External Hard Drive No Longer Works with Macbook

[bamabruin]

I have a 250gb WD Passport that used to work fine with the macbook, but now doesn't read, and makes a clicking sound. The weird part is the same drive still works fine with a PC. Could this is a USB Power issue on my macbook?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Yep, it could be a power issue. Do you have a USB Y-cable to connect to the two ports of your MacBook?
Have you tried an SMC reset yet?
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
It sometimes helped me recognising external HDDs.

 

[-tWv-]

Does the drive show up in Disk Utility?

If it works fine with the PC, it could be that your USB port is at fault. Try connecting it to every possible USB port on the Mac, it could be just an issue with one of them

troubleshoot clicking

 

[MacForScience]

I have a 250gb WD Passport that used to work fine with the macbook, but now doesn't read, and makes a clicking sound. The weird part is the same drive still works fine with a PC. Could this is a USB Power issue on my macbook?

What kind of clicking noise. Does it make it when connected to the PC?

Cheers

 

[bamabruin]

Thanks for all the responses. The issue (as always) turned out to be very simple - it was the cable, I was probably using a cable from an old cell phone, and with a different mini-usb cable it worked.

It's a little odd that the cable worked with a PC desktop, as it must have provided just enough power, but the Macbook couldn't give it enough juice and caused the click.

I hope I didn't cause any damage to the drive- on that note, has anyone used WD's RMA program? Is it worth doing this to get a new drive?