Is your external hard drive that’s not showing on mac? We know this problem will press your panic button on, but believe me, there is no reason for you to worry, so try to stay calm and read this article, which will help you to detect your problem, and we have some easy ways in which you can solve the problem.
Usually what happens is when you plug in your external hard drive you will see that it appears on the desktop, if it is not showing it may be possible that your drive is corrupted, faulty, or not been formatted correctly.
As you must know, the simple and the first way to check is to remove your hard drive, restart your Mac completely, and eventually show up.
9 Ways to Fix External Hard Drive That’s Not Showing On Mac
If this method does not help, you can start trying the External Drive Not Showing On Mac methods discussed in this article. Now let’s take a look at why this problem might be occurring and their solutions simultaneously.
The potential cause and their solutions are shared below.
1. Connection Problem
The first method to solve external hard drive not showing up mac issue is setting your connection problem. Most USB cables are called plugin and play because as soon as you plug in things at random times, your Mac will automatically recognize it, but this is not true every time. You can try the following steps to prevent this error from occurring:
Step 1: Turn on your Mac
Step 2: Plug in the USB cable into the device and your Mac.
Step 3: Don’t use hub plug your drive directly.
Step 4: Then, turn on the external drive.
This might sound strange, but some user says that when they normally plug in their USB, their PC doesn’t recognize their drive but if they plug in exceptionally slow their PC recognize the drive.
2. Power Problem
Resolve external drive not showing up mac with this best method of Power. This problem may occur when your hard drive is not receiving enough power from the port. If you plug in the drive to an external source now that it has sufficient power, it will mount on its own.
Sometimes the Mac doesn’t put enough power across the USB port that is already built. You can try connecting your drive to another USB port or adding a self-powered hub that may solve the problem.
3. Rejecting and Ejecting
If you mac not recognizing external hard drive the try rejecting and ejecting it. Another reason is when you directly remove your drive without ejecting.
So, you have to the right click on the icon showing external hard drive then click on the eject device option, or you can simply drag the device icon to trash so that it changes into the eject option. You should always shut down, eject, or disable before unplugging.
4. There Should be a Tight Fit
Many times the problem is your loose or dirty connection between the cables. You should check both your computer and drive ports to make sure they are clean.
5. Check the Settings
If you looking for how to find external hard drive on mac then this will be the best option. Sometimes we forget the basic steps while connecting drive to the Mac, so let’s see some of the setting instructions.
Step 1: Go to a folder then to preference
Step 2: Under the general tab, see sections show these items on the desktop.
Step 3: Now check whether both external disk and hard drive have a check tick in front of them or not.
Step 4: Check on the box in front of them if not done already.
6. Reset your NVRAM
Resetting your NVRAM will also give you the answer of how to mount external hard drive mac. Try this fix and let us know that is it working or not.
Step 1: Shut down or restart your Mac and press the four keys together option, command, P and R.
Step 2: It might seem that your Mac is restarting.
Step 3: Release the keys after you have heard a second start-up sound.
Step 4: You can also restart the System Management Controller (SMC)
7. Reboot your Mac
Reboot your system if your mac not reading external hard drive. Sometimes the reason why USB won’t boot is the macOS issue. If this is the reason, then it can be easily fixed by simply restarting the Mac. Your macOS memory clears and starts fresh when you restart your Mac.
Click on the Apple menu then to restart. The other way is to press and hold the power button until a dialog box appears then click on restart option.
8. Use the Disk Utility
If you can find out that your disk is faulty by performing the above ways, you can use the apple’s disk utility program. Follow the following steps:
Step 1: Open spotlight by pressing cmd + spacebar type disk utility and press enter to open the program.
Step 2: Look at the column to the left to see if you can see hard drive there.
Step 3: If you can see the hard disk, then check for volume under beneath it. Click on it and select the mount option. If you cannot see the volume listed, then it means that your Mac cannot access the drive.
Step 4: There, you will see options like first aid, restore, and erase. The first aid option will find the error in the disk and will repair it.
Step 5: Click on first aid and select run.
9. Drive Format
If all the above steps do not help, then it can be possible that your drive is fine, but the format is wrong.
Step 1: Windows PCs use NTFS file format.
Step 2: Mac computers, before Sierra, used the HFS+ file format.
Step 3: In High Sierra, Apple introduced a new file system called Apple File System (APFS).
Step 4: exFAT or the older FAT32 are formats that can be read by Window and Mac computer
Eleggible’s Final Words
To conclude, we know that if the Mac has not recognized your hard drive, then it may seem a big problem, but believe just by following steps, your problem of the external hard drive that’s not showing on mac will be solved.
If you are using a hub, try pugging the Mac directly, you should try connecting External Drive Not Showing On Mac, you can perform NVRAM or SMC, run the disk utility, and all the other steps mentioned in the article. We hope this article was a help.
