[FIXED] – WD My Passport External Hard Drive is Grayed Out in Mac

Written By Vishal
Approved By Rohit Arora
Updated on 11 Jul, 2024
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Summary: If your WD My Passport external hard drive is grayed out on a Mac, it could be due to logical errors, corrupted partition tables, bad sectors, or more. You can fix the problematic external drive by repairing it via the First Aid utility or reformatting it. Read this blog for more methods to fix this error.

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When selecting the right external hard drive for Mac, WD My Passport is a preferred choice for creating data backups. This is because of two major reasons: First, it is made a by a trusted brand, and second, it performs well under heavy read/write operations.

Recently, a strange issue is plaguing this external hard drive. Many Mac users have found their WD My Passport external hard drives to be grayed out when connected to their Mac systems. In some cases, the connected drive was not even listed in Disk Utility. Most likely, it could be a logical error with the external hard drive or some form of corruption preventing macOS from mounting the drive.

WD my passport external hard drive gray on mac

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is grayed out on Mac or not showing on the system, the data on will naturally become inaccessible. To access your data on it, you must resolve the underlying issues discussed ahead.

Why is the WD My Passport External Hard Drive Grayed out on Mac?

Upon digging deeper online, we found some possible reasons for your WD My Passport external hard drive to show up as Grayed out on Mac. These are –

Corrupt partition table
File system errors
Encryption errors
Faulty SATA cable
Bad sectors

Methods to Fix a Grayed-out WD My Passport External Hard Drive

As evident from the above list, most issues are logical and thus can be fixed using the built-in First Aid feature in Disk Utility. You may also try changing the SATA cables or plugging the external hard drive in another USB port. But if none of them works, then as a last resort, you can reformat the problematic WD My Passport external hard drive. Let’s look at these methods in detail.

Method 1: Run First Aid via Disk Utility

First Aid is a built-in feature of Disk Utility on every Mac system that allows users to find and repair errors with the disk drives. This utility can repair errors with external hard drives that are causing them to malfunction.

Disk utility can help you repair unmounted or grayed out WD My Passport external hard drive on your Mac. The steps are as follows –

Open Disk Utility.
Connect the problematic external hard drive with your Mac.
Select the WD My Passport external hard drive.
Click on the First Aid button at the top of the window.

use first aid to fix WD my passport external hard drive gray on mac

Let the disk repair process finish.
Once the disk repair process is over, click Done.

Method 2: Reformat the Problematic External Hard Drive

While the First Aid utility can fix many logical issues. There are times when the issues are beyond the scope of this utility. In this case, the only way to get rid of issues is to reformat the problematic hard drive.

But reformatting a hard drive erases all data and causes data loss.

That’s right. Reformatting a hard drive will erase all the data on the malfunctioning external hard drive. Hence, before proceeding with it, we will try to recover data from the grayed out WD My Passport HDD first.

For that, we will use Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac. This robust software can easily help us recover files from an unmounted or inaccessible external hard drive. Additionally, this software brings added features, such as a drive monitor for monitoring the health and vitals of connected disk drives and a functionality to recover data from unbootable Macs.

The steps to use this software are pretty simple –

Connect the problematic external hard drive to a Mac.
Download and install Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac from its official website.
Launch the software.
On the first screen, select the type of data you want to recover. Click Next.

use stellar data recovery for mac to recover data from a WD my passport external hard drive that is grayed out on mac

On the next screen, select the problematic drive. Click Scan.

use stellar data recovery professional for mac

Let the software scan the drive for any recoverable data. Once the scan is completed, preview the files to check them.
If satisfied with the results, press the Recover button to save the file(s) on the desired location/device.

Recover files from grayed out WD my passport external hard drive

Now that you have successfully recovered your data from the grayed-out WD My Passport external hard drive, it is time to reformat the drive. Follow the steps below –

Open Disk Utility and select the problematic external hard drive.
Click on the Erase button at the top of the window.

A window will appear.
Give the external hard drive a new name, select the format, and partitioning scheme. Click Erase.

Doing this will erase all the data, and you will have a fresh external hard drive to use.
Once the process is over, reconnect the drive with your Mac. The drive should be operational and visible at various locations on your Mac.

Conclusion

An external drive becoming inaccessible or unmountable on a Mac is a complex situation. An inaccessible drive connected to a Mac shows as a grayed-out drive. We understand how it feels to lose your data temporarily. But with the right methods, as discussed above, you can easily resolve the greyed-out problem of your WD My Passport external hard drive.

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About The Author

Vishal

Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.

26 comments

David Willy says:

April 11, 2022 at 9:44 am

Hi, I’m using MBA 2017 running on current macOS Monterey. I just finished the whole process and thankfully recovered all my data. Thanks!!

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  April 18, 2022 at 11:11 am
  
  Thanks for sharing the experience with us, David!
  
  Reply
Arnav Batra says:

November 20, 2020 at 2:37 pm

Hi, Just one more question, my MacBook has a 128GB SSD out of which less than half is left free. If the software detects recoverable data that is of more storage than the storage left on my MacBook, will it still be there for 2-3 days till I order a new WD Hard Drive to save that recovered data or I will have to scan my damaged hard drive again?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  November 25, 2020 at 6:39 am
  
  Hi Arnav, you don’t need to scan again because Stellar Data Recovery Professional for mac allows you to scan the drive and recover data whenever you want. You can keep the scan data and recover it after when you got a new hard drive. Thanks
  
  Reply
Jonny says:

July 17, 2019 at 9:54 pm

Hi there,
From reading one of the above comments I was going to try the “image from hard drive” settings. Can changing these settings be dangerous in terms of losing files? The settings under “Image from” say ..
Format: read-only
Encryption: none
Is that what should be selected?
Thanks
Jonny

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  July 24, 2019 at 11:37 am
  
  Hello Jonny,
  You can use our data recovery software in order to recover data from unmounted drives. You can try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac and perform “Can’t find volume” process in order to recover data from such conditions. Thanks
  
  Reply
  1. Arnav Batra says:
    
    November 20, 2020 at 2:32 pm
    
    Hi Vishal! My WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB fell from about a height of 3-4 feet and since then my MacBook is not able to detect it or any data of the drive. Also when I go to disk utility, the drive shows ‘not mounted’, and even after trying to mount it by clicking the ‘mount’ button it is not getting mounted. Also, in the bracket in front of the drive’s name, it says Journaled. I think the drive is physically damaged from the inside. Do you think the Stellar Data Recovery software can recover some files like photos and videos from the drive? Have you come across such cases where actually people got their data back from physically damaged drives by using this software?
  2. Vishal says:
    
    November 25, 2020 at 6:44 am
    
    Hi Arnab, if the drive is showing in disk utility then you can try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac. It will help you to recover data from that drive. One more thing if the drive is not showing and if you observed it has physical damage then take it to the nearest data recovery services center or you can contact our Technical Support Executive: Read More
Duke Pham says:

January 26, 2019 at 12:39 am

I have MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6, and I accidentally disconnect my external USB drive without eject it properly. After that I had the same issue. It shown up in Disk Utility but greyed out after connected it back. Could not eject it, could not remount, virtually could not do any thing. I tried all the solutions posted currently, none worked. Rebooted my Mac and tried connect the drive again, no helps. It was still greyed out in Disk Utility… and finally, on Disk Utility, I right click on the greed out External, and selected image from …, hit the cancel button on the popup, and all the sudden, it became alive…. Not sure what is going on here, but I did not have to erase the drive. Whew…

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  January 28, 2019 at 4:05 am
  
  Hello Duke,
  
  Good that your drive is back to life again. You can run the first-aid repair to further determine the integrity of the drive.
  
  Regards
  Vishal
  
  Reply
mark says:

August 6, 2018 at 1:42 am

Hi Vishal, judging by the blog it appears to have lent good results.
I dropped my passport and it now will not mount.
It lights up and appears to spin with-out any friction or clicking.
It recognizes the partions in light grey,i pushed mount and now reads disk 2s4 and so on.
I used your stellar recovery volume 0 lost volume.
Macpro high sierra 10.13.6.

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  August 7, 2018 at 3:10 am
  
  Hi Mark,
  
  Our support team will contact you. Thank You.
  
  Reply
Mary says:

July 10, 2018 at 6:13 am

Didn’t work for me. 3TB lost..

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  July 16, 2018 at 5:28 am
  
  Hello Mary,
  
  Hope you get the best solution from our support team.
  
  Reply
Luis Rogers says:

April 27, 2018 at 2:56 am

Being a photographer, I usually carry couple of WD My Passport drives. Recently the 2016 purchased drive was not mounting on the mac computer. Because it contains important client’s images, videos, the need of data recovery is must. Stellar restore all data from the inaccessible WD My Passport drive. Wow

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  April 27, 2018 at 3:14 am
  
  Hello Luis,
  
  Thanks for using Stellar Data Recovery Software.
  
  Reply
2. Mary says:
  
  July 9, 2018 at 7:05 pm
  
  Did you just download the trial to recover your data or did you buy this?
  
  Reply
  1. Vishal says:
    
    July 10, 2018 at 2:59 am
    
    Hi Mary,
    
    Thanks for your inquiry.
    
    The trial version of the software allows you to preview all the recoverable data such as photos, videos, docs, emails, audio files. To save the data you need to register the software.
    
    Hope this helps.
    
    Regards
    Vishal
Andy says:

March 18, 2018 at 8:32 am

Hi there,
I’m trying to use a brand new WD drive for my mac, which is running High Sierra 10.13.3, and I’m realizing I bought the drive formatted for Windows. I’m having a very hard time trying to get this drive reformatted for Mac. I’ve been searching forums but to no avail.

When in Disk Utility, on the left, this drive is now called “disk3s1”. At the top of Disk Utility, underneath this title it says: “USB External Physical Volume – MS-DOS (FAT)”. I am struggling to get this drive converted for a mac now. Erasing, Partitioning, First Aid, Mount have all run into errors. Do you have a simple step by step of how to fix this?

Like I said, I haven’t even used this drive yet and I’m running into problems already. 🙁

Thank you in advance for any help.

Andy

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  March 23, 2018 at 3:29 am
  
  Hello Andy,
  
  Thanks for contacting Stellar Data Recovery
  
  We recommend to refer the below link for formatting a hard drive via terminal.app
  Link: http://www.smallbusiness.chron.com/format-os-x-terminal-hard-disk-57815.html
  
  Reply
Stinky10 says:

February 20, 2018 at 10:39 am

Thank you Very much, it worked, perfectly!!

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  February 21, 2018 at 4:48 am
  
  Hello Stinky10,
  
  Thanks for your feedback
  
  Reply
Will says:

December 11, 2017 at 11:20 pm

I’ve followed all these steps but once I’ve erased my drive it isn’t remounting again and I just get an error message?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  December 21, 2017 at 5:19 am
  
  Hello Will,
  
  In Disk Utility select your WD and press Mount key. IF this works then you WD will remount. Else, try connecting your WD to another Mac.
  Please share the results with us.
  
  Reply