Hard Drive Not Showing On Mac

Whenever we insert an external hard drive in the USB port of Mac, you can see it mount on the desktop. You can also check the external drive connected by navigating to Finder (left-hand column under Devices). However, if you are facing external hard drives not showing up on the Mac issue, we understand the annoyance. So, why is it that this error appears and the hard drive is not mounting on Mac, let's figure it out.

• Hard Drive Not Showing On Macbook Air
• Hard Drive Not Showing Up Windows 10
• Hard Drive Not Showing On Mac
• External Hard Drive For Mac

Mac not formatted to display external drives: As already mentioned it is possible that your device is recognising the external drive, but not reading it to show up on screen. However, the drive will still appear in the left-hand column of the Finder menu under Devices. From there you will be able to access the drive. Modifying Settings Of Finder. There is one common reason why Mac doesn't display or recognize an.

Apart from the faulty cable or issues in the USB port, other reasons for the error and the common solutions include:

• If your USB connector is damaged?
• If your cable wire is defective? You may try another cable to connect the hard drive.
• If there is any hardware issue with Mac, try connecting the external hard drive with a PC.
• Reboot your Mac to try connecting the external hard drive.
• Try resetting NVRAM whose description is give below.

If you have gone through a quick check, but the external hard drive is not mounting on Mac, you may need to try the possible solutions mentioned below. Kindle for mac 1.17 download.

Fixed: Mac Not Recognizing External Hard Drive

Fix 1: Check Finder Settings

If your Mac is not prepared to detect the external hard drive, the error is likely to appear. To clear the path, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Go to the Finder window.

Step 2: Here, open Preferences > General

Step 3: Make sure that the checkbox of External Disks is enabled.

Once the settings are activated, check if the external hard drive is connecting or not. If not, try another method.

Must Read:CleanMyMac X VS. http://fzkkvx.xtgem.com/Blog/__xtblog_entry/19088642-cricut-explore-air-2-setup-on-mac#xt_blog. MacBooster 8 – Side by Side Comparisons

Fix 2: Run First Aid On External Hard Drive

Your Mac may need a first aid checkup if the external hard drive is not showing up on the Mac. It is because First Aid for Mac is meant to clear out the possible technical glitches that arise due to corrupted files and apps. It also helps in solving issues related to hard drives. So, run the First Aid by following the steps below.

Step 1: Go to System Preferences and open Disk Utility. Or you can spotlight Disk Utility and click it open.

Step 2: Click the first tab above, mentioning ‘First Aid.'

Step 3: Select Run when prompted ‘Run First Aid On Mac.'

Once it runs and finishes its job, you can try connecting the external hard drive to Mac again.

Also Read :CleanMyMac VS. CCleaner – Which Mac Cleaner is The Best?

Fix 3: Delete Problematic Apps & Junk

There are chances that you have recently installed a new application, and it is creating conflicts with the smooth functioning of the hard drive. It is also possible that junk has been accumulated with the loaded apps in the system, and the external hard drive is not reacting rightly.

To free the system from such apps, you can drag and drop them in the Trash. But many of the associated files might not get deleted. For this, we recommend using Smart Mac Care that not only helps incomplete uninstallation of the applications but also optimizes the system for renewed use.

Step 1: Install Smart Mac Care in your Mac.

Step 2: As soon as it is ready, an automatic system scan or checkup will occur. This scan helps in detecting junk, malware threats, the browser's privacy, and more. You must choose ‘Fix All Items' for the overall safety of your device.

Step 3: Now go to the Advanced Tools bar from the top, and Uninstaller will open at first.

Pokemon xy emulator mac. Step 4: Detect and delete apps that you have recently downloaded or are unnecessarily hogging your system by selecting them and clicking on ‘Clean Now.'

Step 5: Restart your Mac and connect your external hard drive to the system now. If the problem was associated with app conflict, your external hard drive might be able to work now.

Fix 4: Reset NVRAM

Non-Volatile Random Access Memory or NVRAM is a small amount of memory where Mac stores some key settings. However, a sluggish behavior of Mac or drive issues creates annoyance, and you can try resetting NVRAM.

Step 1: Shut down your Mac by visiting Apple Preferences.

Step 2: Now, as you start your Mac, press, and hold keys Command+Option+P+R at the same time. Now you will hear the chime sound. Continue holding the keys, and startup sound will appear again.

As NVRAM is reset successfully, you can find if Mac is not reading a hard drive now.

Fix 5: Run Mac Diagnostics

If all of the above methods haven't worked right for you, you can try running Apple Service Diagnostic, and it will help manage hardware issues on your Mac. For this, follow the steps mentioned below.

Step 1: Disconnect all the devices connected to your Mac, including an external keyboard, mouse, or any other drive attached.

Step 2: Now, reboot your system. Suppose the power is off, power it on.

Step 3: Now, long-press the ‘D' button until the language section displays. Here, choose the preferred language.

Step 4: As the diagnosis is done, the screen will display all the possible solutions.

Step 5: Follow them and get your external drive connected once again.

And you will probably be able to resolve Mac not reading a hard drive.

How To Recover Or Retrieve Lost Data From Hard Drive?

It is always recommended that you store your data not just on an external drive but also on a cloud-like Right Backup that is compatible with Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android with one account.

In case the data is not settled in the cloud, you can use Disk Drill or any other third-party tool that needs to be installed in the system. After that, you can connect your external disk. Now navigate yourself to the recovery option and get the data back in one go. It might take some time to fetch the lost data, but once done, make sure that you eject the drive very safely without damaging the drive or the cable attached to it.

FAQs: External Hard Drive Not Showing

1. Why is my external hard drive not showing up on my Mac?

There may be various reasons why your external hard drive is not mounting like faulty cable, incompatible selected preferences, presence of conflicting apps, or hardware glitches.

2. How do I get my hard drive to show up on my Mac?

The answers could be many. You can edit the Preferences section, and enable the external drive, delete conflicting apps from the system, remove junk, run Mac diagnostics, run First Aid from Utilities, and try resetting NVRAM. One of the above methods helps in showing your hard drive up on Mac.

3. How do I force my Mac to mount an external hard drive?

After opening Apple's Disk Utility, click the option to Mount and make it visible on the desktop. This way, you will be able to show an external hard drive to the system.

4. How do I revive a dead hard drive?

Try repairing your hard drive by opening Disk Utility > Continue > View > Show all devices > First Aid > Run. If your hard drive is not repaired with the method or the data has been corrupted, you may need to use a third-party tool to recover it all.

Wrap-Up

We are hopeful that your problem of external hard drives not showing up on Mac has probably been solved using the methods above. In case if you haven't been able to get your external drive not mounted on Mac or the data has been lost due to any means, you may need to recover using third-party software. However, it is also recommended that you must be careful in disconnecting your hard drive from the system so that no damage is likely to occur.

Must Read:

Summary :

Are you still troubled by the issue 'hard drive not showing up'? This article will show you how to slove the probelm 'hard drive not showing up'. In addition, the issue 'hard drive not showing up' may lead to data loss. But, don't worry! MiniTool Power Data Recover, a piece of profesional data recovery software, can help you to get the lost data back.

Hard Drive Not Showing up

Hard drive containing massive important data is not showing up in My Computer or Windows Explorer? Have you ever encountered this problem?

Hard Drive Not Showing On Macbook Air

It is believed that many users have encountered the situation mentioned above. Let's see a true example from answers.microsoft.com:

My 2nd hard drive isn't showing up in my computer. The hard drive was a slave I took out of my old XP machine after it crashed. I had installed it into my new vista machine before and it was working, but then I had to reinstall the OS and ever since then it has not shown up. I have double checked to make sure it was set as a slave drive and it is. It shows up in the Bios, the device manager, and in Disk Management, just not in my computer. Nothing is showing up as unallocated in disk management and the drive says it's healthy. In the device manager it says the device is working properly. I've tried to just give it a drive letter in disk management, but when I right click on it the only option I have is help. I've also tried to update the drivers, and it says they are up to date. I've tried disabling and enabling the hard drive. I've even tried uninstalling it. When I restarted it did detect it and reinstalled the drivers, but I still can't get it to show up in my computer. answers.microsoft.com

Why does hard drive (including external hard drive or, USB hard drive) not show up in My Computer or Windows Explorer? Do you know how to deal with this issue? Besides, can we recover data from hard drive when it is not showing up?

Want to know answers of these questions? Here we are!

Why Hard Drive Isn't Showing up and How to Fix

According to the questionnaire survey and the result of experiment, we find there are many factors that can cause the 'hard drive not showing up' issue, including mistaken operation, computer virus invasion, and hard drive letter missing, and so on.

Let's discuss the details.

Case 1- Hard Drive Is Not Initialized

As we know, once hard drive shows as uninitialized, we are unable to see it in Windows Explorer, and cannot access its files. And many reasons (such as virus invasion, master boot record corruption, bad sectors, and so on) can lead to disk not initialized issue.

Solution

To solve this issue, you can right-click the uninitialized disk, and then choose Initialize Disk to initialize it to use it again.

If your disk is not initialized anymore due to sudden change, we don't suggest you to initialize the disk immediately. Conversely, you had better recover all your missing data from it, and then initialize it to make it usable again. Otherwise, the original data will be lost forever. Here, if you don't know how to perfectly recover lost data, you can try using MiniTool Power Data Recovery because of its excellent performance, simple operation and high security.

Related: Solved-Disk Unknown Not Initialized Issue on External Hard Drive

Case 2 – Hard Drive Letter Is Missing

A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned to a physical drive or drive partition in the computer. And if you want to see your hard drive in My Computer or Windows Explorer, you should assign it with a drive letter. Once the drive letter is missing, you will encounter the 'hard drive not showing up' issue.

Solution

To solve this problem, you can assign a drive letter for it. Windows built –in disk management as well as partitioning software like MiniTool Partition Wizard can help to add a new drive letter on it.
Click here to learn several ways to get missing drive letters back in Windows.

Case 3 – Hard Drive Is Hidden

Now, some users want to turn to third-party software like MiniTool Partition Wizard to hide their hard drive to protect data. However, once accidentally hide a drive containing massive important data, what should we do since this drive isn't showing up in Windows Explorer?

Solution

If drive is hidden by mistake, what should we do since Disk Management only offers Delete Volume feature as well as Help feature, as shown above? Can we delete the hidden volume, and create a new one? Of course, we can! But, this method will cause data loss.

Case 4 – Hard Drive Becomes Unallocated

Let's start with a true example:

My external USB 3.0 HD was working perfectly well yesterday. However, today suddenly became an 'unallocated' drive without even a drive name. I'm able to detect the drive but I have no way of accessing it.

The only solution that I've tried so far is to access the HD with another computer. But, the results are the same with those computers. I haven't done anything else.

Here's a screenshot of the problem:

In this case, what should we do? Can we effectively solve this problem without losing original data?

Solution

If your hard disk space turns into unallocated, you are allowed to create new volume on this disk and make it appear in Windows Explorer. However, this solution will cause data loss forever.

In addition, you are highly recommended to recover data from unallocated drive ahead of doing anything else. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is recommended here since this all-in-one tool has been awarded as the top 10 data recovery software on TOPTENREVIEWS.

Case 5 - External hard Drive Is Not Recognized

There's also another situation where the hard drive (especially external hard drive like USB hard drive) is not showing up in My Computer or Windows Explorer. And, you will receive a warning that saying device not recognized.

As a matter of fact, this issue can be caused by various reasons, including the currently loaded USB driver has become unstable or corrupt. For more information about the device not recognized error, please see Error: 'USB Device not recognized' when you try to access a USB external hard drive.

Solution

Here, to fix the 'external hard drive not recognized' error, you can try the below methods.

Method 1: Restart computer

Unplug your USB, restart your computer and plug in and see if it works now.

Method 2: Update device driver

Open Control Panel > Printers and devices. Check if you can see any entry for Unidentified USB device or Unknown Device. Open its Properties and update its driver, if an update is found to be available.

..

Case 6 – Hard Drive Has Wrong File System

Last but not least, if your hard drive is partitioned with the wrong file system, you cannot see it in My Computer or Windows Explorer. For example, you may have formatted the drive with the ext4 file system from Linux or the HFS Plus file system from a Mac. Windows can't read these file systems. But, you can see this drive in Disk Management as shown below:

Solution

To solve this issue, you can delete this drive, and then create a new partition with the newer NTFS file system or older FAT32 file system so Windows will be able to recognize it.

Here, we want to share another case to you.

Sometimes, you will find you cannot access your NTFS drive from another device, such as a DVD player, smart TV, game console, or media center device. This is because that many devices, even Microsoft's own Xbox 360, can't read the Windows NTFS file system. And, they can only access drives formatted with the older FAT32 file system. To fix this problem, simply convert it to FAT32.

After seeing why hard drive isn't showing up in Windows and how to fix this issue, let's move onto the next part.

Hard Drive Not Showing Up Windows 10

Recover Data from Hard Drive Not Showing up

From the above description, we can see several factors can cause the hard dive or external hard drive not showing up issue. Although you can fix the 'hard drive not showing up' issue according to the solutions we mentioned above, we advise you to recover data at first. Otherwise, the original data saved on the drive which is not showing up will be lost permanently. However, how?

You are probably wondering:

'How do I effectively recover data from hard drive when it is not showing up?'

Right now, MiniTool Power Data Recovery (PCWORLD, a professional IT magazine, speaks very highly of this data recovery software) can help you effectively recover lost data because of its powerful functions.

Mac os x 10 5 8 download. Now, let's see the detailed steps.

Download MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trail edition.

Launch this professional tool to get its main interface as follows.

4 different data recovery modules are listed in the main interface of this all-in-one data recovery software.

• This PC focuses on recovering lost or deleted data from damaged, RAW or formatted partitions. And this module is selected by default.
• Removable Disk Drive is designed to recover lost photos, mp3/mp4 files, and videos from flash drives and memory sticks.
• Hard Disk Drive can recover files after partition loss or deletion.
• CD/DVD Drive helps to recover data from formatted or erased CD/DVD discs.

Here, you can click the Hard Disk Drive to recover lost data. After selecting this module, you will see the following window.

Now, select the target hard drive which is not showing up in Windows Explorer, and then click Scan button. In this window, you are able to click Settings to specify needed file systems as well as file types.

Wait for the full scanning finishes to get the best recovery result.

Finally, select all needed files, and save them. It is recommended to store needed files on another drive. Otherwise, the original data will be overwritten.

The trial edition of MiniTool Power Data Recovery can only scan lost data. If you need to recover more data, please choose the paid edition. Here, you might be interested in this post: MiniTool Power Data Recovery License Comparison.

Conclusion

Are you still worried about the 'hard drive not showing up' issue? Now, after reading this post, I guess you might have a basic understanding of how to fix this issue.

Should you have any question or suggestion about the hard drive not showing up in This PC or My Computer, please feel free to send your email to [email protected].

Hard Drive Not Showing up FAQ

1. Hard drive is not initialized.
2. Hard drive letter is missing.
3. Hard drive is hidden.
4. Hard drive becomes unallocated.
5. Hard drive has a wrong file system.

1. Initialize hard drive.
2. Assign drive letter.
3. Hide hard drive.
4. Recover hard drive partitions along with data.
5. Format hard drive.

Hard Drive Not Showing On Mac

1. Right-click This PC.
2. Choose Manage.
3. Click Disk Management.
4. Right-click the new hard drive.
5. Choose Initialize Disk to initialize it.

External Hard Drive For Mac