A WD My Passport formatted with Mac file system will be a dud on the Windows and vice-versa. Thankfully, MS-DOS FAT32 and ex-FAT formats have survived to date, and these are the file system to make your WD My Passport work with a Mac and a Windows PC simultaneously. A Western Digital external hard drive can be used on both Windows and Mac OSX. This is useful if a drive is being used under both Operating System (OS) to move files between the two environments. Most WD Drives come formatted in the NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) format.
I used my WD Passport HD to back up my DVR recordings on my Dish receiver before it got replaced. There was nothing on the Passport which was formatted with the WD Smartware, but was reformatted with the Dish formatting needed to save the DVR media recordings. Now when I try to backup my laptop with the Passport, it is not recognized at all. I cannot format it as a writable drive because the Passport is not even recognized on an external drive. I can connect the Passport to Dish and it reads my DVR recordings fine. How can I get the Passport to be recognized on a PC again? I am fine losing whatever DVR recordings are saved.
Run Windows Disk Management (if you are using Windows Vista or later, you can search for it by this name; if using XP, type compmgmt.msc in the Run menu). The bottom half of the window shows you physical drives (as distinct from 'drive letters' as seen in 'My Computer' etc). Disk 0 is usually your system drive, and if you have any other internal drives they will be listed below it.
Your WD drive should be listed below that (but above DVD drives etc, if you have any). If it is not shown, there's a problem in the physical (hardware) communication between the computer and the hard drive - perhaps your PC's USB drive does not produce enough power to power it. If it is listed, the partitions that make up the drive will be shown on the right.
You may see 'RAW' (the PC does not know what to make of the drive), 'Unknown Partition' (Windows does not recognise the partition type) or something else. At any rate, you should be able to right-click on that area and delete the existing partition if any ('Delete Volume'). Now right click again and create a new partition. You will now need to format the partition. If you ONLY want to use the drive with your PC, choose to format it as NTFS. Otherwise, choose the FAT32 format which is recognised by most devices (though perhaps not by your DVR, by the sound of it).
. This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system.
This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to erase a WD drive in Windows OS and macOS.
This answer explains how to setup and use WD Security and WD Drive Utilities on a Windows or Mac computer. This answer explains how to install WD Apps software in Windows (10, 8, 7, or Vista) and macOS (10.8.x Mountain Lion through 10.12.x Sierra).
WD Discovery Online User Guide. This answer explain starting macOS Time Machine backups to My Passport and External USB Drives. Direct Attached Storage Online User Guide and Solutions. This article explains how to safely eject a USB device from a computer.
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This answer explains how to format a drive in the exFAT or FAT32 file system. This allows the drive to be used on both Windows and macOS.
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This answer explains how to format a WD drive for use on Windows and macOS. This answer explains how to erase a WD drive in Windows OS and macOS. This answer explains why My Cloud mobile app is unable to access the 'TimeMachineBackup' or 'SmartWare' shares on a My Cloud device. This answer explains how to fix WD Software install, uninstall and update issues on Windows PC. This article explains how to backup and restore using the File History feature of Windows 10. WD Community It's taken a fall or two to the soft carpet floor from a height of about 16 inches, but I don't think this should be a problem. I'm sorry, but those 16 inches are more than enough to damage a drive.
The drive is probably physically damaged. It doesn't take much of a bump to damage them. Professional data recovery is likely the only solution. Joe Dropping included, you have several kinds of issues that arise that can cause a drive not to read. The drive itself is broken, which means you can only possibly retrieve your data through data reco. What OS are you using and does the drive show in Disk Management?
Does it say anything in Disk Management down where the bars are shown like Raw? Never trust important data to just one drive intern.