External HD No Longer Recognized

[cocococo]

My 2TB WD hard drive is no longer being recognized by my Mac laptop.  I'm running Yosemite 10.10.5, and while I upgraded a while ago, the problem happened after a random restart. My husband can see the HD on his PC (but can't read the files because he no longer has MacDrive installed) so I'm assuming it's an issue with Yosemite, not hardware related.  Do you have a fix?

 

It's all backed up to Backblaze, but I'd like to salvage it if I can!

 

Thanks, Brian.

[Brian]

It's a common problem with Yosemite and El Capitan. The drives will randomly unmount. There isn't a fix I know of. 

Now for part 2. WD must use the world's cheapest cases and ports. Often with their externals, the HD itself is fine, it's just the crappy USB port that they use...you can't just get to it. 

What I'd recommend doing is taking the WD EHD to a Mom & Pop computer shop and see if they can transplant the HD into a new case. 

[cocococo]

I've reformatted the drive and that seems to have fixed the unmounting issue, but I'd still like to replace the WD.  What HD do you recommend?  I have almost 2TB in data.  Is it wise to just keep going bigger and keeping everything together, or am I better off staying small and keeping things broken down by year in separate drives?

[Brian]

I like G-Drives. They come Mac formatted and on the "Pro" level ones, they come with decent hardware. Of course, with a price-tag to match. They aren't your $79 special from a box store.  

Give this one a look:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1024614-REG