An external drive is an important part of the system especially for MacBook users as some variants of MacBook have only 256GB or 512GB of Storage.
External Hard Drive Not Showing up on Mac – Here’s the Fix
But oftentimes, there are chances of external storage getting damaged due to various reasons, which could be a loose connection or hard disk failure.
This is quite frustrating when you urgently want to transfer some important files from the external hard drive to the computer or when you store your unfinished projects in the external drive.
In this article, we will be discussing the methods to fix the external hard drive, and if unfortunately it is corrupted, we will also discuss the mac data recovery process to recover all the data from the external drive.
What Causes this Problem?
I know you have been wondering why an external hard drive cannot work on Mac even when you have not dropped the external drive or downloaded any pirated stuff that could potentially hard the drive.
Well, these could be some of the most common reasons:
- Damaged Cable
- Partition problem
- Corrupted external drive
- Read-only permission
How to Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing up in MAC Issue?
Fix 1: Check the Cable
Sometimes the connecting cable can be faulty which ultimately does not connect the external hard drive to the MacBook. If you have not changed the connecting cable in years, then you should try using a different cable.
If your external drive shows up after changing the cable, then congratulations, the drive is safe, only the cable was at fault. But if this does not help, move to the next fix.
Fix 2: Try Another Port
You can connect your hard drive to the MacBook using a USB cable, but there can be possibilities that the USB connector is at fault. If your MacBook supports a USB-C connection, try connecting the external hard drive using a USB-C cable.
If your hard drive has thunderbolt support, then get an Apple Thunderbolt cable and try to connect the hard drive to mac using the thunderbolt cable.
If none of the connectors fix the problem, then try the next method.
Fix 3: Change the Preferences
By default, the finder may not show up the external drive icon which is why you might think that the external drive is not connected to the MacBook, but all you have to do is change the preferences settings.
This can be done by following the steps below:
- Firstly, open the finder and select preferences from the general tab.
- Now in General settings, you need to check whether the external drives option is checked or not, if it is not checked, do it.
- Once it is done, go back and see whether the external drives show up or not.
If that still does not fix the problem, the last method will definitely do it.
Fix 4: Change Drive Format
If you tried connecting your external hard drive to the system for the first time and faced this problem then there are chances that the drive format is not supported by the MacBook.
MacBook supports HFS+ file format, exFAT and FAT32, and in the newer version, the Apple File System (APFS) was introduced as well. If your external drive is in NTFS format, you will have to format it and change it to exFAT or FAT32 format.
This can be done by following the steps below. We recommend you copy the important files and folders in a separate place, but if you accidentally delete all the data from the external drive, we will share the way to recover it.
- Make sure the drive is connected to the MacBook.
- Press CMD and spacebar at the same time and type disk utility to open the disk utility window.
- Now select the external drive which you want to format from the drop down list.
- Now click erase and the data will be erased from the drive,
- Now select the untitled part and select an exFAT format. You now have to click on erase and the partition will be formatted as exFAT.
- Once the process is over, your external drive will be available to use. You can now see the drive in finder as well. To recover the lost data, let’s move forward.
Recovering the Lost Data After Formatting
We will be using Recoverit to recover the deleted data. If you didn’t know this, deleted files can be recovered easily if they are not overwritten by other files. That can be done using a backup or a mac data recovery software which is a ray of hope when you do not have a backup.
Recoverit is a product by Wondershare technologies which primarily focuses on recovering the lost data files such as photos, videos, audios, emails, and more. The data can be recovered from external storage, and internal storage easily.
Let us find out more about the features of Recoverit.
Recover Files Easily
The best thing about recoverit is that you can easily recover 1000+ file types and supports different storage formats such as NTFS, FAT, HFS+, APFS. It does not charge you anything extra for recovering a different format.
Recover Files From Any Storage
You can recover files from a flash drive, external hard disk, laptop, computer, and smartphone easily. Just connect the device to the computer, launch Recoverit and start the recovery process.
Easy to Use
The most important thing about data recovery tools is the process to recover data. It should be very simple and easier for a non-tech-savvy person as well. And recoverit shines here as well with its 3 step data recovery process, it has made data recovery an easy task.
Recover Data from T2-secured mac
The T2 security chip by Apple works on encrypting the storage devices for better security enables secure boot options, improves image signal processing, and does a lot more.
The latest version of Recoverit, that is, version 9.6 is capable of recovering data from a T2-secured MacBook which comes with an M1 chipset, making it the best mac data recovery tool.
Recover Data From T2-Secured Mac
To recover data using Recoverit, you need to follow the following procedure.
- Download and install the software from the official website.
- Now launch the software and select the disk from which you want to recover the data.
- Once you have selected the disk, click on the start button and let Recoverit perform a deep scan to find the deleted files.
- After the deep scan is finished, the recovered files will show up.
- You can select those which you wish to restore and click on the restore button.
Wrapping Up
The external drives and USB sticks often get damaged due to various reasons, but in this article, we have discussed the ways to fix the external hard drive and provided solutions to recover the data after you format your drive to mac supported file format.
Since formatting deletes all the important data files, we shared the method to recover data using Recoverit.
We recommend you use Recoverit to safely restore the files that you have lost. It is available as a free trial and a premium version.
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