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NEW WD Elements External hard drive won't mount

Royal Menace

Royal Menace

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Just bought the WD Elements external Hard drive, plugged it in... and it won't mount on my G4!

😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

-Checked all USB ports
-Doesn't show up in Disk Utility or System Profiler

Searched so many forums but found nothing! Please Help!
 
Royal Menace said:
Just bought the WD Elements external Hard drive, plugged it in... and it won't mount on my G4!

😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

-Checked all USB ports
-Doesn't show up in Disk Utility or System Profiler

Searched so many forums but found nothing! Please Help!
Click to expand...

Wow, all those faces really conveys how dire the situation is!

Have you made sure that any power adapter, if necessary, is plugged in? Is there a physical power switch on the drive? Does the drive turn on, but, just not mount? Have you tried it on a different computer?

Failing all this, the drive is a dud and should be returned for a replacement. But, thoroughly check all of the simple things first - you may have missed something.
 
I remember reading about how WD Elements HDD had some problems with Mac OS X.

Try plugging the drive into another non-mac computer and see if it works.
 
If that's the problem, WD should be ashamed of itself. Again, if that's the issue, take it back and get a new one. Actually, do that anyway. It's not worth the headache.
 
Never expected such a quick responds!

It's a portable unit so it has no power adaptor and no switch. I have no PCs to try it on cos friends and family only have macs but I did try it on a G5 and it worked!

I have a sneaking suspicion that it could be my very poor heath of my notebook battery and the computer just doesn't have enough power... Would I be right?
 
Royal Menace said:
Never expected such a quick responds!

It's a portable unit so it has no power adaptor and no switch. I have no PCs to try it on cos friends and family only have macs but I did try it on a G5 and it worked!

I have a sneaking suspicion that it could be my very poor heath of my notebook battery and the computer just doesn't have enough power... Would I be right?
Click to expand...

Not exactly a battery issue, but partially right about the power most likely. In the documentation that comes with the drives, WD does note that to use the drives with some laptops, a "Y" USB cable is required to hook it to 2 USB ports to provide adequate power. They note that if it is an issue you can contact them and they will send you the "Y" cable at no charge, so that is likely the issue- particularly since you were able to mount it fine on a G5 indicating that the drive itself is OK.
 
sickmacdoc said:
Not exactly a battery issue, but partially right about the power most likely. In the documentation that comes with the drives, WD does note that to use the drives with some laptops, a "Y" USB cable is required to hook it to 2 USB ports to provide adequate power. They note that if it is an issue you can contact them and they will send you the "Y" cable at no charge, so that is likely the issue- particularly since you were able to mount it fine on a G5 indicating that the drive itself is OK.
Click to expand...

I was about to say that the documentation says nothing power of the USB but it's there... in the most minuet writing! Thanks for that!

I've contacted WD but I would love to know if WD is actually a good choice, I think it is but a friend suggested Maxtor, and I'm not so sure!
 
Western Digital (WD) and Seagate are the two biggest hard drive manufacturers. Yes, I would say either one is a good choice and both should stand behind their products.
 
I've been using Seagate and Western Digital drives for many years. Never had any problems with them. They keep the customers happy, that's all that counts 😀

Infact, I'm using a Western Digital 7200RPM 320GB HDD in my MacBook right now.
 
*SOLVED* Western Digital external HD won't mount on mac

This worked for me guys. I was ready to pull my hair out. I have a mybook essential edition 750gb HD that just one day disappeared from my macbook pro finder window. The drive would spin up, and the light would come on when plugged in, but it would not mount. Its formatted for the mac, so it wouldn't show on windows either, even with macdrive. In desperation, I finally went to the WD website (probably shoulda looked here first eh?) and downloaded WD Macintosh+TURBO drivers and walla! everything is working perfectly! hope this works for you as well as it did for me.
 
WD Elements SE

Hey, I am the owner of a macbook pro and I recently purchased a WD Elements SE 1TB hard drive. It connected with the macbook properly and I have my back-up files on it... but I can't export my music library to it. Any ideas?
 
I have one as well. On the box is says that the drive has to be reformatted for Mac... It is pre-formatted for PC. I hope it helps.
 
WD External Hard Drives (USB)

Personally I have 3 WD Elements USB Drives 2 x 1.5TB an a 1TB… The 1TB I have been using for over a year and a half now, and been giving it a really hard time, and it's never faulted, and the 2 x 1.5TB over a year on both an there fine.

However I did find that when I upgraded to 10.6.8 I started having issues with trying to partition a drive, so I'm guessing it's possibly OS related.

All drives prior were formatted to Mac OS Extended Journal. If anyone is having an issue with there drive I suggest going back to where you bought it from as it is possibly a dud? WD Elements Drive's carry a 3year Guarantee anyway, which kind of says they are confident in there product, personally I cannot moan and I'm thrashing the drives big time with Video an Audio Editing…
 
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