Disk No Longer Reading after plugging into Windows

I have a WD Elements disk that was formatted for MacOS (didn't realize it) and when I took it home and tried to plug it into a Windows PC, it acted like the drive was bad. When I brought it back to work and plugged it in, the Disk Utility told me to initialize the disk. I do not want to lose the data that I JUST saw on the disk but now MacOS will not read it.

This is similar to Initalizing a disk to make it readable - Apple Community

and I tried the two software recommendations and neither got me anywhere to be able to read the disk.


Is there anyway to read the disk? I can see it in DriveDx and all is healthy, but because I believe it wasn't formatted in EXT, the MacFUSE software didn't help either.


Any suggestions?

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 4, 2025 3:32 PM

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Posted on Jun 12, 2025 7:07 PM

FYI, I did find the Terminal command which would try replacing the current partition table with the backup partition table. Depending on what caused the change in the partitions, this could restore the partition table to the previous layout, or the backup partition table is identical to the current layout.


I would not use this command until you have finished recovering your data just to be safe since I don't know if it will cause any problems with the data recovery software if it is already midway through a scan/restore.


If you want to try replacing the current partition table with the backup partition table, then you first need to get the device identifier for the external drive. You can get this device identifier from Disk Utility. It will be in the form of "diskX" where "X" is a number such as "disk7" as in the command line pictures you last posted. Keep in mind you need to retrieve this device identifier just before using any of the command since the device identifier can change every time you connect the drive.


Once you have the correct device identifier for the "broken" drive, you can use the following Terminal command to replace the current partition table with the backup copy of the partition table (replace "diskX" with the correct device identifier for the "broken" drive):

sudo  gpt  recover  diskX


This command will prompt you for your admin password. Nothing will appear on the screen as you type the password. You will need to press the "Return" key to submit the password.


If the command doesn't produce any errors, then eject the drive and reconnect it so it will pick up the other partition table.

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20 replies

Jun 10, 2025 8:55 AM in response to g_wolfman

i did run the command and then first aid at 2 different points. so it is possible the drives changed, bc I had another drive plugged in.

I will have to re-run these commands later on Wednesday when I am back at church. I unplugged the drive so that no one messed with it.

I know that I recently updated this Intel Mac to 15.x I don't know off hand the exact .x, but its' recent.

The 16.8MB makes me think when I i plugged into a windows device to read it, it may have created that?


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Disk No Longer Reading after plugging into Windows

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