- WD My Passport Does Not Show up due to Virus Attack. As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. However, sometimes, virus infection might corrupt the file system of WD my passport external hard drive and make it not show up when you connect the external to your computer.
- By default, it doesn’t display due to the setting not show external disks may be enabled. Open a Finder window. Select Preferences and the General tab. Make sure the box next to the External disks is checked. If the box is checked, move on to fix the external hard drive not showing up on Mac. Mount the Drive in Finder.
- External Hard Drive (3)- WD Easystore 2TB Portable HDD (Part 3)- Not Showing Up In My ComputerWD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive https://amzn.to/2L.
Hello Chris.Please can you contact me.My WD drive dropped on the floor and i have not been able to access anything inside of it.It shows LED light when connected.It doesnt show in 'My Computer' but it makes clicking sounds for about 5seconds and in Computer Management it shows as Disk1 and says 'Disk not Initialized'.
Summary :
WD Easystore and My Passport are two hard drives from Western Digital. Which one should you buy to use? This post focuses on WD Easystore vs My Passport and you can know the difference between them, as well as which is better for you to choose. Now, let’s go to see the detailed guide.
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As for computer storage, hard drives, SD cards, USB flash drives, and more are common storage devices. To store some large files including documents, music files, photos, videos, etc., hard drives are good options. Usually, you use portable hard drives to store some important data for backup to keep it safe.
If you are WD users, you may don’t know use which one, WD Easystore or My Passport. Today, we will introduce you to some information on WD Easystore vs My Passport and you can know the answer from this post on the MiniTool website.
Overview of WD Easystore and My Passport
Before introducing something on WD Easystore vs My Passport, let’s see an overview of these two hard drives.
WD Easystore
Easystore is an easy, portable backup and storage device that provides plenty of storage space for storing documents, photos, music, and more. It offers up to 5TB capacity (plenty of storage space).
It is equipped with WD Backup and WD Discovery. It offers an easy-to-use connection to devices and it is backward-compatible with USB 2.0 for simple connection to your computer.
WD My Passport
WD My Passport is a trusted and portable hard drive that can store, organize, and share your music, photos, videos, and documents. It also comes with WD Backup and WD Recovery. Password protection with hardware encryption is supported by this portable disk to keep your data safe. Also, it is USB 2.0 compatible.
Western Digital has announced the travel SSD – My Passport Go SSD. And this post will show some specifications of this My Passport Go SSD.
WD Easystore VS My Passport: Similarities
After having a direct impression of these two portable hard drives, you may find they have some similarities.
Capacity
Each hard drive can offer up to 5TB of storage capacity. It is hard to imagine what you can store on the drive. Perhaps 1250000 music files, 1 million pictures, or 600 hours of HD movies, can be saved on the hard drive. Of course, this may vary based on the file format and size.
USB Connectivity
Both of the hard drives support USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. The average transfer speeds for USB 3.0 and 2.0 are respectively 625MB/s and 60MB/s.
WD Software
Reformatting Wd Easystore
WD Easystore and My Passport come with WD Backup and WD Recovery. WD Backup allows you to automatically back up your files by setting the schedule, for example, hourly, daily, or monthly.
WD Recovery allows you to connect to popular social media and cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Facebook. And you can seamlessly import, organize, and share your documents, videos, and photos to the hard drive for backup. Besides, you can manage your drive, for example, reformatting, LED control, and more.
Power Supply
Also, both of them support a USB power supply. That is, you can directly connect them to your computer via a USB cable.
WD Easystore VS WD My Passport: What’s Difference
In this part, we will show you 4 major differences – appearance, password protection, compatibility, and value for money.
WD Easystore VS My Passport Appearance
Generally, hard drives look very similar – a small box with USB ports. Usually, most disks are black but some brands offer different colors based on the hard drive models.
WD Easystore
This hard drive only has a color – black. And its dimensions are 4.33' x 3.21' x 0.62' – a bit large and heavy (about 8.2 ounces).
WD Passport
This portable hard drive comes in 4 different colors including black, blue, red, and white. This indicates that you can easily distinguish your disks if it is going to be your second drive.
As for the surface of this hard drive, half is smooth and the other half has small ridges. Its dimensions are 4.22' x 2.95' x 0.44' and it weighs about 7.4 ounces. It is small enough so that you can put it in your hand.
In conclusion, as for My Passport vs Easystore in appearance, My Passport is a winner.
WD Easystore vs Passport: Password Protection
Today making sure data security is an important thing especially when you need to store your significant personal files and documents on an external hard drive. This is because files always are lost or deleted accidentally due to mistaken operations, theft, etc. If your hard drive offers password protection, your vital data can be protected to a certain degree.
Related article: 5 Operations to Keep Your Digital Data Secure Effectively
WD My Passport allows you to set up your own password with password protection. Most importantly, the hard drive comes with +256bit AES hardware encryption, which protects your data safety in a better way.
Unfortunately, WD Easystore doesn’t support password protection or hardware encryption. In this aspect, My Passport is also a winner.
WD Easystore VS My Passport: Compatibility
When choosing a portable hard drive, the compatibility issue should be what you should consider. That is, you should know which operating system the drive can be used in.
WD Easystore can be used in Windows 10/8/7 and macOS while WD My Passport is only compatible with Windows 10/8/7. But now Western Digital has released My Passport for Mac (with 3 capacities – 2, 4, 5TB).
It can be seen that WD Easystore wins My Passport in compatibility.
WD Easystore VS Passport: Value for Money
Price is another important factor you should take into account. When comparing these two portable hard drives, which one has a high-performance cost ratio? Let’s see an analysis.
WD My Passport offers 4 capacities, for example, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB. The prices are reasonable and are respectively $59.99, $69.99, $114.99, and $119.99 on the website shop.westerndigital.com, sitting towards the lower end of average. It provides a 3-year limited warranty.
While WD Easystore has 5 capacities – 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 5TB. The prices are less than My Passport and the warranty is 2 years.
In this aspect, WD Easystore is more economic.
My Passport VS Easystore: Which One Is Better?
After having an understanding of Western Digital Easystore and My Passport, here comes a question: which one is better for you to choose?
WD Easystore is a winner in compatibility and value for money while My Passport wins in appearance and password protection.
To be specific, if you are using a Mac, you can choose WD Easystore or use WD My Passport for Mac. If you need to store any type of personal information including financial papers, medical documents, contracts, etc. and worry about security, WD My Passport is a good choice since you can use password protection and hardware encryption.
All in all, in our opinion, WD My Passport is a better option since it is compact & lightweight and the colors can help you distinguish it from other drives. Besides, password protection is an important factor.
But WD Easystore is also an excellent hard drive with large capacity and reasonable prices. Just choose one based on your actual situations.
How to Back up Data to WD Easystore or My Passport
As mentioned above, WD Backup is an automatic software for Windows 10/8/7/Vista to back up your files to a Western Digital hard drive for data protection. So, you may wonder about how to do this work.
Step 1: You can run this backup software that comes with your hard drive. Or go to download WD Backup from the official website, unzip the file and click the .exe file to install. Then, run it on your computer.
Step 2: If there is a created backup, click Back up Files to start.
Wd Easystore Not Showing Up On Mac Os
Step 3: Choose your WD hard drive, WD Easystore or My Passport as the backup destination and click Next.
Step 4: You can see the default setup. To change the backup schedule (hourly), click Edit Schedule to automatically back up files daily or monthly.
To change the backup source (By default, this software will back up the files and folder for the User who is signed in to the computer), click Edit Files to go to choose what you want to back up.
Wd Easystore Not Showing Up On Mac Software
Step 5: Click Start Backup to back up your files.
This backup software can only be used to back up your important files. If you need to back up the Windows system, it cannot help. Besides, according to users, WD Backup often fails to work.
Related article:What to Do If WD Backup Is Not Working Windows 10/8.1/7
To backup up your computer well to WD Easystore or WD My Passport, we recommend using a professional and third-party free backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
Use MiniTool ShadowMaker to Back up Your Computer
MiniTool ShadowMaker is designed to back up your files or folders automatically, create a system image, backup disks, and partitions. Besides, you can use this software to clone disk to another hard drive and sync files to other locations.
Also, you can create a bootable drive with MiniTool Media Builder. Once the system cannot boot, you can run the PC from the drive and perform a recovery via the created image backup.
How to use MinTool ShadowMaker to back up your files or system? Just get it and follow the guide below.
Step 1: Launch the backup software to its main interface.
Step 2: Navigate to the Backup window, you can find MiniTool ShadowMaker will back up the Windows operating system by default. If you want to back up files, choose Source > Folders and Files and then choose files you want to back up.
Step 3: Then, choose your WD hard drive as the storage path.
Step 4: To back up files automatically, click Schedule to make a setting. You can back up data daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
Step 5: Click Back up Now to start the backup immediately.
Want to create automatic file backups in Windows 10? This post shows you how to automatically back up files to an external hard drive with ease.
Bottom Line
WD Easystore vs My Passport: which one is better or which one should you choose? After reading this post, you know some similarities and differences between these two portable hard drives and know which one is your good choice.
Besides, you can use the built-in WD Backup software to back up files for data protection. Also, an alternative to WD Backup – MiniTool ShadowMaker can back up the computer well.
If you have any suggestions for these two hard drives or questions about computer backup, you can contact us by leaving a comment below or sending an email to [email protected].
WD Easystore vs My Passport FAQ
'I have a WD My Passport external which is not recognized on Mac, but I have stored many files on this external HDD. So can anybody tell me how to recover data from an unreadable external hard drive for Mac? I have some important excel files on this external, so I would appreciate it very much if anybody can recommend useful excel recovery software.'
WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows PC for data transferring or backup. If a WD My Passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, you had better make it clear if the problem is caused by external HDD error or Mac OS crash.
Windows? -> [5 fixes] how to fix wd usb disk not showing up on Windows 10
Here are 4 fixes for you on MAC for fixing the wd disk not showing up problem.
#1 - Try it on another mac machine
You can connect the WD My Passport to another computer to see if it can work normally. Once you are sure that the WD My Passport is corrupted and becomes inaccessible, you had better stop performing any further data writing to this external.
#2 - Recovering files from WD My Passport that Is Not Readable on Mac
For an unreadable external hard drive data recovery, you need to rely on a professional data recovery program. Free mac data recovery tool such as Lazesoft Data Recovery for mac is a good solution for data recovery from any storage media including WD My Passport when it is not detected by Mac OS or other PC.
Also read: 5 free file recovery software for mac
Option: Recovering data from wd external hard disk with free data recovery software on Windows 10 - iCare Data Recovery Free.
#3 - Fix WD My Passport Not Showing UP on MAC with Disk Utility
Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac
#4 - Check Finder preference
Check wether the disk is selected under finder preference under General, and Sidebar.
Also read: 5 free ways to repair usb disk on mac
Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work on Mac
Everybody knows that the most important thing is to restore all lost data when a WD My Passport drive is not recognized on Mac, but many people still like to know the reasons why an external hard drive stops working on Mac. Here are some possible reasons:
- WD My Passport external contains too many bad sectors
- The WD My Passport is infected with virus or Trojan
- WD My Passport portable HDD file system is corrupted
- WD my passport external hard disk is formatted wrong or needs updated drivers
- More other reasons
Solution When WD My Passport Is Not Recognized due to Incompatibility issue
An external hard drive might not show up on a computer when it is formatted improperly. As you know, when you buy a new external hard drive, it usually has FAT32 or NTFS file system. Both of file systems are able to be recognized by Windows OS, but it might become unreadable when you plug an external hard drive that has FAT32 or NTFS file system to a Mac computer. Therefore, if a WD my passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, but it is able to be compatible with Windows OS, you only need to format it to HFS+ file system which is able to be recognized by Mac OS.
WD My Passport Does Not Show up due to Virus Attack
As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. However, sometimes, virus infection might corrupt the file system of WD my passport external hard drive and make it not show up when you connect the external to your computer. In this situation, you can recover all inaccessible data at first and then you can run antivirus software to scan the external hard drive and finally format the external into proper format.
WD My Passport External Is Recognized on Mac but becomes Inaccessible
Another situation is that the WD my passport portable hard drive can show up on Mac OS when you plug it to your computer, but the problem is that you are unable to access any data stored on this disk. In this situation, you can also check whether the external hard drive file system is compatible with Mac OS. If WD my passport external HDD has unknown file system, you can use iCare Data Recovery to recover files from inaccessible drive and then try to format the WD my passport external hard drive to HFS+ file system. If you want to use your external hard drive in Windows PC, you can connect it to a Windows PC and format RAW to NTFS file system.
Wd Easystore Not Showing Up On Mac Desktop
It does not matter why a WD My Passport external HDD is not recognized, you have chance to recover files from WD portable hard drive which is not detecting as long as it is not physically damaged or overwritten.
Last updated on Aug 30, 2021
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