Macbook El Capitan Not Reading External Harddrive

Summary: About how to set up the external hard drive not showing upward on Mac. Usually, a drive that'south not showing up because it'south corrupted. You can costless download iBoysoft Information Recovery for Mac to recover your files from the corrupted drive.

Usually, when you connect an external hard drive to your Mac, it will show up on the desktop or at least in Finder. But this time, the connected external hard drive isn't showing up on Mac, even on your newly installed macOS 12 Monterey. Why?

Take it easy and follow our guide to detect out the reasons and check the connections, macOS settings, and the external difficult bulldoze. And then, the external hard bulldoze will evidence upwardly on your Mac over again.

Table of Contents:

• i. Guide to fix external hard dive not showing upward on Mac
• two. Why is the external hard bulldoze not showing upward on Mac?
• 3. FAQs about external hard drive not showing up on Mac

Tin can't see external hard drive showing up on Mac, what to do?

Sometimes, an hard drives non working or showing up on your Mac considering it'due south not recognized by the system. But sometimes, it is due to your subconscious settings.

Don't know where to outset? We are here to help. Y'all tin follow our footstep-by-step guide to discover and access the external hard drive on your Mac.

Or, you tin watch this video to fix the external HDD/SSD that isn't showing up on your Mac. It is more intuitive.

Edit your preferences to display external drives

Sometimes, the external hard drive is not showing upwards because your Mac is not set to. If you lot can't see the external difficult drive on Mac, yous can get Finder to locate the external hard drive.

To make external HDD show up on the desktop and in the Finder of macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, or earlier, the post-obit steps would be helpful.

• Step ane: Become to Finder > Preferences > General tab and select "External disks" to make external hard drives bear witness on the desktop.
• 
• Pace 2: Become to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and brand sure the "External disks" nether "Locations" is ticked. Then your external hard drive will appear in Finder.
• 
• Step iii: Become to Desktop/Finder and check if your external hard drive is showing up. If not, download, install iBoysoft Data Recovery on your Mac and and then bank check if your external hard drive is showing upwards in iBoysoft Data Recovery.
• Step iv: If your external hard drive is showing upwards in iBoysoft Data Recovery, follow the sorcerer to recover data and and then format external hard bulldoze.
  If your external difficult drive is not showing up in iBoysoft Information Recovery either, send it to an good for reparation.

Check the connections of the external hard drive

External hard drives like Buffalo Ministation, WD, Samsung, Seagate, and Lacie are continued to Mac using USB cables and ports. But if the connexion fails, your external drive won't be recognized past your Mac.

And so, if Mac not seeing your external hard bulldoze, check if the external hard drive is properly connected by the following steps.

one. Restart Mac and replug the external drive in slowly

Perhaps, at that place are no problems with the USB cables and ports. The temporary bug or slow reaction of the operating organisation tin can forestall the external bulldoze from beingness detected by your Mac.

You tin unplug the external bulldoze and wait a moment. Then, restart your Mac and slowly replug the external drive into your Mac to bank check if it shows up in your Finder this time. If still not, try the next solution.

2. Ensure the drive cable has sufficient power

External hard drive requires electricity to low-cal upward, spin, and transfer information. So, if the external hard drive is lack of power, information technology won't prove up on Mac. You lot can do these things to bank check the power supply.

1. For Desktop external difficult drives similar Seagate Backup plus and WD Elements Desktop, make sure the external difficult drive is externally connected to a ability socket.
2. 
3. For portable USB external difficult drives, brand sure the USB port is not wobbly, dusty, loose, or deformed. If the USB port won't work and can't supply with plenty power, you can try some other USB port.

If you are working on MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models, two things to notice.

First, make certain your Mac is not in a low power mode. External difficult drives tin can't piece of work if there is no enough ability in the USB port.

Then, brand certain the USB hub and USB-C adapter piece of work if your Mac uses Thunderbolt 3 port. Though an authentic USB Type C adapter is better, it lesses problem if you connect the Thunderbolt portable hard drive for Mac directly to your Mac.

3. Change a USB cable

The broken USB cablevision will block the external drive from establishing connections with your Mac. Y'all can effort to alter a compatile cable and replug your external hard drive.

4. Check the USB port

Mayhap the USB port on your Mac is damaged. And then, the external hard bulldoze similar a Seagate difficult drive is not recognized by Mac. You can endeavor to connect the external hard bulldoze to another Mac USB port.

Too, check the USB port on the hard drive enclosure case. Sometimes, the external drive is not showing upwards due to a problematic SATA connectedness. So if necessary, you tin ask help from specialists to open up the external difficult drive example and have a check.

5. Send the external drive for repair

Connect another external hard drive to your MacBook, Mac mini, or then. If it tin show upwards and piece of work on your Mac, information technology indicates the external difficult bulldoze that's non showing upwardly on Mac is already damaged. You can ship it to a local repair center.

Moreover, some Mac users said that the external difficult drive tin can't be detected later on installing macOS 12 Monterey. Y'all tin can update the drivers in App shop. Just in virtually cases, you lot need to ask Apple'due south programmer for assistance from their official site.

Kicking your Mac in Condom Fashion

Chances are that some programs are stopping your external hard bulldoze being loaded on Mac. Those incompatible programs could be the USB security app, encryption program, or any antivirus software that you lot installed recently. In this case, you tin can endeavor to reboot your Mac in Rubber Mode, which only runs essential macOS items.

• one. Restart your Mac (some Mac computers play a startup audio).
• 2. Immediately press and hold the Shift primal, and and then release the Shift fundamental when yous see the progress indicator.
• iii. Later on the restart, reconnect your external difficult drive to the Mac and run across if it is detected.
• If the external difficult drive is recognized by macOS in Safe mode, y'all should first your Mac in normal mode and then uninstall the suspicious programs that you lot download recently.

Check if the external bulldoze is showing up in Deejay Utility

If you've tried the above ways to cheque and fix the connexion issues merely the external drive still doesn't appear in Finder, get to Disk Utility.

Disk Utility tin prove up all the macOS-detected internal and external hard drives on your Mac, even if it has some small-scale bug. Yous can open up Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility to check if Mac is picking upwardly the external drive.

Note: If your external fusion drive is not showing upward on Mac, you tin can bank check if it is recognized as two split drives by macOS in Disk Utility likewise.

Commonly, at that place are two possible circumstances:

1. The external drive is showing up in Deejay Utility but is greyed out (labels Non Mounted).
2. The external hard drive doesn't testify up in Deejay Utility.

Example one: The external drive shows upwardly in Disk Utility but not mounted

If the external hard drive can be found in Deejay Utility, it ways that your external hard drive is detected by your Mac. But since you lot can't see and open your hard drive as usual, we demand to practise some fixes in Disk Utility.

ane. Manually mountain the external hard drive in Disk Utility

The external drive ususally can be auto-mounted when it's connected to the Mac. Just if the Os fail to mountain information technology at that time, yous tin can attempt to mount information technology by hand in Disk Utility.

• ane. Expand the View choice and choose Testify All Devices.
• two. Find and select the external hard drive that is non showing up on your Mac.
• iii. Choose Mount at the tiptop carte bar.

Later on the drive is mounted, you can become to Finder to access it. Sometimes, you may encounter no sectionalisation showing upward in Disk Utility merely only the manufacturer's proper name like WD and Seagate appears.

This ways the segmentation table (A unit of measurement of data describing the partition information on the hard disk drive) is damaged or lost. Every bit a effect, macOS is unable to recognize the external hard drive.

In this situation, you're advised to recover important data with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac offset, and then reformat this hard bulldoze.

ii. Run Get-go Aid to check the external hard bulldoze

If y'all are even unable to mount this external hard drive on Mac with Deejay Utility's Mount feature, the external drive may be corrupted or have some directory structure issues.

Whatever, you tin can run First Aid to check and repair the external hard drive.

• Step 1: Launch Disk Utility.
• Step two: Choose the grayed out external hard drive from the left sidebar.
• Step iii: Click the Kickoff Aid button on the top and then choose Run to confirm this operation.
• 

3. Reformat of your external hard drive

If Mac is unable to recognize the external hard bulldoze still or Showtime Aid failed to repair the external difficult bulldoze, the file organisation or some core information is too corrupted to be repaired by Starting time Assistance. Here are some error reports you might receive from Disk Utility:

1. file system check exit code is viii
2. fsroot tree is invalid
3. APFS object map is invalid

In this case, you have to reformat it to assign a new file system to this drive.

Besides, if the external hard drive is formatted with unrecognizable file system, like Linux EXT3 and EXT4, the only solution is to reformat information technology to make it compatible with your Mac.

However, as information technology mentioned before, reformatting will clean the external hard drive and erase all data on information technology. If you don't have whatsoever backup and fear losing the data, recover files from the corrupted external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac get-go.

iBoysoft Mac Information Recovery is powerful in hard bulldoze data recovery, especially when your Macintosh hard drive or external hard drive is non recognized on Mac. It helps you recover lost data from unreadable, unmountable, corrupted, and formatted drives.

Except for hard drives, this information recovery software too works with USB wink drives, memory cards, SD cards, pen drives, CF cards, etc.

To recover lost data and reformat the corrupted external hard drive:

• Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac, and so restart the estimator.
• When external hard bulldoze is not showing up normally on Mac due to deejay corruption, the data on the drive becomes a great business organization. To recover and admission your files on the unrecognized external hard drive, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is a handy tool to help.
• Footstep two: Scan for lost information on the external hard bulldoze.
• Later launching this program, check if you tin can run into the unrecognizable/corrupted external hard drive is listed in the main interface. If you can encounter it, click on Scan to search for your files on this external hard bulldoze. If not, you need to send information technology to data recovery lab.
• 
• Step three: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click Recover to become them back.
• When you lot tin't open up the external difficult drive and admission files unremarkably on your Mac, you can use the Preview feature of iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to see your files. Information technology helps to brand sure that your documents, photos, music files, videos, and emails are in good status.
• 
• Step 4: Launch Disk Utility and locate the external hard drive from the left sidebar of the window.
• Stride v: Select this unrecognizable external hard drive and click the Erase button.
• Step vi: Consummate the related information (name, format, scheme), then click Erase to reformat the problematic external hard drives in Deejay Utility.

Case 2: The external drive not showing up in Disk Utility

ane. Force quit fsck in Activity Monitor

If the external difficult drive doesn't show upwards in Disk Utility, you tin can check if the Mac has detected and recognized its hardware information in System Data: Become to Applications > Utilities > System Information > USB. And so check the external hard drive information.

If you see the external hard drive showing up there but not in Deejay Utility, the hard drive may be under repair by macOS. Go and check information technology in the Mac Job Manager - Activity Monitor.

• one. Click the Launchpad and find the Other folder. Notice and open Activity Monitor in that location.
• 2. Blazon and search if there is any process named "fsck_hfs" or something similar. (If your external hard drive is exFAT formatted, then information technology should be "fsck_exfat".)
• 3. Select that chore and click the Force a process to quit push button at the upper left to stop it. then the external hard drive should evidence up on the desktop of your Mac.

If the parameters of the external hard drive are non recognized correctly or even not recognized, the external difficult drive is damaged. You tin can go to a local repair middle for some aid.

2. Reset NVRAM & SMC

Nevertheless, what if the external hard drive is non showing up in Mac's Disk Utility at all? It should be some hardware issues that stop the external hard drive showing up on Mac. Don't worry! Yous can check and repair those problems with the following solutions.

Reset your Mac's NVRAM

NVRAM is helpful to retain the data while ability is turned off. If you experience issues related to these settings or others, resetting NVRAM might exist helpful to get your Mac to recognize the external hard drive.

• 1. Shut downwardly or reboot your Mac.
• 2. Immediately press these four keys in a sequence: Command + Selection + P + R.
• three. Hold the keys for at least xx seconds and after you hear the 2d chinkle, release the buttons.
• iv. After releasing the keys, your Mac will restart and hopefully your bulldoze will bear witness up.

Reset the SMC on your Mac

In sure circumstances, resetting SMC can exist a solution because SMC is responsible for lower-level functions like power and hardware.

Annotation: The method of resetting SMC is varied from models to models, so check and know how to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac.

Permit'southward accept resetting SMC of a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro Retina, or MacBook Pro's with an internal non-removable battery as an instance:

• 1. Close down your MacBook Air/MacBook Pro.
• ii. Connect the power adapter to the Mac.
• 3. After your Mac shuts downwards, printing Shift + Control + Option on the left side of the born keyboard, so printing the ability button at the same time. Agree these keys and the power button for 10 seconds.
• iv. Release all keys and the power push button at the aforementioned time. Then press the ability button again to turn on your Mac, which would have a niggling fourth dimension.

4. Update software

If your Mac uses macOS 10.12 or earlier just external difficult drive is APFS formatted, the external drive tin't exist recognized by your Mac. You are advised to update your macOS. So, your Mac tin work with the latest file systems, software, and some firmware relating to USB peripherals and devices.

To update macOS, you can:

• Step ane: Right-click the Apple tree logo at top right, and so cull Organisation Preferences.
• Stride 2: Find and open Software Update to check for new macOS update.
• Pace 3: Support your of import files and follow the wizard to update your operating system.

five. Run Mac diagnostics to detect hardware problems

Apple tree Diagnostics is a set up of diagnostic tools used by technicians to find Mac hardware faults. You can employ it to ostend or deny your suspicions. If the external difficult drive has been physically damaged, yous have to send it to local disk repair center.

How to Prepare Samsung External SSD Non Working on Apple Silicon M1 Mac?

This post explains why you lot encounter the external difficult bulldoze not mounting on the M1 Mac issue and how to make your Samsung external SSD work again. Read more >>

Why is the External Hard Drive Not Showing up on Mac?

Most of the time, Mac non recognizing external hard drives is considering of the hard drive corruption and faulty connections. But other factors tin make external hard bulldoze invisible on Mac every bit well.

The causes for external difficult drives, USB pen drives, and SD cards non showing upwards on Mac vary from case to case. Namely, they are:

• The USB cable is broken.
• The USB port is malfunctioned.
• The USB adapter is not working properly.
• The external difficult bulldoze is not formatted incorrectly.
• The hardware and software similar disk driver demand an update.
• The file organisation of the external hard drive is corrupted.

Every bit a outcome, you plug the external hard drive into your Mac just nothing happens. It looks like that Mac is not reading your external hard drive. The difficult drive won't appear on the desktop or in the Finder. But this doesn't necessarily hateful your Mac non recognizing the hard drive.

To sum up

Information technology'due south relatively complicated to check out why is an external hard bulldoze not showing upwards, recognized, or detected by macOS. If you worry about information loss in this process, you tin recover all important data from the external hard drive first with the aid of iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

Moreover, to prevent an external hard drive not showing up event, it's advised to properly squirt or connect your external drives at whatsoever time. Besides, always bankroll upwardly critical files on some other drive or in the cloud would assistance a lot.

FAQs about external hard drive not showing up on Mac

1. How do I go my difficult drive to show upward on my Mac?

First, you need to open up Finder. Move to the top carte bar and click Finder > Preferences. Then, tick on the External disks option under the Full general tab on the Finder Preferences window.

2. What do I do when my external hard drive is not detected?

In the outset identify, you should cheque the connections, including the external difficult drive, USB cablevision, and ports. Then, try to replug the external drive and restart your Mac, update the disk commuter, check the disk format, reformat the external drive, or apply for a repair.

Was this commodity helpful?YesNo

About writer

Katrina Yuan

Katrina Yuan is a senior technical writer at iBoysoft with over four years of experience delivering cognition about reckoner operating systems, hard drives, etc.

griffithatimenswo.blogspot.com

Source: https://iboysoft.com/mac-data-recovery/external-hard-drive-not-showing-up-on-mac.html

Share this post