WD My Book external HDD Will not show up in Windows 10 I am trying to get a WD MY Book HDD connected to my PC running Windows 10. I have tried about half a dozen of the methods that I have read on other posts and forums and still am not able to recognize my drive on this PC. So, please provide me an easy to use the method to resolve WD external hard drive not showing in disk management in Windows 10. Any help much appreciated.” “I have a brand new external hard drive but it will not show up on my PC (including the disk management segment of computer management).
- Western Digital External Hard Drive Not Showing Up
- Wd External Drive Not Working
- Western Digital External Drive Not Showing Up
- Western Digital External Hard Drive Drivers
In general, when you plug in an external hard drive to your Mac’s USB port, you will see it shows up automatically on the desktop, in the Finder, and in the Disk Utility. However, there are times that you cannot find it because the computer is not set up properly or the disk fails to mount. If that is exactly what is happening to your WD external hard drive, follow the quick fixes and effective methods below to make the drive show up again.
Let’s check all the basics first to save time, money and hassles.
1. Make sure the USB cable is plugged to the end of the USB port.
2. Change USB port/cable to detect WD external hard drive.
3. Detach the drive and reboot your Mac to quit any apps that might stop the drive from being detected.
4. Try connecting the WD external hard drive to another computer to see if it works.
After doing all these basic checks, if the WD hard drive doesn’t show up on Mac still, you can try out the following solutions one by one.
Solution 1: Show WD external hard drive on the desktop
By default, your Mac is supposed to display the icons of all external disks on the desktop. Then users can access the disk on the desktop directly. If the setting is somehow changed, the WD hard drive will stop showing up on the desktop.
Microsoft office 2010 discount for students. To change the situation:
- Go to Finder in the top menu bar on the desktop.
- Select Preferences….
- Go to the General tab.
- Check External disks.
Then the WD external hard drive will appear on the desktop.
Your hard drive shows up on the desktop but not in the Finder? Well, the cause might be the same.
Solution 2: Show WD external hard drive in the Finder
The detected and mounted internal and external disks will be shown up in the Finder. However, if somebody chooses to hide some items, he or she can set up not to show them in the sidebar of the Finder. However, you can easily change the setting back.
- Open the Finder and go to Finder at the top menu bar.
- Select Preferences….
- Go to the Sidebar tab.
- Check External disks.
You should be able to see the WD external hard drive that doesn’t show up in the Finder now.
The WD external hard drive won’t show up even after you change all the settings? Then it is very possible that the drive is having mounting problems.
Solution 3: Show WD external hard drive in the Disk Utility
First, you have to figure out the mounting problem is caused by physical damages or logical errors by checking the disk in the Disk Utility. If you can find the WD external hard drive in Disk Utility, congratulations! It means the Mac can recognize and detect the WD external hard drive, and, in other words, the disk doesn’t have any hardware issue preventing you from fixing it. It only has some logical issues that result in the system failing to mount it. Then the following steps would help.
First of all, try to select the hard drive and use the Mount button to manually mount the external hard disk. If you are unable to mount the WD external hard drive, please try running the First Aid through Disk Utility. To do this, choose the grayed out external hard drive from the left sidebar, click on First Aid on the top and select Run.
The Mac still doesn’t mount the external hard drive successfully? You have to reformat the disk to make the drive work again. However, you should be aware that reformatting will delete all existing data.
Hard drive data recovery software for Mac like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can easily achieve the task.
Key capabilities of iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac:
- Recover photos, videos, documents, audio, email files, archive files, etc.
- Support data recovery from hard drive, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.
- Support data recovery from formatted/unredable/unmountable/corrupted disks.
- Recover data from unbootable Mac.
- Support APFS, encrypted APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT and exFAT file system.
- Work on macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and earlier OS X versions to OS X 10.7.
Here is the simplified process of recovering data from the troubled WD external hard drive:
- Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.
- Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
- Select the WD unmountable external hard drive and click the Scan button to scan for all the lost data.
4. Preview the searching results, choose the files you need, and click Recover to get them back.
After recovering important files from the WD hard drive, it is time to reformat it. Stay in the Disk Utility window, follow the easy steps to finish fixing the not showing up WD external hard drive.
- Select the WD external hard drive.
- Click on the Erase button.
- Input a name, format (exFAT is recommend for cross-platform users) and scheme.
- Hit Erase.
After erasing the disk, detach and reattach the hard drive to the Mac. It should be mounted correctly and show up on the desktop, in the Finder and in the Disk Utility.
Conclusion
This post is not only useful when your WD external hard disk is not showing up on Mac, but applies to any external hard drive or SD card not showing up situation on Mac including but not limited to Seagate external hard drives, Samsung external hard drives, and Toshiba external hard drives.
Many users complained that their external hard drives are connected but not showing on computer or File Explorer the Windows 10/8/7. Some reported that the USB or external hard drive is not showing up on My Computer or File Explorer but showing in Disk Management. Others said that external hard drive shows in device manager but not disk management. To fix these external hard drive issues, this troubleshooting post will be helpful for you.
Case 1: External hard drive shows up in disk management but not file explorer
You may experience that your USB or external drive has been connected to the computer, but it is not showing in File Explorer or My Computer, but shows in Disk Management instead. Under this situation, it will be regarded as an unknown disk and shows the capacity to be 2048 GB in the Disk Management. To fix the problem, please try following methods.
Tip: If your external hard drive shows in device manager but not disk management, you can directly move to the case 2.
1. Assign a Drive Letter to the USB/Hard Drive
Sometimes, the drive might not have been assigned a drive letter by Windows so that USB or external hard drive cannot show on File Explorer but in Disk Management. In this case, you can try to assign a drive letter to the USB or external hard drive in Disk Management.
STEP 1. Navigate to 'Control Panel'> 'System and Security'> 'Administrative Tools”.
STEP 2. Choose 'Computer Management”. Provide an administrative passcode, if asked.
STEP 3. In Disk Management, find out the unlabeled hard drive and right-click on it to choose 'Change drive letter and paths..'
STEP 4. Click 'Add'> 'OK' to pick out the available drive letter.
STEP 5. If the drive letter does not show on the drive, check if the drive is offline. If it is, right-click the disk number and select Online. And then, follow the instructions again.
NOTE:
If you can't finish the operation in Disk Management, you are able to run 'cmd' to change or assign the drive letter.
- Open Command Prompt. (CMD) and type 'diskpart'.
- At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'list volume”. ( mark down the number of the simple volume whose drive letter you want to assign)
- At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'select volume n[volume's number]' (Select the volume whose drive letter you want to assign)
- At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'assign letter=N' (N stands for the drive letter you want to assign)
2. Make sure that the hard drive is enabled and online
Make sure the hard drive is enabled
If the drive has been disabled, the disk will be invisible in File Explorer. When the disk is disabled, follow the steps below to Enable it:
STEP 1. Press 'Windows'+ 'R' on the keyboard to activate run box.
STEP 2. Type 'devmgmt.msc' on the run box to open 'Device Manager”.
STEP 3. If a drive is disabled, the disk drive will be marked with a down arrow. Locate the hard drive you want to enable.
STEP 4. Right-click on it and choose 'Properties'> 'View'tab.
STEP 5. Click on 'Enable Device' button > 'OK”.
STEP 6. After that, check if the down arrow is still there.
Make sure that the drive is online
Sometimes, an external hard drive connected but not showing because the drive is offline. To be detected by Windows, you can follow steps below to check the current status of the disk.
- Go to 'Control Panel'> 'System and Security'> 'Administrative Tools'.
- Choose 'Computer Management', and locate your disk in 'Disk Management'.
- Right-click on it and select 'Online'.
3. Update drivers for USB or external hard drive
When your USB/external drive does not show on file explorer on Windows 10/8/7, you can try to update its driver in Device Manager. As we know, an update is created to fix some glitches for the previous version so as to make USB or external drive showing on My computer again.
STEP 1. Press 'Windows'key + 'R'and enter 'devmgmt.msc' on the run box.
STEP 2. Open 'Device Manager'> Click the 'Scan for hardware changes' icon on the menu.
STEP 3. Right-click on the inaccessible USB/external hard drive and choose 'Update Driver Software..'.
STEP 4. After the update is finished, restart your PC and check if the device is accessible.
4. Recover data from hard drive that is not showing
When external hard drive issue occurs, an external hard drive is not showing files though they still exist. If any important data is in the USB/external hard drive when external hard drive shows up in Disk Management but not File Explorer, you can employ data recovery to retrieve your data before formatting it. Here we highly recommend you FonePaw Data Recovery which is capable of recovering data from USB/ external hard drive, supporting Window 10/8/7. To recover data from hard drive, you just need few simple steps.
Download
STEP 1. Run FonePaw Data Recovery, and then, select the file types you need.
STEP 2. Next, click on 'Scan' button after selecting your USB/external drive.
Western Digital External Hard Drive Not Showing Up
STEP 3. Select out the files you want to recover.
STEP 4. Finally, click on 'Recover' button to finish data recovery.
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STEP 5. After that, you can keep on formatting your inaccessible USB/external hard drive.
Case 2: External hard drive shows up in Device Manager but not Disk Management or File Explorer
Western Digital External Drive Not Showing Up
Unlike case 1, USB or external hard drive sometimes is invisible in File Explorer or Disk Management, but it can be detected in Device Manager, for example, an external HDD won't show up in explorer, but it shows in Device Manager. To fix the issue, several methods can be listed below.
1. Make sure the USB or external hard drive is available. If it is not showing up in Disk Management or File Explorer, you can try to plug it into other USB port of your computer. What's more, you can connect your external drive to other computers to check if it works.
2. Partition and format the external hard drive.
- Go to 'Computer Management”. > Right-click on black bar of the invisible drive to choose 'New Partition..'> Follow the instruction to finish the Partition.
- Right-click on the drive and select 'Format”.
3. Disable and re-enable the USB controller.
Western Digital External Hard Drive Drivers
- Navigate to 'Device Manager”. > Find 'Unknown USB Device' and right-click on it. > Choose 'Uninstall”.
- After restarting your PC, enable the USB controller again.
Now, your issue - external hard drive not showing Windows 10/8/7 has been resolved. To manage the data on USB/external hard drive, read here: