If an external hard drive doesn't appear in Finder in Mac, it is best to be able to resolve the problem by following the troubleshooting steps below.
External hard drive not showing up on Mac
The problem of external hard drives not showing up on Mac is due to many causes, starting with the external drives not being configured to appear in the Finder, a cable USB faulty or broken, corrupt system configuration, and other causes.
Another excuse for the external drive not working or not being recognized by the Mac is that the external drive is in the standard Home format. windows home NTFS, which is not recognized by macOS.
If you want to use an external hard drive on Mac and Windows computer systems, it must be in Windows format. FAT32 or exFAT.
1. Restart the Mac
Click on Apple emblem in the top menu bar and choose Reboot in the drop-down menu.
After restarting your Mac, you may see the external drive appear in the Finder window.
2. Changing USB ports
Turn off the Open air driving and connect it to another USB Port and see if it appears in the Finder window.
If you're using a USB hub, disconnect it from your Mac and connect the external drive to the USB port. If you're using a UBC-C port, connect the external drive to another port USB-C.
3. Change Search Engine Preferences
Open the Search on your Mac > click The Search Tab in the top menu bar and choose Preferences in the drop-down menu.
In the Finder Preferences screen, go to Basic Sheet and choose Outer disks choice.
Then change to Sidebar and ensure that each External discs e CDs, DVDs and devices iOS are selected.
If the external drive is still not recognized by your Mac, you'll need to mount it manually using Disk Utility.
4. Manually mount an external hard drive on Mac
Balance Command + Possibility (Alt) + Space bar to open the highlighted search > type Disk Utility in the search bar and double click on Disk Utility in the search results.
In the Disk Utility screen, choose the External hard drive in the sidebar and click the button Monte file.
5. Run the support first
You can use the built-in “First Aid” tool on your Mac to repair corrupted data and various problems that may prevent the external drive from working properly on your Mac.
OPEN Disk Utility > select Open air driving in the sidebar and click First support.
In the affirmation pop-up window, click Run to check.
If First Aid Tool is ready to fix the problem, the drive should now appear in the sidebar. If not, try mounting the external hard drive manually.
7. Reform the external unit
As mentioned above, you were unable to use the external drive even though it was formatted as NTFS. To fix this problem, it is essential forma tear the external drive in a file format suitable for macOS.
Observe: The formatting procedure will erase all information on the disk.
OPEN Disk Utility > select the Open air driving in the sidebar and click Delete.
In the affirmation pop-up window, type a Identify for outdoor unit > choose the Format type and press the button Delete button.
Please wait patiently until the formatting process is complete, then it should appear in the Finder window.
- Start your Mac in recovery mode
- Back up a Mac to an external hard drive with Time Machine
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