Recover WD External Hard Drive Data on macOS Monterey

Query 1: Help, I’m in trouble. I lost my precious data from my Western Digital 2 TB external hard drive due to accidental formatting. Does there exist a solution through which I can recover my data from my WD external hard drive? Note: I am using MacBook Pro with macOS Monterey.

Query 2: Hello, my 2 TB WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive was not recognizable anymore when connected to my MacBook with macOS Monterey. The drive contained essential data, which I desperately want it back. I would appreciate any data recovery advice, thanks!

Icebreaker

Knowing your Western Digital (WD) external hard drive is essential in recovering your lost data. Your hard drive is an electromechanical non-volatile data storage device that stores data permanently on a rotating platter coated with the ferromagnetic material. The magnetic head of the WD hard drive writes or reads data to or from the platter. These data are stored in a series of logical blocks or sectors.

macOS Monterey maintains the information of these files as metadata stored in the file system of the drive. When you delete a file, macOS Monterey updates its metadata information. Also, when you erase a drive, Monterey creates a fresh file system. In both situations, data stored in the sectors remain unharmed—This gives a chance for data recovery.

Mounting an External Hard Drive

WD external hard drive mounts on your macOS Monterey when you connect it to your MacBook. Mounting makes the drive available for use and is visible in Finder and Disk Utility. In case the storage drive is corrupt, the file system information is lost, which makes the hard drive un-mountable or unreadable on macOS Monterey.

The only way to create a new file system is by erasing the un-mountable/unrecognizable external hard drive with APFS or other macOS Monterey compatible file system format. Nevertheless, formatting also makes hard drive data inaccessible from macOS Monterey, and consequently, you lose those data.

Steps to Recover Lost Data

To recover lost data from your WD external hard drive, you need to deploy Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac on your MacBook running on macOS Monterey. This practical and efficient macOS Monterey compatible data recovery software provides an intuitive user interface to ease your recovery process.

The steps to recover your lost data from your WD external hard drive are as follows:

Step 1) Download the software on your Mac from Stellar’s official website.

Install the software on Macintosh HD. Now, connect your Western Digital external hard drive to your MacBook and launch the data recovery software, and from the main interface, select the type of files you want to recover and click Next;

Step 2) Choose your erased or unreadable WD external hard drive and toggle on Deep Scan.

Step 3) Click Scan, and once the scan is complete, preview the scanned files to verify

Step 4) Select the required data and click Recover. Specify the save location to another external storage drive with storage space more than or equal to your WD external drive space, and then click Save

Video: External Drive Recovery on Monterey

This is how you can recover your data from your erased or un-mountable external WD hard drive on macOS Monterey. Free download this amazing software and bring your lost data back to life.

Safeguard Data via Backup

This data loss instance must have triggered your brain to back up your Mac data. Backup does not mean, which most people comprehend, to save data to an external drive without keeping a copy on the internal drive. Backup means if you lose one the other you can use to get back your data.

Therefore, if you saved your data to an external drive and you do not want the same data on your Mac, then you need to have yet another external drive to back up. This is the sole philosophy of backup. It is advisable to create the backup of backup for business-critical data and keep the redundant backup in an offsite location.

Conclusion

The blog showcased tried and tested methodology to recover your lost data from a WD external hard drive on macOS Monterey. Try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac to recover lost data quickly. The software is great to handle all kind of logical data loss situation from any Mac storage device—internal or external—including WD drives.