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My passport is recognized in disk utility and that useless “SmartWare”, yet it’s not possible to mount it, or any other external drive. I was able to mount one MAC-Journaled formatted drive. Problem is, I’m also a student, and USBs pass around, getting & giving studying material, so I’m screwed all over. Suddenly, it stopped being recognized as Passport:E and now is recognized as Local Disk:E. It may have something to do with the USB cable connecting it, as it's difficult to connect it to the computer and if the wire is touched in the slightest way it disconnects, but when it is connected, as I said, it is not recognized as the same thing.
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Related Reddits. Special thanks for the CSS from its creators at:,! A friend came to me today looking to wipe his computer clean and reinstall everything from a backup.
Being that he uses a Mac, I suggested to him to use Time Machine. He already backed up his computer to an external hard drive, specifically a 2 TB WD My Passport for my Mac. I helped him connect that external hard drive to Time Machine.
I proceeded to restart the computer while holding cmd + R, as that is the way to reinstall. I selected reinstall from a time machine back up, and pressed continue, but no back up could be recognized. It kept on searching. I checked to see if my external hard drive would be recognized on his computer and it did. However, when I checked if his ext. Hard drive would work on my computer, nothing showed up.
Obviously it is a problem with the external hard drive. Any ideas on how to make the Mac recognize it when reinstalling or a work around to reinstall his backup? Hello sohcatoah!
Your friend backed up his Mac using Time Machine onto a 2TB WD My Passport? How is the external formatted?
Does another system successfully detect it? I would suggest you changing the cable on the external with a new one and trying it on a different system, according to its file system. If the drive works, try again with restoring the back up. Did you do the steps like explained in this article from the Apple Support page? Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac: CKWD. By “external formatted” I was referring to the file system that is on the external WD drive, on which the back up was created.:) For Mac OS X the usual file system is HFS +, but it could also be exFAT in this case. If the two Macs detect the drive correctly then the cable is definitely not the cause of the problem.
These would also mean the drive itself is also probably not at fault. If you doubt6 the drive, you could create the backup onto another drive and try with it. Which would mean that there is a setting or a path of actions that needs to be taken in order for the system to first recognize the external WD drive as “bootable” with OS X, and/or for the back up software to create the correct back up. At this point, I would also advise contacting Apple Support. Otherwise, I believe this article from the Support page on the Apple website should be able to help.
CKWD.
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Want to pay it forward? Consider donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation! They give you stickers! So my external hard drive is not being recognized regarding me not being able to access files on the drive itself. I do see that the computer recognized that it had been connected according to the the device manager and I do see the computer initially tries to install something when the drive is connected. The drive itself seems fine. I just bought it, so I don't think anything has happened to it.
I do want to say my GF did try to back up her computer through Time Machine on her Mac. Yes, I know that it had to be reformated for Mac use, but she did not and did not ask me about it and just started it. She said that she was asked to delete everyone on the drive by Time Machine and she selected yes so that might be the core issue here but I am not really sure how to get back the items that were lost. So far, I have googled to try to find the drive without the added difficulty of the time machine.
I have only seen the device manager and a yellow triangle thing and how to fix that. However, there is no yellow triangle and every cable I have used so far works on other devices. Besides the usual things to try like, try a new cable, turn the computer on and off, etc. I am at a lost here. Any help would be really appreciated.