In your case it should be labeled as something similar to WD passport ultra.

After more than an hour I came back and the drive showed up on my Mac again.

So somehow the problem got fixed.) I ran First Aid on Macs Disk Utility.

Problem: When I plug my WD Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive WDBBKD0040BBK-0A (with 2TB of family photos) into my MacBook Pro it has fast flashing of light and cant be mounted.

It can be read on a Windows laptop (after Windows automatically fixed an error).

How it broke: The WD Passport Ultra was plugged into my MacBook on battery.

I was not actively reading or writing to the external hard drive, but it did have a list of directories open (no individual photo files, but just the directory names).

Click Go on the top menu bar, then choose Utilities and open the Disk Utility application.

My Passport Won'T Show Up Mac OS Will Recognize

If the drive is not on the desktop or if Disk Utility is showing that the drive is formatted in a file system that is not recognized by the Mac OS, the drive can be formatted so the Mac OS will recognize it.

Ever since that my WD hard drive has the flashing problem and cant be mounted on my Mac.

I tried changing the Mac laptop, changing the USB cord, same problem.

It says that it detected an error and had the option of automatically fixing it.

I clicked Start and let it ran, but it didnt have a progress bar and just had a Cancel button.

After running for 3-5 minutes, my mom came in and unplugged the external hard drive forcefully (I yelled at her for doing that).

We tried plugging it into the Windows laptop again, and my files and photos could be read But it still cant be read on Mac and has the flashing problem.

Why is it like this What is broken How can I test what is broken Im asking because I have had accidentally unplugged other WD external hard drives without ejecting in the past while not writing data, like in this case, but the drives never broke.

What is up in this case Im curious if this is something that happens a lot or if its just a less durable hard drive I got.

Because Im at a point where WDs warranty can give me a new drive to replace it, or I can fix this drive myself.

My Passport Won'T Show Up Free Software Program

I have copied the photos out to a new drive on a Windows machine.) Because if it is something that happens with the same frequency in all drives, shouldnt I just fix it What is the best free software program on Windows that might potentially fix my problem Mac programs are good too if they can actually access it since my Mac cant even mount it.

As you have backed up the photos on the windows machine, you should try to use disk utility to fix your drive.

There might be a volume mounting error or a format error, which can be fixed by using a function in disk utility called first aid.

It should show up.

When it opens you should see a column on the left with all your disks listed there.

As you can see, this column has both internal and external drives listed there.

Be extremely careful, do not tamper with the internal drives.

Go over the list very carefully and select your external drive.

My Passport For Mac Won'T Show Up