External hard drive unrecognizable in disk utility but found in System Information I've got a WD EasyStore 1TB external hard drive that won't show up in disk utility at all. I've tried multiple MacBooks and on my raspberry pi. The ONLY thing I can get to recognize the hard drive itself are the WD Drive Utilities (yuck), but when I try to erase it from there the application crashes. I have looked for a fsck_hfs or fsck_exfat process running to see if the machine is trying to repair the disk before it runs it at all. Nothing. When I try to reboot my MacBook with the drive connected to it, it stays stalled on the apple logo for as long as I'll let it. I can see that it is recognized as a USB connection in System Information, but it is not recognized as storage at all. Help, please!!!
If several Macs and a Pi have all failed to read the disk, then I'd suggest it's not a software problem.
It's likely that the hard drive has failed in some way. WD drives are known to have poor enclosures, but getting the drive out of a portable drive shell is not easy.
You can try taking it to a data recovery firm, but it will be expensive. If you have a backup, just toss it. (This one, not the backup.)
Otherwise, you can try data recovery software yourself, but if the drive won't even be recognised, it's unlikely.