How to fix external hard drive not recognized on mac. The upper level drive shows up in disk utility, but the partition of the disk i would like to mount the only partition on the drive is greyed out. Following site procedures for reformatting to mac os extended journaled and erasing the disk using mac disk utility, i received the message unmounting disk mediakit reports not enough space on device for requested operation. Open a finder window to see if the drive is mounted or not. Here in the below, well show you how to fix and repair not detectable or unrecognized wd my passport or other brands of the. Macos external drive not showing not reformatting fix. When i plug my external hard drive into my macbook it flashes its white light and begins to stay solid, but doesnt show up on my desktop.
Mac doesnt recognize external hard drive, how to fix. You can searching for it using spotlight search or via finder application utility. Recently the hard drive fell from desk and now only one of the volumes mounts. I purchased a new mybook essential a couple of weeks ago. I tried opening up disk utility on my mac, but it just spins forever trying to mount the external hard drive. Wd external hard drive such as my passport are suitable and trusted devices. How to fix an external disk drive that wont show up on a mac. If disk utility is not working to reformat the drive, this command will work for you. I had a mac system volume not showing up in disk util any more. How to move iphone back up on mac to external hard disk.
If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. Ive been using a wd mybook external hard drive to back up using time machine but suddenly the it wont mount. We show you a special command you can use to quickly and easily fix your external hard drive if it is not showing or can t be reformatted on your mac computer. It appears in disk utility but not in finder or on the desktop.
Mybook essential just wont mount external drives for. Frends pc worked fine with that drive, and also my lcd tv mounted that drive. Heres how to access the contents on a usb drive that wont open on your mac. List of all wd firmware and software available for download. I copied all my data from the external drive to the mac upgraded to a clean installation of hs.
External hard drive not showing up on mac what to do. Wd mybook wont mount apple ios os help fix mac iphone. Macbook pro wont mount external hard drive ask different. Next day when i turn the pc on, does not recognize any more the hard drive. If you can see the hard drive in disk utility check underneath it for a volume. When you are in disk utility, look in the upperleft corner and find the view. Disk utility is within system preferences, or you can find it using spotlight. Mac wont read the external hard drive further once the partition table is damaged, lost, or corrupted. As you said there are several reasons why mac wont recognize a drive. Heres what you need to know, along with our toprated apple friendly drives. Unable to mount external hard drive on mac solved youtube. Well show you everything you need to know about the. It shows up on the system profiler connected to the usb, but it will not mount no matter what i try.
How to format or partition an external hard drive for mac. How to fix wd my passport for mac hard drive not mounting. When the ext hd would not mount on my macbook, i did check to see if it would mount on the imac but it would not show up on the desktop or the disk utility. My microsoft surface does not recognize the external hard. Please help, i have asked friends and nobody can find a solution i have a western digital my book external hard drive that will not mount to mac or pc machines. Check apples disk utility to see if an external drive is showing up. Wd mypassport external hard drive wont mount to my macbook pro. If you are having a similar problem on your wd my passport ultra hard drive or other brands of external hard drive or devices, dont worry. Why is external hard drive not showing up on my computer. Go to finder preferences general and make sure that there is a tick beside external drives. First we will check the basics, and from there we make sure that macos is set up to display external drives, can mount the drive, and that the drive has no errors on either the disk itself or its file structure. Great fix for sd cards, flash drives and all other external hard drives that are not working with your mac.
I opened up disk utility and it said it was not mounted. First of all, if your wd external hard drive is listed on the lefthandside menu of disk utility, you can make sure it doesnt have any hardware. Your mac will not be able to mount the disk until after the automatic checks are complete. Since updating to macos sierra, my seagate 1tb harddrive isnt being read or. When you wake your mac up, for whatever reason, your external drive does not wake up. How to solve an external hard drive not showing up in 2020. Operation failed dont understand the space issue and since the disk is unmounted ii am unable to do. Two perfectly fine external hds now unmountable, even in terminal using disk utility. Hopefully there is a really easy fix to get the hard drive to mount on. Password protection the my book drive s builtin 256bit aes hardware encryption with wd security tools helps keep your content private and safe. Macbook pro refuses to mount an specific external hard drive or usb stick, after being able to do so with no problem before, and usually after the operating system disconnects it suddenly. How to open an external drive thats not showing on mac.
Mac or macbook doesnt recognize external drives appletoolbox. View and download western digital my book user manual online. Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover lost data from not showing upnot working wd hdd without data loss. Fix wd my passport for mac not showing upnot working on mac. I have tried reformatting it and starting from scratch. The wd my passport for mac is not showing up in finder nor in disk utility.
It sounds obvious but one of the main reasons why drives fail to mount is if the drive isnt receiving enough power. Highlight your drive and click partition in disk utility. If that doesnt work, we have a couple of simple troubleshooting tips to fix an external hard drive not showing up on mac. If disk already mounted and system goes to sleep, it also powers down ports, including usb ports. If first aid successful in fixing errors, the external drive should be available to mount. Try switching to the partition level and click the mount button again. The guy at the mac store told me i could reformat my external hard drive by going into the disk utility option, changing the volume format to msdos fat. Wd mypassport external hard drive wont mount to my. Make sure your mac is set to show mounted drives on the desktop. External hard drive not mounting 282361 views 71 replies. Disk drive format your my book drive is preformatted as a single ntfs partition for compatibility with all updated windows operating systems. External hard drive not mounting apple developer forums.
Select the storage tab and see if you drive appears here. If it is visible, then click the option to mount, which should make it visible on the desktop and in the external drives option in the finder menu. Wd passport ultra cant mount on mac, flashing lights, but can be. To verify, click on the apple logo in your screens top left corner and select about this mac. Resolve a couldnt unmount disk error in disk utility. External hard drive not mounting mac apple community. The wd driver manager also showing the drive in good status. To check an external drive connected to your mac, open disk utility from the utilities folder of your applications folder. It will treat it as an uninitialized drive because the first sector will no longer. Note there are plenty of options you will find on internet for this issue, e.
West digital hard drives, such as wd my passport for mac, wd elements portable, or wd easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos. If you cant back up or restore your mac using time machine. Check on your external hard drive, click the first aid tab and select run to start running diagnostics. When you restore one volume to another, all the files on the destination volume are erased. Guides to fix mac files wont copy to external hard drive. You can turn time machine back on after your drives. It mounts the first time, but when i unplug it and then plug it back in to the same mac or a different one, it does not mount. If you do not have the habit of running time machine on time, then relying on data recovery software is the last and best option left for recovering data from mac hard drive. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive in fact, you should for better file organization, heres a stepbystep guide. Can i cancel a mac disk utility 7 pass erase mid way. Finder, and disk utility when the drive gets plugged into macs usb port. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. How to force external hd to mount on mac os x desktop youtube.
External wd hard drive wont mount macrumors forums. Equipped with wd backup software for windows and apple time machine compatibility for mac, the my book desktop hard drive can back up your photos, videos, music, and documents. I was working in my surface with the external hard drive. I decided to click on the view button at the top right corner of my disk utility app and i had show only volumes selected. When i plugged in my external hard drive it showed up in my drive in disk utility but it was grayed out. And partition table or partition map records the necessary partition information of the external hard drive. Mbp would mount the drive month later when tried again. Disk wont format external drives for mac wd community. Youve plugged in an external usb hard drive and it doesnt show up automatically on your desktop. When you connect a macformatted drive to windows, youll be informed that you need to format the disk in drive x. I formatted it to work with my macs per your telephone support instructions. Mac files wont copy to external hard drive how to fix. Check apple s disk utility to see if an external drive is showing up. Looking to add storage, or for a smart way to back up your mac.
Restore a disk using disk utility on mac apple support. External hard drive wont mount in macos high sierra or above. Open the disk utility app and highlight your external hard drive. When i clicked mount it still wouldnt mount, the drive is still showing dim. I disconnect it several times, restart the pc, remove the hard drive power and usb. Solved wd external hard drive wont mount on mac iboysoft. It will scan all system files, dlls and registry keys that have been damaged by security threats. Fix and repair wd my passport ultra not detectedshowing. Normally when you plug in an external hard drive to your macs usb port. To mount a drive, open disk utility and look for the drive in the list. It also shows up on disk utility but i cant select it, then it disappears. When you connect an external hard drive on mac, it will show up on desktop, finder, and disk utility. In this article, well show you how to solve an external hard drive not showing up. Ok i guess i done this right, i have taken lion osx from dvd dragged it to usb stick.
Get setapp and receive a free copy of the ultimate mac user book. That particular external hard drive or usb stick is perfectly good since it works ok under linux. Wd my passport greyed out in disk utility and unrecognized in. When you restore from one volume to another volume, an exact copy of the original is created. Ive tried reinstalling drivers and everything several times allready, it just wont mount. Im trying to access some files for a client on a western digital external firewireusb drive on my macbook pro. If not, return to disk utility and select your external drive from the left sidebar. If you receive this message from disk utility after replugging an external drive that wasnt successfully ejected or unmounted, it could be that the os is already busy performing the repair in the background. A misaligned or malfunctioning cable may be the cause of the problem, especially if you also have errors when trying to read from the external disk. Then use the first aid feature in disk utility to verify your disk. I could not mount my hard drives and it would not let me repair, erase, nor partition them, an old and a new one. Well, one of the best ways to get back lost data from hard drive that wont mount on mac is utilizing time machine backup.
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