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30 July 2019  Jennifer Thatcher  Technology Manager of Test Dept.
 

Summary
Mac is highly integrated, with many unchangeable parts. Many people prefer to use an external hard drive when the memory isn’t enough but they may encounter that the external hard drive isn’t recognized or showing up. How to solve if it happens in your Mac? How to recover data from a formatted hard drive? This essay will tell you all.




External hard drive is a device that uses magnetic storage to store data. How if the external hard drive is not showing up in Mac? Here are some troubleshooting tips!
external hard drive not showing up in mac

Why External Hard Drive not Showing up in Mac?

Many problems can cause the external hard drive not to be recognized in Mac. The following steps can help you basically troubleshoot.
1. Check whether the drive is plugged in correctly.

2. Check whether the drive has power supply.

3. Check whether the USB cable has been frayed.

illustrataion for external hard drive not showing up mac
4. Restart you Mac. Maybe it is only system crash.

5. Change to a different USB port. It may be a port issue.

6. Try the drive in Windows. The format of the drive may be received by Windows, not Mac.

If you have carried out all these steps, and the external hard drive is still not showing up in Mac, the problem could be caused by the drive itself: the drive has been damaged; the format is not recognized; or the drive hasn’t been mounted in Mac yet. Here are some solutions to solve these problems.
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How if External Hard Drive not Showing up in Mac?

1. Manually Mount External Hard Drive

① Connect the drive to your Mac.
connect external hard drive to mac
② Orderly open Lauchpad> Autres> Disk Utility.
find mac disk utility
③ In the left sidebar, select your target external hard drive.
④ If the drive is there, check the volume group. If the volume is not there, click on the [Mount] button at the top.
mount hard drive when it is not showing up in mac
⑤ If you Mac has mounted the drive, the option [Unmount] will be displayed instead.
click to unmount disk in disk utility

2. Check External Hard Drive Format

If your drive is NTFS format, it cannot be recognized by Mac. Please check whether your drive is NTFS.
① Click Mac menu at the top-left, then select [About This Mac].
find about this mac in menu
② In the tab [Overview], enter [System Report].
go to mac system report
③ Then at the left sidebar, click [Storage] to select your target drive.
④ Then view the format in [File System] in the main screen.
check disk file system in Mac
⑤ If it is NTFS, open [Disk Utility] and select the target external hard drive. Then click [Erase].
erase hard disk drive when it is not showing up in mac
⑥ In the following box, select the target format in [Format] and click [Erase]. The drive will change to the format you select.
select format disk and change new format in mac
If you’ve saved important files in the drive, please back up in advance. If not, you can recover data from the formatted drive with professional data recovery software Renee Undeleter.

3. First Aid for External Hard Drive

The Mac internal tool can verify and fix errors for files, applications and drives.
① Open Lauchpad> Autres> Disk Utility.
find mac disk utility
② Select the target drive at the left sidebar, the click [First Aid] at the top.
find first aid in disk utility
③ In the pop-up box, click [Run] to check the volume for errors. It will then fix the errors if necessary.
run first aid in mac disk utility
When these three solutions fails, the hard drive may be damaged. It is suggested to send it to mend.

How to Recover Data within Unreadable Hard Drive in MacOS?

Data Recovery Software- Renee Undeleter

  • Files recovery – Recover the files after emptying Recycle Bin or deleted by mistake without data backup.
  • Formatted recovery – Scan the whole partition and list all files, especially for the formatted partition or inaccessible issue.
  • Partition recovery – Scan entire disk to find out all partitions’ information and simulate the partition table.
  • Image creation – Clone a partition image which can be used in case that reading partition is slow or need a backup.

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Steps:
① Download and install Renee Undeleter.
② Select [Whole Partition Scan].
launch Renee Undeleter Mac version
③ Select the target drive then click [Next].
select target drive to scan
④ Then your drive will be scanned automatically.
select scan file format for mac
⑤ After that, check the file you want to recover, and click the button [Recover].
preview scan result before recovery