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How To Eject My Passport For Mac

Summary: This guide introduces three common scenarios in which you might find your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac. If the WD My Passport read-only on Mac problem is caused by the NTFS file system, installing iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to edit, rename, delete the saved files and transfer files to the read-only WD My passport hard drive.

  1. In order to maintain your WD My Passport for Mac in good condition, you should pay attention to: Make sure that your WD My Passport doesn't become physically damaged. Always safely and properly eject the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
  2. Now that you know your items have been backed up, EJECT/REMOVE “My Passport for MAC” to be safe, and start deleting items you choose off your computer’s hard drive to free up space. Reinsert your “My Passport for MAC” external drive when you need/want to retrieved backed up items you deleted off of your computer’s hard drive.
  3. I have a WD Ultra 'My Passport' external hard drive and had originally configured it to my MacBook pro, but I just received the surface pro 4 as a gift and I'm trying to use the external hard drive with this device. I saw a post about getting the WD app, and I did that, but it doesn't recognize my device, or at least it is not detecting it.
  4. Eject external hard drives, memory cards and more by clicking on the Eject icon next to the name of the device in the Finder window. Look on the left side. Look on the left side.

Western Digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. Its product line covers WD My Passport, WD My Passport Ultra, WD My Book, WD Elements, WD My Passport for Mac and more. Among those external hard drive categories, WD My Passport external hard drives are the most widely used ones. However, many users complain their WD My Passport is read-only on Mac like the user below in WD community.

The message you saw (eject before disconnecting) is definitely what you get when you forget to eject first. I had a similar problem several months ago with a WD My Book that I was using as my Time Machine backup. Now I cant get the My Passport to mount even when I leave it connected to my computer overnight.

'I have a WD My Passport 320GB external hard drive that I am trying to hook up to my iMac for the first time. I'm running macOS 10.13. I'm extremely frustrated because this drive is in a read-only mode, and I can't figure out how to change it! Any suggestion to fix this?'

Please continue reading and look for solutions for solving read-only WD My Passport on Mac problem.

Why is the WD My Passport read-only?

Sometimes, the WD external hard drive is read-only on Mac when you just got a brand new WD external hard drive. In other times, it suddenly became read-only after you have been using it for a while. The most common reasons for a read-only WD external hard drive, like WD My Passport, are listed below:

  • 1. Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted
  • 2. You have read-only permission to access WD My Passport hard drive
  • 3. Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted

If you are not sure which reason has caused your WD My Passport external hard drive read-only on Mac, check the scenarios one by one. If you know the reason already, you can jump to the scenario that best describes your situation.

Scenario 1: Your WD My Passport hard drive is NTFS-formatted

For WD My Passport Ultra and WD Elements, check if the hard drive is formatted with NTFS file system. By default, macOS can mount a Windows NTFS volume or drive in read-only mode. You can view the files saved on the NTFS-formatted partition or drive but can't make any changes to them. In addition, the WD My Passport hard drive won't let you add any files to it. To check if your WD My Passport is NTFS formatted, follow the steps:

  • 1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities.
  • 2. Click the WD My Passport (you may have changed its name) at the left sidebar. The file system information will be displayed on the right.

Note: You can also right-click the disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info' to check the file system information.

After having confirmed that the WD My Passport is formatted with NTFS, many people will choose to convert NTFS to APFS (for macOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra) or reformat the WD My Passport hard drive to make the WD external hard drive compatible with Mac. But as you know, directly formatting WD Elements or My Passport on Mac causes data loss.

In fact, installing an NTFS for Mac driver is a much easier way.

Solution: Install an NTFS for Mac driver to make WD My Passport writable

The NTFS drivers for macOS - iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can help you read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drives on Mac.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is an NTFS disk management tool. It can manage NTFS drives with NTFS write support. It can easily and effectively mount NTFS drive on Mac automatically in read-write mode. It works with macOS 11/10.15/10.14/10.13.

Three simple steps to read and write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive easily.

  • 1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your Mac. Then, restart your Mac.
  • 2. Connect the NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive to Mac.
  • 3. Write to NTFS-formatted WD My Passport drive after the drive has been mounted successfully.

How To Eject Wd My Passport For Mac

Besides an NTFS mounter, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac can also open, unmount, eject, erase and repair NTFS volumes. It can list all attached external disks including USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks, external hard drives and so on. You can open them with one click. Moreover, you can reformat them to NTFS with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac if you need.

Scenario 2: You have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport hard drive

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not formatted with NTFS but you have no write permission to it, it is probably because you have read-only permission to access the WD My Passport. Since your WD external hard drive is write-protected, all your write access is denied.

To know your permission to the WD My Passport, follow the steps below:

  • 1. Right-click the WD My Passport disk icon at the desktop and choose 'Get Info'.
  • 2. Check the information at the bottom under the Sharing & Permissions tab.

If you can see the message 'You can only read', then you will understand why you can't write to your WD My Passport drive.

Solution: Change read-only permission on the WD My Passport drive

Follow the instruction below to change permission on Mac so that you can access the WD My Passport again:

  • 1. Click on the lock icon at the right corner in the Get Info window.
  • 2. Enter password if asked.
  • 3. Check the 'Ignore ownership on this volume'.
  • 4. Click on the gear button and choose 'Apply to enclosed items…'.
  • 5. Click 'OK' when you are asked to confirm the operation.
  • 6. Click the 'Read Only' in Privilege column and select 'Read & Write'.

By now, you have regained the read and write access to the WD My Passport.

Scenario 3: Your WD My Passport hard drive is corrupted

If you are sure that the read-only WD My Passport is not caused by NTFS file system nor read-only permission, another possible cause might be the disk corruption. When an external drive is corrupted, people suddenly have trouble reading or/and writing to the disk. Then you will have to fix the corrupted WD My Passport external hard drive to make it writable again. We will introduce two solutions here:

  • Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac
  • Reformat the WD My Passport on Mac

Solution 1: Fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility on Mac

This solution might help you solve the read-only external hard drive problem without formatting. You will utilize a built-in tool on Mac called Disk Utility. It is used to manage internal and external disks on Mac. There is a function called First Aid in Disk Utility that can be used to check for and repair errors on the selected disk or volume.

Here is how to fix the read-only WD My Passport in Disk Utility:

  • 1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
  • 2. Select the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.
  • 3. Click on First Aid and click on 'Run' to repair the WD My Passport drive.
  • 4. Click 'Done' after the operation completes.

If First Aid fails to repair the WD external hard drive, your disk might be seriously corrupted. You will have to reformat the WD My passport to make it not read-only.

Solution 2: Reformat the WD My Passport for Mac

Reformatting the corrupted WD My Passport drive is the ultimate solution for fixing the read only file system on Mac. Follow the steps below to know how to make the WD My Passport compatible with Mac and PC.

  • 1. Make sure you have a copy of your important files on WD My Passport hard drive, or recover lost data from the external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
  • 2. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
  • 3. Click on the WD My Passport drive at the left sidebar.
  • 4. Check Click 'Erase' on the top of the Disk Utility window.
  • 5. Input a name.
  • 6. Choose FAT or exFAT as format for convenience because either of them is compatible with both Windows and macOS. Then, how to format the WD My Passport for Mac exclusive use? Simply choose APFS or Mac OS Extend format in Disk Utility, which also works if you want to format WD Elements for Mac.
  • 7. Choose 'GUID Partition Map' as Scheme.
  • 8. Click on 'Erase' button.

You can reconnect the WD external hard drive to Mac again to see if it is writable now.

Conclusion

The external hard drive read-only on Mac problem doesn't happen to WD external hard drives only. Any external hard drive could be write-protected on Mac. It is quite common to see other notable external hard drive brand get the same complaint like Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, etc. When you come across the read-only disk problem on Mac, the post is always helpful.

Summary: WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix WD My Passport not working issue and recover data from unrecognized WD My Passport.

Everything has flaws. At times, WD My Passport won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD hard drive's light is on but not working. Even worse, it may become unreadable on your Mac. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

If the WD My Passport is not showing up on Mac desktop, Finder or Disk Utility after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If you can't see files from WD external hard drive on Mac, how to access data? You'll get answers here.

Troubleshoot WD My Passport not showing up on Mac issue

As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

  • Safely remove the WD My Passport and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason
  • Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.
  • Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.
  • Connect the WD My Passport to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport undetectable.

How to fix WD My Passport not showing up on Mac issue?

If the WD My Passport for Mac still does not work or not show up on Mac after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow the connected hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.

Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.

  • 1. Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.
  • 2. Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD My Passport for Mac on the desktop.
  • 3. Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD My Passport for Mac in Finder.

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the WD My Passport for Mac drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:

1. Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.

2. Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.

Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.

How

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually

Sometimes, hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the hard drive.

  • 1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
  • 2. Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.
  • 3. Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.

Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.

Method 2: Repair WD My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid

If you can't mount the WD My Passport for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.

  • 1. Go to Disk Utility.
  • 2. Select the WD My Passport for Mac.
  • 3. Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.
  • 4. Click Done when the reparation finishes.

Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac

If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.

The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover lost data from the WD My Passport for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is free hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover lost data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Recover lost data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac

  • 1. Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
  • 2. Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
  • 3. Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.
  • 4. Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.

Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

How To Use My Passport For Mac

After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport for Mac drive with no fuss.

  • 1. Go to Disk Utility.
  • 2. Select the WD My Passport for Mac drive in the left sidebar.
  • 3. Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.
  • 4. Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.

What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?

If My Passport for Mac hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, it means the WD hard drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some hardware problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.

Understanding why My Passport drive not showing up on Mac

Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up on Mac just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD My Passport for Mac not showing up or not working.

How To Eject My Passport For Mac Before Disconnecting It

  • Recent macOS update issue
  • System failure
  • Virus infection
  • Motherboard issue
  • WD My Passport drive damage or corruption

Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport drives for Mac

Apparently, most hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport for Mac in good condition, you should pay attention to:

Wd Passport Mac Not Working

  • Make sure that your WD My Passport doesn't become physically damaged.
  • Always safely and properly eject the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
  • Don't just unplug the USB cable, on the contrary, unmount your drive by right-clicking (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.
  • Properly use WD software like WD Drive Utilities, WD Backup software ( to back up important files to your My Passport drive), and WD Discovery ( to organize and share your files to the My Passport drive to backup your online social life).