My Passport not recognized by PC

Grotug

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Mar 14, 2008
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I am having difficulty getting my WD My Passport 1TB removable disk drive to show up in My Computer. The drive works fine on my Macbook Pro but won't show up on my Dell Dimension XPS (circa 2008) w/Windows 7 Pro (just updated).

All drivers are up to date and usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf files are in my C:\windows\inf folder. My Passport and WD SES Device both show up in Device Manager and seem to be in good working order, but My Passport does not show up in My Computer.

The drive's part number is: WDBBEP0010BBK

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
Solution
Hey there, Grotug.

@rgd1101 is exactly right. If the drive is formatted for Mac OS X, it probably uses the HFS+ file system, which is not supported by Windows, which leads to this problem. In order to be able to use it by both Mac OS X and Windows, you should reformat it with the exFAT file system, which is fully supported natively by both operating system (Mac OS X and Windows). Note that reformatting a hard drive is data destructive and you should backup any important data, which you can't afford to lose before you start this process.
In case you want to format it with the exFAT file system, here's how to do it: How to format a WD external hard drive in exFAT or FAT32

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
Hey there, Grotug.

@rgd1101 is exactly right. If the drive is formatted for Mac OS X, it probably uses the HFS+ file system, which is not supported by Windows, which leads to this problem. In order to be able to use it by both Mac OS X and Windows, you should reformat it with the exFAT file system, which is fully supported natively by both operating system (Mac OS X and Windows). Note that reformatting a hard drive is data destructive and you should backup any important data, which you can't afford to lose before you start this process.
In case you want to format it with the exFAT file system, here's how to do it: How to format a WD external hard drive in exFAT or FAT32

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
 
Solution
Thanks guys! I shoulda thought of that! Thank you for the detailed reply Boogieman_WD. I really appreciate it! Looking at the drive's properties I see that its format is "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." Thanks again!