I have had a 1TB Western Digital Ultra external hard drive for nearly year.
Out of nowhere it will not show in disk utility but it does show in system profiler. I have a Macbook pro mid 2012 running Yosemite 10.10.1
I have of course tried searching myself but found no clear answers.
I tried verifying the main disk and found nothing wrong. Other external drives work fine with this port and cable. Could it be a hard ware failure? Thanks for the support guys I'm just trying to identify possible causes.
Details given by system profiler:
My Passport 0741:
Product ID: 0x0741
Vendor ID: 0x1058 (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)
Version: 10.22
Serial Number: 575831314139335031333539
Speed: Up to 5 Gb/sec
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Location ID: 0x15200000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 900
Current Required (mA): 896
Best Answer
If disk utility does not even see it the electronics in the drive may have failed. System Profiler may show a drive there but if disk utility cant access it, well... "Houston we have a problem."
If it IS an external you could try unplugging any other USB devices and/or trying another USB port and possibly even a different USB cable. If you can easily open the case without voiding the warranty you could check cabling there as well. But that might be a waste of time. Drive enclosures are pretty reliable these days.
Failing that you might try a 3rd party disk utility. But I am not sanguine about the prospects. If Disk Utility doesn't even see the drive there is a good possibility nothing else will. It may be time for a new drive.