First of all, I bought a new WD My Passport external HD for my '09 Macbook Pro running Yosemite. I formatted it as instructed, and installed the utility software. Now it won’t stay mounted for more than a few seconds before it turns off and disappears. I can’t do anything with it, including uninstalling any software, because again, it only stays visible and accessible for a few seconds. I’ve found references to this issue, but no solutions. Do I just need to return it?
And if I do, can anyone recommend a brand of portable HD? I wanted to use it for backups, and take it with me whenever I go out in my backpack so it doesn’t get hit if some disaster destroys my apartment and my larger external HD backup. My other option when I bought this one was Seagate, but I was told that WD was more reliable (which I suppose it still could be, if it were to actually WORK).
Most name brand drives should have decent reliability.
In googling this appears to be a narrowly specific Passport/Yosemite compatibility issue not an issue with a failing drive or an indication that the Passport is not generally reliable.
I use WD My Passport portable external drives to back up my Windows PC. But I don’t use the software on the external drive. (I like the portable external drives because they don’t need a separate power supply but instead are powered by the USB port.) Instead I use software on the PC (Symantec Ghost to be precise). Can you access the external drive without the software? What happens if you uninstall the software from the Apple computer without the external drive attached, and then format the external drive (perhaps on another computer)? Can you then access the external drive independent of the WD software? If so, you might try another way to backup the Apple computer, like Time Machine.