Before formatting, make sure to copy and paste your files to your Mac so that you can put them on the drive after formatting.īefore formatting, can you see if the data is still accessible via Terminal. NTFS and FAT32 are not always the best choice on macOS. What is your External Drive's format? If you will be using it only on a Mac, then I would recommend formatting it to HFS (macOS Extended) or APFS. This does not seem like an issue with macOS, more like an issue with your drive. If that doesn't fix the issue, then you can try using Safe Boot to isolate and fix issues with your Mac. I have no experience with partitioned external drives, so I know not if this could suggest that they are actually two separate physical units (something 'hacked' in the SATA-to-USB controller, maybe?) or it is just me unable to properly erase the hard drive and forget about that damn VCD.First, try running First Aid while the device is readable. One strange thing I noticed is that even when the drive is unmounted, I have the option to mount separately the virtual CD and the drive itself. I tried with both fdisk and parted, but I may have done something wrong.

I connected that evil drive to my Ubuntu Server 14.04.

I opened Microsoft's System Registry utility to force-allow write on the protected media, and just when I was about to start partying, I realized I failed once again.

with Windows, I launched HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, as somebody has claimed it to have had success, but I ended up with a 'Device media is write-protected' error.again, I wasted some time with OS X and some built-in command-line tools (which I guess are just the command-line counterpart of the Disk Utility app).with Windows 10, I tried removing all partitions from the physical drive with the built-in Disk Manager and some other tools like EaseUS Partition Master.I also tried to change from MBR to GUID and vice-versa with no success. under OS X, I tried to initialize the physical drive several times with Apple's Disk Utility.

Whenever I plug this device into a computer, there is a virtual CD unit that pops up called 'WD Unlocker', and I'm trying to remove it physically, instead of just hiding it (I found many guides on this, and by the way none of them worked). I have a WD My Book (3TB storage, USB 3), and just like many other enthusiast owners of this external drive, I'm trying to get rid of their crapware.

Should i install wd drive utilities