WD Passport Essential not recognized on pc after using it on Mac

I was using a Macbook pro laptop since many years and recently have switched to Acer Aspire. This new laptop has Windows 7 operating system. I don’t have any problems with the operating system. I also have a WD Passport Essential (USB 3.0) and have some very important files in it which I want to transfer into my new Laptop. But my hard drive is not recognized by the windows 7 operating system. I am unable to use my WD Passport with the Windows operating system. It was working fine on Mac system.

It happens sometimes that when the operating system is changed the Hard disk is not recognized, but you don’t have to panic it can be resolved. Just follow this steps and see if it helps you or not. Connect your hard drive and Open the “Administrative tools” from the control panel and select the “Computer Management”. Click on Disk management and search over there if you can find your external drive over there. If it is present over there, then it might be a case that it doesn’t have a Drive letter assigned to it. If you are unable to find it over there then click on “Actions” from the menu bar, click on “Rescan Disks” and it should show after this. It is necessary to assign a Drive letter always.

Check if you have attached any extra device, you can even try to attach the external hard drive to some different USB port and check if it is recognized. If the problem is still present then you will have to make changes in some settings. Just follow some steps and check if you are able to detect your WD passport. Connect the external hard drive and wait for some time. If it does not gets detected then go to ”My Computer” and then click on “Organize”. Then go to “Folder and search Options”. Here you can see a different tab. Click on View tab and search for Hide empty drives in the Computer folder. Check now you see that or not.

Sometimes the external hard drives are not detected by the Windows 7 operating system due to the Lower filter value and Upper Filter value for USB devices. In such circumstances you have to delete this Filter values so that your USB devices is detected easily. For deleting this filters go to the Registry by typing “regedit” in the search option without the quotes. Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE under this search for “SYSTEM” in the system look for “CurrentControlSet” after this “Control” and after that “Class” now here you will see lots of keys. You have to look for the key with the name { 36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}. Once you find this key just right Click on this key entry and choose “Export”, in the “Save in” box select “Desktop” and type “backup” in the “File Name” and now save these settings. Now right click the key and from values select “delete” to delete the “Lower filters” and “Upper filters” value. Once you are done this restart the computer and check now whether the WD passport is now detected or not. In most of the cases the problem is due to the keys so just try it and I am sure it will definitely help you in some or the other way.

Hi, I am a 2nd Year engineering student and I am using a Dell laptop with Windows 7 operating system installed on it. I have an elder brother who lives in Bangalore as he is working as a “Web developer” in a MNC. He is using an Apple laptop I don’t know the model name or number but it is an Apple product. I am not sure what model it is. He recently sent me a WD passport drive and I am also facing the same problem that it is not getting detected on my Windows 7 Operating system. I had a word with my brother and he said that he was using the passport before me so now I am unable to understand what to do. Tried one of the above mentioned solution but nothing seems to work so is there any better solution for this or that’s it.

Hey friends first of all just get out of this misconception that you can’t use the passport on your systems. No manufacturer will make a product which works only for one operating system and not for other. The drive shows compatibility for both the operating systems and issue is with the file system. Every file system is not compatible with every operating system. As the external WD passport essential was initially running on Mac then the WD Passport might have been formatted in HFS or HFS+ file system. Now as you are trying to connect the same passport to the Windows Operating it will definitely not detected as Windows does not recognize or support HFS file system. It will be formatted in the NTFS file system which will be detected on all the Windows systems but not on any Mac Operating system as Mac does not recognize or NTFS file system. You will have to format the external drive in Fat32 file system so that you can use the drive on both the operating systems i.e. Windows and Mac OS. Hope this solution will give you a complete Idea about the existence of your problem and a solution to that.

Thanks for the reply, I have finally understood what was the problem but can you please suggest some other solution as you said the problem is with the file system means. I will need to format my WD passport with the help of the Mac OS to the Fat32 file system. This again seems to be a problem to me as I am not using a Macbook now and I don’t have any Mac system with me right now. Secondly my passport contains many important documents as I have mentioned earlier so I can’t format my system. Even I came to know that using Fat32 file system I’ll be able to back up only 4 GB of data not more than that, any data greater than 4 GB will have a risk of data corruption. So please suggest some any other solution if possible or if available.

Yes there is a different solution available for this issue and trust me it does work very fine without making any changes to your passport. Just download the HFSExplorer. It’s an application which reads all Mac formatted hard disks on the Windows operating system. HFSExplorer program is written in Java and some Windows specific part written in C so that it gets access to the raw block devices. It is very easy to install and use this application. Download the software and install it once you have installed the software two shortcuts of HFSExplorer will be made in the start menu folder. One will be in User Account Mode and other will be in Administrative mode. If you are willing to access the partition of the disk then you should always use the HFSExplorer in Administrative mode.