Western Digital Elements Software Mac
Jul 15, 2020 We don’t have the possibility of encrypting it by hardware, but we can use a software solution. This is the basic disk drive from Western Digital and all the focus is in the price/GB. Pricing and in-store availability. The WD Elements Desktop 12TB external hard drive can be purchased at Amazon only for $175.49 including shipping. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Western Digital Elements is a great option if you want lots of storage on the cheap, and can live with some pretty mediocre speeds. However, if you have money to spend, there are better options.
Summary :
Western Digital has announced a series of new hard drive and it is the Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive. Can you hack a network that has mac filtering. This new WD Elements Desktop hard drive comes in large hard drive capacity. This post will show more specifications of the WD Elements desktop HDD.
The Introduction of Western Digital Elements Desktop Hard Drive
Western Digital is a famous manufacturer around the world which has researched and developed a lot of storage devices such as external hard drives, USB drives, solid-state drives, flash memory and so on.
And recently, Western Digital has announced a series of new hard drives and they are the Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive. In the following part, we will show some specifications of this WD Elements desktop HDD.
First of all, let’s look at the hard drive capacity of this Western Digital Elements Desktop hard drive. It comes in 6 different hard drive capacities which respectively are 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB and 10 TB. With these large capacities, Western Digital Elements Desktop hard drives enable users to save a lot of files and data, making it easy for you to save all of your important photos, music, video and files. The dimension of this WD Elements desktop is 48 x135 x165.8 mm.
Secondly, we will talk about the performance of this WD Elements desktop hard drive. It is a pity that the performance of this hard drive is not available now and this Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive can’t be as fast as the SSD. But this WD Elements desktop HDD provides a large hard drive capacity. And the performance of this WD HDD may vary due to the hard drive capacity.
Good Reliability and Compatibility
Although the performance of this Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive is not as fast as the solid-state drives, this WD HDD provides good reliability and compatibility.
Since all of your data is important to you, the Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive provides good durability, shock tolerance, and long-term reliability. So it can provide good protection for your data and the hard drive.
On top of that, you can also choose to back up the whole hard drive to keep your data safe.
WD backup software helps back up files to keep data safe but cannot backup the whole hard drive. This post shows you a WD backup software alternative.
This interfaces of this Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive USB is the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. Therefore, with this single drive, you can get compatibility with the latest USB 3.0 devices and backward compatibility with USB 2.0 devices as well.
Of course, this Western Digital Elements desktop hard drive is preformatted as the NTFS. It is compatible with Windows 10/8/7. If can be used in the Mac OS as long as you format it to the required file system. But you need to know that the compatibility may vary depending on users’ hardware configuration and the operating system.
Want to format an external hard drive for Mac and Windows PC? This post will show specific methods to make external hard drive compatible with Mac and PC.
The price of this WD Elements desktop HDD also varies depending on the hard drive capacity. According to Western Digital, the price of the 10TB is about $299.99.
Final Words
From above information, you can find that Western Digital has announced a kind of new hard drive which provides large hard drive capacity reaching up to 10TB. On the other hand, it provides good reliability so as to keep data safe and also provides good compatibility.
Summary: This post shows how to access a WD hard drive when it's not recognized by Mac. To fix WD external hard drive not recognizing error without data loss, you can recover lost data from the unrecognized hard drive for free with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Just like Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac, Western Digital hard drive not recognized on Mac is another frequently asked question in Apple related forums.
So, if you are wondering:
- Why is the Mac not recognizing my WD hard drive?
- How can I make the unrecognized WD hard drive work on Mac again?
- Can I fix this issue without losing my important data?
You are in the right place for a solution!
How Mac recognizes a WD external hard drive?
The process of Mac recognizing an external hard drive is a little complicated even though you can't see it. Specifically, when you plug a WD hard drive into a Mac computer, macOS would be notified. Then macOS will call all related hardware and software to read, recognize, and show this hard drive on the Desktop and in Finder, so that finally you can access your data on the drive on your Mac computer.
So, we usually simplify this process in 4 steps:
- The WD hard drive is supplied with power.
- macOS reads partition information of the WD hard drive.
- macOS recognizes the file system of each volume.
- Users access data on the WD hard drive.
However, if any part of this process goes wrong, Mac won't recognize your WD hard drive. As a consequence, you can't access, copy, write to or transfer data stored on it.
Guide to Fix Mac not recognizing WD hard drive
So, based on the process of Mac recognizing a WD hard drive, we need a thorough check to know which part makes the WD hard drive not working on Mac, and then fix it in the following part.
Quick fixes of WD hard drive not recognized on Mac error
A proper connection is the most basic condition that Mac can access the WD hard drive. Or else the external hard drive would not even show up in Disk Utility. When your Mac can't recognize an external hard drive, you can always do the following quick fixes at the very beginning.
- Make sure the WD hard drive is externally plugged into a wall outlet if it's a WD desktop hard drive like WD Elements Desktop and My Cloud.
- Connect the WD hard drive USB cable directly to the computer and do not use a USB Hub.
- Try a different USB cable and port for power and data supply, especially if the My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility.
- Try a different USB-C adapter to connect the WD hard drive if your Mac only has the Thunderbolt 3 port.
- Try to connect the WD hard drive with a different Mac computer to check if the WD hard drive can be recognized on that Mac.
- Try to plug the WD hard drive in to a PC to check if the file system of the WD hard drive is not compatible with Mac.
The WD hard drive lights on but is not recognized by Mac still? Wait! Do you allow your Mac to show the recognized WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop?
Show the WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop
Sometimes, you think WD hard drive is not recognized by Mac because the WD external hard drive isn't showing up in Finder or on the desktop. However, the fact is that the WD hard drive is detected by macOS and it is not set to show up on Mac.
In this case, you can show the WD hard drive by changing the settings:
Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General, make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. This will make the WD hard drive show up on the Desktop.
Step 2: Select Sidebar tab on the top, make sure the 'External disks' option under Locations is also ticked.
The WD hard drive is not working on Mac still?
Well, it seems that Mac really can't recognize the WD hard drive. We need to take advantage of some tools for further check.
Update incompatible WD Apps with WD Discovery
Western Digital has multiple self-developed software, including WD Drive Utilities for Mac, WD Discovery for Mac, and WD Security for Mac. Possibly, your Mac doesn't recognize the WD hard drive because the WD software is not compatible with your macOS.
In this situation, you can simply update those WD programs through WD discovery.
Check if the WD hard drive is password locked
If you are using WD hard drives like My Book Drive and it is not recognized by Mac now, you can check if the hard drive is password protected. It's because macOS won't read the partition information and mount the volumes if the WD hard drive is password locked.
Western Digital Elements Software Mac Download
You can download and install WD discovery to unlock the WD hard drive if a password has been set to protect the hard drive.
The WD hard drive is not encrypted? Then the reason for Mac not recognizing the WD hard drive is that macOS fails to access the partition and file system information.
Repair the unrecognized WD hard drive in Disk Utility
Disk Utility is a built-in disk management and repair tool on Mac computers. When a WD hard drive is not recognized or not working due to inner disk errors, you can try to repair the unrecognizable WD hard drive with Disk Utility.
Tips: Before you try to repair the WD hard drive in Disk Utility, if the WD hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but not mounted, you can select the Mount option first then the WD hard drive will be mounted on the Desktop.
Step 1: Go to Applications > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Click 'View' and choose 'Show All Devices'.
Step 3: Select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.
Step 4: Click on First Aid on the top. Wait while First Aid verifying and fixing possible errors of the WD hard drive.
If First Aid can't repair the WD hard drive, or Disk Utility doesn't recognize the volumes of the drive, probably, the WD hard drive could be corrupted caused by bad sectors.
Use WD Drive Utilities when WD hard drives not working on Mac
If a WD hard drive won't work normally on a Mac due to bad sectors or other parameter errors, you can use WD Drive Utilities for Mac to have a diagnosis what happens to your hard drive. It's because WD Drive Utilities is a specialized utility for WD hard drives to check for potential drive failures, slow disk performance, and bad sectors.
Step 1: Install WD Drive Utilities on your Mac and then launch it.
Step 2: Plug the unrecognizable WD hard drive into the Mac.
Step 3: Click on 'Diagnose' and choose 'Run Quick Drive Test' to check the WD drive completely.
Fix the unrecognized WD hard drive by reformatting
If the unrecognizable WD hard drive can't be repaired by WD Drive Utilities, the file system of the WD hard drive might be seriously damaged or corrupted. In this case, you have to reformat or erase this WD hard drive. Before that, it's necessary to recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with free hard drive data recovery software for Mac, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, to avoid data loss.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is professional in external hard drive data recovery on Mac. It supports Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, and hard drives of other manufacturers. This data recovery software can recover lost data when hard drive is unrecognized, unmountable, unreadable, corrupted on Mac. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can recover lost data from Macintosh hard drive, USB drives, Pen drives, SD cards, memory cards, CF cards as well as other storage devices.
Tutorial to recover lost data from unrecognizable WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac and reformatting
Step 1: Recover lost data from unrecognized WD hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
To recover your important photos, videos, music, documents, emails from this unrecognizable WD hard drive, you can free download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac.
2. Scan for lost data on the WD hard drive.
When the data recovery software is launched, you will see your unrecognizable WD hard drive in the interface. You need to select this corrupted WD hard drive and then click the 'Scan' button to scan for data on this drive.
3. Preview and recover files.
When WD hard drive is corrupted, you can't access your data on this drive. But you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to preview the data on the drive, which will help you make sure your files are not corrupted before you finally click 'Recover' to recover them.
Step 2: Fix WD hard drive not recognized error by reformatting.
Western Digital Mac Software
1. Go to Disk Utility and select the unrecognized WD hard drive from the sidebar.
2. Click on Erase on the top.
3. Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process.
After reformatting WD hard drive process finished, you will hopefully see the WD hard drive recognized and showing up on Mac correctly.
However, if the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility at all, the great chance is that the WD hard drive is physically broken. As a result, Mac can't read and recognize it. In this case, we advise you to check if the serial number of the WD hard drive is still in warranty so that you can ask for a repair or replacement service.
WD provides no-limited warranty unless your WD hard drive was purchased from an authorized distributor or authorized reseller like Amazon. So, if your WD hard drive is dead for disk corruption, please free free to contact their support team for warranty status review and product replacement.
Conclusion
Whenever a WD hard drive being unrecognized on Mac, data rescue should come first. After recovering data from the unrecognized hard drive with free data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, you can then try to fix the error in different ways without worrying about data loss. Besides, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac also helps recovering data when USB flash drives, Toshiba external hard drives, or other external hard drives that are not showing up on Mac.