you how to perform Western Digital backup with the Clone Disk feature of MiniTool ShadowMaker.

How to clone hard drive or migrate OS to SSD without data loss? MiniTool provides two pieces of best free SSD cloning software.

Perform Western Digital Backup with Clone Disk Feature

Now, you can refer to the guide on how to perform Western Digital backup with the step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Install and launch MiniTool ShadowMaker

1. Install the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
2. Launch it.
3. Click Keep Trial to continue.
4. Click Connect in This Computer to enter its main interface.

Step 2: Choose Clone Disk feature

1. After entering its main interface, please go to the Tools
2. Then click Clone Disk feature to continue.

Step 3: Choose disk clone source

1. In the popup window, click Source module to choose the disk clone source. And here you need to choose the Western Digital hard drive.
2. Click Finish to continue.

Step 3: Choose disk clone destination

1. Click Destination module to choose a target disk to save all Western Digital backups.
2. Click Finish to continue.

Please note that all data on the destination disk will be destroyed during the disk clone process. So, if there are any important files on the destination disk, you had better back up them in advance. Please see: How to Backup Files on Windows 10? Try These Top 4 Ways

Western Digital Elements Mac Software Download

Step 4: Start to perform Western Digital backup

1. After you have selected disk clone source and destination, it is time to start to back up Western Digital hard drive.
2. In the popup window, you can see the progress bar. And the disk clone time depends on how much files on the source disk.
3. When the process is finished, you can click Finish to continue.

When the disk clone process is finished, you will receive a warning message, as shown in the following picture:

The warning message has the following information:

• The source disk and the target disk have the same signature.
• So you need to remove either of them from your computer when the disk clone process is finished. Otherwise, one disk will be marked offline when you first boot your computer.
• If you want to boot the computer from the target disk, please change the BIOS setting firstly.

When the above steps are finished, you can find that the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker has successfully backed up the operating system or the hard drive to safeguard your data and files.

And this WD backup tool can effectively help you to back up your files so as to protect them.

However, as we have mentioned in the beginning, Western Digital has provided two programs to help Western Digital users to back up files. They are WD backup software and WD SmartWare software. But both of these two WD backup tools only support backing up the files. It can’t help you to back up the hard drive or the operating system.

And if you just want to back up files, you can try these two programs. And we will simply show you how to use WD backup software as an example.

How to Use WD Backup Software?

The following contents are the guides on how to use WD backup software.

Step 1: Launch WD backup software

1. Install WD backup software.
2. Launch WD backup software to enter its main interface.

Step 2: Start to back up files

In the main interface of this WD program, click Back up Files to continue.

Step 3: Select the backup storage device

1. Then you are required to choose the WD storage devices
2. Click Next to continue.

Step 4: Select backup source

You can click Edit Files to choose the specific files or folders you want to back up.

Step 5: Start to backup

When you have finished the above steps, you can start to back up your files by clicking the Start Backup button.

All in all, these are all steps of how to use WD backup software.

Western Digital Elements Mac Software Reviews

Although the WD backup software can help you to back up files, it also has some demerits. In the following part, we will show some difference between the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker and the WD backup software.

Quality WD external hard drive data recovery can be finished easily with Power Data Recovery. Would you like to know the details?

MiniTool ShadowMaker VS WD Backup Software

1. Backup content

The WD backup software only supports to back up files. But the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker not only supports you to back up files, but also it enables you to back up the operating system, disks and partitions.

Besides the backup feature, MiniTool ShadowMaker can help you to perform Western Digital backup so as to keep your files and data safe.

Western Digital Mac Backup

What’s more, the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker can help you to sync files to keep data safe.

2. Supported device

The WD backup software only supports the Western Digital hard drives and it doesn’t support the hard drive with other brands. However, MiniTool ShadowMaker can support hard drives with all brands.

3. Failed to work

Some users complain that the WD Backup software may fail to work, such as WD backup not working, WD backup stuck and so on. However, the alternative to Western Digital backup software Windows 10 can work normally at most time.

So MiniTool ShadowMaker plays an important role in backing up files, especially when the WD backup software not working or stuck.

From this comparison, you can find that the Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker is more effective and powerful than WD backup software since it supports backing up different backup source and supports different devices.

Bottom Line

In conclusion, we have introduced what the Western Digital backup software is and how to use the WD backup software. In addition, we also have introduced a powerful Western Digital backup software alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

The best backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker can help you to perform Western Digital backup in two different ways.

And if you have any problem of MiniTool ShadowMaker, please feel free to contact us via the email [email protected] and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

WD Backup FAQ

1. Launch WD Backup software.
2. Click Back up Files
3. Choose WD storage device.
4. Click Next.
5. Click Edit Files to select backup source.
6. Click Start Backup.