How to find an external drive that’s not showing up on a Mac

Normally in the event you hump in an external hard drive to your Mac’s USB port you may stare it appear on the desktop (aka mount on the desktop). You can also stare it in the Finder in the left column underneath Locations (or Gadgets in older versions of macOS). If the drive is not showing up on your Mac chances are it has not been formatted as it’s going to be, has been corrupted, or is faulty. Alternatively, you may have position a password for the drive that you want to enter before this may connect.

We display you the way to work out whether or not the reason the external drive is not mounting on your Mac up is due to a situation with the drive itself, the cable or the port, and how to acquire to the bottom of the situation and access data on your drive.

This article assumes you have an external drive that ought to quiet connect to your Mac via the USB-A, USB-C, or a Thunderbolt port. For these that have a NAS drive that connects over the network then you without a doubt ought to quiet read our article about connecting to a NAS drive.

How to fix a drive that won’t display up on a Mac

There are a number of reasons why your hard drive, flash drive, USB drive, or SSD may perhaps not be showing up. It may have been formatted incorrectly, it may be corrupted, it may have a faulty (or inadequate) cable, or there may be one thing else.

For these that flee although the following steps you ought to quiet with a little bit of luck be able to name the cause and fix the situation that is stopping your external drive from opening on your Mac.

1: Edit your preferences

Expectantly there may be a really easy fix to acquire the hard drive to mount on your desktop. Try the following to make certain your Mac is position to display mounted drives on the desktop. 

1. Inaugurate the Finder.
2. Click on Finder in the menu at the top of your screen. 
3. Click on Settings (Preferences in older versions).
4. Click on General.
5. Make certain that there may be a tick beside External disks. 

If it was already position up so that the external drive would appear on the desktop then continue to apply the steps below.

2: Examine the cable

The first port of call is always to check that it’s plugged in, however we are certain you have done that. The situation can be with the cable although.

One of the main reasons why drives fail to mount is if the drive isn’t receiving satisfactory energy. If the drive is powered via a USB-A cable you want to check that adequate energy is being delivered to the drive. Very dilapidated Macs may require a USB energy cable, a cable that splits into two USB connectors that want to both be plugged into your Mac, in explain to advise satisfactory energy to the drive. Similarly, make certain that the drive doesn’t have an external energy supply it wants to be the usage of.

On the topic of cables, make certain that it’s not at fault. Try the usage of a various cable with the drive to stare if that fixes the situation. Similarly, if you are the usage of a USB port on a hub check that’s not what’s causing the situation.

Also check that the port on your Mac isn’t the situation. Try the usage of a various port. Or if you only have one port, hump another software in and stare if that works okay.

3. Is there a password?

You can defend a drive with a password in the event you initially start the usage of it so check to stare if the reason your drive isn’t mounting is that there a password inquire of of field has popped up.

4: Try another Mac and then strive a PC

Your next step is to strive plugging the drive into another Mac. If it also fails to mount there you may know that there may be a situation with the drive whereas if it does mount then the situation is along with your Mac.

Your next step is to strive plugging the drive into a PC. If the drive mounts on the PC it’s probably that you have came upon what the situation is: the drive is formatted for PCs and can’t be read by your Mac.

5: Use Disk Utility to access the drive

If the various exams above counsel that the disk is faulty then you without a doubt can train Apple’s Disk Utility program to access the disk and potentially fix whatever is causing the concern. Here’s what to model:

1. Find Disk Utility by opening Spotlight (cmd+Space-bar) and start typing Disk Utility, press enter to open the program.
2. Search in the column on the left to stare if the hard drive appears there.
3. For these that can stare the hard drive in Disk Utility check underneath it for a quantity. If it’s there click on on it and select Mount. If your Mac has already mounted the drive the option Unmount will be displayed instead. (If there may be not a quantity listed your Mac is not able to access the drive. The Mount option will be greyed out.)
4. Your options are First Aid, Erase and Restore. First Aid will check the disk for errors and then repair the disk if necessary and right here’s the option to resolve. (Restore allows you to erase the contents of the drive and replace that with data from some place else. Erase deletes all the data stored on the drive. For these that would admire the data on the drive model not resolve Erase or Restore!)
5. Click the First Aid tab and select Accelerate. 
6. If after operating First Aid the Mac finds errors you presumably can fix you may stare the option to Repair Disk. For these that model, gallop ahead and flee the repairs.

6: Change the drive format

If your Mac is unable to repair the disk if is probably that the drive is both formatted the usage of a file machine that the Mac cannot read, or it’s effectively and actually broken – if it’s the latter we counsel you apply this tutorial about getting better data from a damaged disk.

Expectantly although the drive is pleasing however the format is wrong. Here’s a little bit of background on file formats:

• Windows PCs train NTFS file format.
• Mac computers, prior to Sierra, outdated-fashioned the HFS+ file format.
• In Excessive Sierra Apple launched a recent file machine called Apple File Contrivance (APFS).
• exFAT or the older FAT32 are formats that can be read by Window and Mac computers.

To make certain your drive can be read by Macs and PCs you want to format it the usage of exFAT or the older FAT32. We’ll explain how to model that below.

It is imaginable that the hard drive has been formatted the usage of a various file machine (i.e. on a Windows PC). In that case, if you may admire to access the data on the drive you’ll want to connect your drive to a Windows PC that does recognise it and replica the data before moving on to the following step.

Having purchased the data of the drive via a PC you can reformat the drive so that you can add the data again. Here’s how to reformat your drive so it can be read by and Mac or a PC.

1. Inaugurate Disk Utility (as per the steps above).
2. For these that don’t require the data on the hard drive, select the disk and click on Erase.
3. Sooner than Disk Utility starts to erase the disk this may pick a format for you. You can change this if you click on on the Formatting options. Settle on your format, probably exFAT if you want to make certain it’s compatible with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is probably the handiest option. 
4. Give the drive a name. 
5. Click on Erase and wait to your Mac to erase and then reformat the drive.

7: Try a data recovery app

For these that have been unable to access the data on the drive then you without a doubt may perhaps want to strive one of the options integrated in our spherical up of the
Handiest data recovery apps for Macs.

Our recommendations contain EaseUS Data Recovery for Mac, $89.95/£95.ninety 9 at Easeus, Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, $59.ninety 9/£43.ninety 9 at Stellar, or Recoverit $seventy 9.ninety 9/£69 at Wondershare.

8: Always disconnect your drive correctly

We have final suggestion to make that is extra of a guard against this error happening again.

Make certain that your external drive doesn’t turn into damaged at some point by always unmounting the disk correctly after the usage of it. Don’t proper unplug the USB cable. To unmount your drive you can proper-click on (control-click on) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and resolve Eject. Apparently, most drive points are caused when the disk is eliminated without ejecting it correctly.

Decided there may be not a hope to your faulty hard drive? We have a spherical-up of a few of the handiest we’ve viewed right here: The handiest Mac hard drives.

Author: Karen Haslam, Editor