Normally when y'all plug in an external hard drive to your Mac'southward USB port you will see information technology appear on the desktop (aka mount on the desktop). You can as well run across it in the Finder in the left column under Locations (or Devices on older versions of macOS). If the bulldoze is non showing up on your Mac chances are it has not been formatted correctly, has been corrupted, or is faulty.

Nosotros prove you lot how to work out whether the reason the external bulldoze is not mounting on your Mac upward is due to a problem with the drive itself, the cablevision or the port, and how to resolve the problem and access data on your bulldoze.

This article assumes y'all have an external drive that connects to your Mac via the USB-A, USB-C, or a Thunderbolt port. If yous have a NAS bulldoze that connects over the network and so you should read this article about connecting to a NAS drive.

How to set a bulldoze that won't show up on a Mac

At that place are a number of reasons why your hard drive, wink drive, USB bulldoze, or SSD might not exist showing upwards. It may have been formatted incorrectly, it may be corrupted, information technology may have a faulty (or inadequate) cablevision, or at that place could be something else.

If yous run though the following steps yous should hopefully exist able to identify the cause and ready the problem that is stopping your external bulldoze from opening on your Mac.

1: Edit your preferences

Hopefully there is a really like shooting fish in a barrel fix to get the difficult bulldoze to mount on your desktop. Try the following to make sure your Mac is prepare to show mounted drives on the desktop.

  1. Open the Finder.
  2. Click on Finder in the menu at the top of your screen.
  3. Choose Preferences > General and brand sure that there is a tick beside External Drives.finder mount drive

If it was already prepare then that the external drive would announced on the desktop then continue to follow the steps below.

2: Cheque the cablevision

The get-go port of call is ever to check that it's plugged in, just we are certain you have done that. The trouble might exist with the cablevision though.

One of the main reasons why drives fail to mount is if the drive isn't receiving enough ability. If the drive is powered via a USB-A cable y'all need to check that adequate power is being delivered to the drive. Very old Macs may require a USB power cable, a cable that splits into two USB connectors that need to both be plugged into your Mac, in social club to deliver enough power to the drive. Similarly, make sure that the drive doesn't take an external power supply information technology should be using.

On the subject of cables, brand certain that information technology's non at fault. Try using a different cable with the drive to encounter if that fixes the trouble. Similarly, if you are using a USB port via a hub bank check that'south non what's causing the problem.

Also check that the port on your Mac isn't the problem. Try plugging into a different port. Or if you lot simply have the one, plug another device in and see if that works ok.

three: Try another Mac and then effort a PC

The side by side step is to effort plugging the drive into another Mac. If it also fails to mount there you will know that there is a problem with the drive while if it does mount then the problem is with your Mac.

The adjacent step is to endeavour plugging the drive into a PC. If the bulldoze mounts on the PC information technology's likely that you have discovered what the problem is: the bulldoze is formatted for PCs and tin can't exist read by your Mac.

iv: Utilise Disk Utility to access the drive

If the various checks above suggest that the disk is faulty then you can use Apple's Disk Utility programme to admission the deejay and potentially gear up whatever is causing the issue. Here'due south what to do:

  1. Find Disk Utility past opening Spotlight (cmd+Space-bar) and offset typing Disk Utility, press enter to open up the program.
  2. Wait in the column on the left to see if the hard drive appears there.
  3. If yous can run across the difficult drive in Disk Utility check underneath it for a volume. If it is in that location click on information technology and select Mount. If your Mac has already mounted the drive the selection Unmount volition exist displayed instead. (If there is no book listed your Mac is non able to access the bulldoze. The Mountain option will be greyed out.)Disk Utility Mount Hard Drive
  4. Your options are Start Help, Erase and Restore. Kickoff Help will check the disk for errors and then repair the disk if necessary and this is the pick to choose. (Restore allows you lot to erase the contents of the bulldoze and replace that with data from somewhere else. Erase deletes all the information stored on the bulldoze. If you need the information on the drive practise not choose Erase or Restore!)
  5. Click the Showtime Aid tab and select Run.Run First Aid Mac
  6. If after running Get-go Aid the Mac finds errors you lot could fix you may encounter the pick to Repair Disk. If you do, go ahead and run the repairs.

5: Alter the bulldoze format

If your Mac is unable to repair the disk if is likely that the drive is either formatted using a file system that the Mac cannot read, or it is well and truly broken - if it'due south the latter nosotros propose yous follow this tutorial about recovering data from a damaged disk.

Hopefully though the drive is fine but the format is wrong. Here'south a flake of background on file formats:

  • Windows PCs apply NTFS file format.
  • Mac computers, prior to Sierra, used the HFS+ file format.
  • In Loftier Sierra Apple introduced a new file system called Apple File System (APFS).
  • exFAT or the older FAT32 are formats that tin be read by Window and Mac computers.

To make sure your bulldoze can exist read by Macs and PCs you need to format it using exFAT or the older FAT32. We'll explain how to do that beneath.

It is possible that the hard drive has been formatted using a different file system (i.e. on a Windows PC). In that case, if yous need to access the information on the drive yous'll need to connect your bulldoze to a Windows PC that does recognise it and copy the data before moving on to the next step.

Having got the information of the drive via a PC you tin can reformat the drive so that y'all tin add the data again. Here's how to reformat your bulldoze then it can be read by and Mac or a PC.

  1. Open Deejay Utility (as per the steps above).
  2. If you don't crave the data on the hard drive, select the disk and click Erase.
  3. Earlier Disk Utility starts to erase the disk it volition option a format for you. You can change this if you click on the Formatting options. Choose your format, probably exFAT if you want to make sure information technology's uniform with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac Bone Extended (Journaled) is probably the best option.Drive formats Mac and PC
  4. Give the drive a name.Name drive
  5. Click on Erase and wait for your Mac to erase then reformat the bulldoze.

6: Attempt a data recovery app

If you have been unable to access the information on the drive then you might want to try 1 of the options included in our circular up of the All-time information recovery apps for Macs.

Our recommendations include EaseUS Data Recovery for Mac, £95.99/$89.95 at Easeus, Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, £43.99/$59.99 at Stellar, or Recoverit £69/$79.99 at Wondershare.

seven: Ever disconnect your bulldoze properly

We take last suggestion to make that is more than of a guard against this mistake happening again.

Brand certain that your external drive doesn't become damaged in the futurity by ever unmounting the disk properly after using it. Don't but unplug the USB cable. To unmount your drive you lot tin can right-click (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject. Patently almost bulldoze issues are caused when the disk is removed without ejecting information technology properly.

Decided in that location is no hope for your faulty hard drive, we take a circular upwards of some of the best nosotros've seen here: The best Mac hard drives.