Fix WD My Passport Drive Not recognized: Ultimate Solutions
13 September 2023 Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
Summary
Learn why your WD My Passport mobile hard drive is not recognized by your computer and discover effective solutions to solve the issue.
If your WD My Passport mobile hard disk is connected to the computer, but the hard disk cannot be found in the file explorer, that is, the hard disk cannot be recognized, the reasons may be as follows:
● The connection between the mobile hard disk and the computer is loose, the USB port is faulty or the data cable is faulty, etc.
● After installing or updating the Windows 10 system, the version of the hard disk driver in the computer is too old, so the hard disk cannot be recognized normally.
● The mobile hard disk itself has no default drive letter or hidden attributes, so Windows 10 system will not automatically assign a drive letter (drive letter) to the hard disk, and the hard disk without a drive letter cannot be displayed in the file explorer.
● The mobile hard disk is faulty or has bad sectors, so the system cannot recognize the hard disk. (See solutions to bad sectors)
● The mobile hard disk is a brand new hard disk, and it may need to be initialized when it is connected to the computer for the first time before it can be displayed and used normally. After opening Disk Management, you may find that its status is displayed as “unallocated”, “uninitialized” or “unknown”.
There is a problem with the connection between the mobile hard disk and the computer, which may cause the mobile hard disk to be unrecognized, that is, the hard disk cannot be found in the file explorer and disk management. It is recommended that you eject the hard disk safely and then connect it to another USB port for checking. If the hard disk still cannot be found normally, try to replace the hard disk data cable.
If the mobile hard disk is a brand-new hard disk, it may need to be initialized before it can be displayed and used normally when it is connected to the computer for the first time. You can check whether the hard disk status is “not initialized” or “unallocated” in disk management, and then initialize the disk and create a new simple volume.
Press the Windows icon + X key at the same time, select Disk Management in the menu. If the hard disk is displayed as not initialized, then right-click the mobile hard disk, select Initialize Disk, and then follow the corresponding instructions to complete the operation.
If the mobile hard disk partition is displayed as “unallocated”, right-click the unallocated partition, select New Simple Volume, and then set the capacity, drive letter, file system, etc. for this partition according to the wizard. If you don’t know which file system to choose, please refer to the tutorial of differences of FAT32, exFAT and NTFS file systems. If the mobile hard disk is used in Windows system, it is recommended to choose NTFS. After completing the above operations, you can open the file explorer to check whether the mobile hard disk is displayed normally.
If you are not in the above two situations, and you are worried that the important data in the hard disk will be lost, you can first use professional data recovery software to scan the mobile hard disk and recover/extract files. If there is no important data in the mobile hard disk, you can directly refer to the solution to the third part of WD My Passport hard disk not recognized.
Renee Undeleter is a software specially designed to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to find the lost data back. This software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation, so it can help you solve many data loss problems that may occur during system use in an all-round way, which is very convenient.
Whether the hard disk partition disappears, the hard disk becomes RAW, or the hard disk cannot be accessed normally, as long as the hard disk can still be displayed in the disk management list, you can use this software to try to scan and recover data. However, it should be noted that if the hard disk is severely damaged or the lost data is overwritten by other data, the probability of successful data recovery is low.
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Easy to use Recover data by 3 steps;
Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan;
Supported file types Image, video, audio, text, email and so on;
Image creation Create a partition image to read and back up data;
Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk and computer.
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Free TrialFree TrialFree Trial 800 people have downloaded! Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Undeleter, select the option Whole Disk Scan in the main interface. This option will scan the entire hard disk, so do not install the software to any partition of the hard disk that needs to be scanned. In the hard disk that does not need to be scanned, otherwise it will not be able to use Whole Disk Scan to scan. If the lost data is not much and the lost time is not long, you can also use Fast Partition Scan and Whole Partition Scan modes to save scanning time.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
Data recovery function introduction:
Fast Partition Scan: Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.
Whole Partition Scan: Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.
Whole Disk Scan: It can analyze and obtain partition information, and fully scan the entire partition.
Image Creation: You can create a mirror image for a partition to back up the current partition state.
Step 2: Next, select the disk device to be scanned and then click Next. Select default setting on the advanced setting interface.
Step 3: After that, the software will analyze the disk device. After scanning, you can double-click the file in the preview window on the right to preview it, then select the file you want to restore, and click the Recover button in the lower right corner to restore the selected file.
Step 4: Next, select the target folder, click Browse to select another disk to save the recovered files, and then click the Recover button to start the file recovery command, you just need to wait patiently.
Step 1: Connect the WD My Passport mobile hard drive to the computer, right-click the (Start) menu, and select (Device Manager).
Step 2: Find the hard disk device in the Disk drives of the device manager, right-click the hard disk, and select Update driver.
Step 3: Select Search automatically for updated driver software. Then follow the prompts to complete the operation. After updating, check again whether the mobile hard disk can be recognized.
The mobile hard disk cannot be recognized, there may be a problem with the drive letter, which can be solved by changing or reassigning the drive letter. Proceed as follows:
Step 1: Press the Windows icon and X key at the same time, select Disk Management in the menu, right-click the target hard disk, and select Change drive letter and paths.
Step 2: Click Add or Change to add and change the drive letter for the hard disk, and then click OK.
Step 3: Open the file explorer, select This PC, and you can see that the unrecognized hard disk has been successfully displayed.
If you find that the mobile hard disk cannot be recognized every time you connect it to the computer, it may be that the mobile hard disk has a hidden or no default drive letter (no default drive letter) attribute, and the system will not automatically assign a drive letter to the hard disk, so the hard disk cannot be found in Windows 10. At this point, you can choose the method 2 above to manually change the drive letter (you need to do it once every time you connect), or you can clear the hidden and no default drive letter attributes through the following steps (you only need to do it once), so that the system can automatically assign a drive letter to the mobile hard disk.
Step 1: Search for diskpart in the taskbar search box, right click on the search result and select Run as administrator.
Step 2: Then enter the following commands, and you need to press the (Enter) key every time you enter a command.
list disk List disks.
select disk 2 (2 indicates the disk number) Select the disk, which can be selected according to the capacity.
list part List the partitions.
select partition 4 (4 represents the partition number) to select a partition.
attributes volume Check disk partition attributes. Check the properties of (Hidden) and (No Default Drive Letter), where you can see that the (Hidden) property is (No), and the (No Default Drive Letter) property is (Yes).
Enter attribute volume clear NoDefaultDriveLetter to clear the attribute for (no default drive letter). If the (hidden) attribute is (Yes), you can also enter the (attributes volume clear hidden) command. After that, safely eject the hard disk, reconnect it to the computer, and open the file explorer to check whether the hard disk can be displayed normally.
If your WD My Passport drive is offline, it will also prevent the drive from appearing in File Explorer. You can set it online by following these steps:
Step 1: Keep the WD My Passport mobile hard drive connected to the computer, right-click Start and select Disk Management.
Step 2: Right-click on the WD My Passport removable drive, and then click Online.
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