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

We show yous how to work out whether the reason the external drive is not mounting on your Mac upwards is due to a problem with the drive itself, the cable or the port, and how to resolve the problem and admission information on your drive.

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

How to fix a bulldoze that won't bear witness up on a Mac

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

If you run though the post-obit steps you should hopefully exist able to identify the cause and fix the trouble that is stopping your external drive from opening on your Mac.

one: Edit your preferences

Hopefully there is a actually piece of cake set to get the hard drive to mount on your desktop. Try the post-obit to make certain your Mac is set up to bear witness mounted drives on the desktop.

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

If it was already ready so that the external drive would announced on the desktop then continue to follow the steps beneath.

2: Check the cablevision

The first port of call is always to check that it's plugged in, but nosotros are sure you have washed that. The problem might be with the cablevision though.

One of the main reasons why drives fail to mountain is if the drive isn't receiving enough ability. If the bulldoze is powered via a USB-A cable you need to cheque that adequate power is being delivered to the drive. Very quondam Macs may crave a USB power cable, a cable that splits into 2 USB connectors that need to both be plugged into your Mac, in lodge to evangelize enough power to the drive. Similarly, make certain that the bulldoze doesn't have an external power supply it should exist using.

On the subject of cables, make sure that it's not at fault. Endeavour using a different cable with the drive to see if that fixes the problem. Similarly, if you are using a USB port via a hub cheque that's not what'due south causing the problem.

Also check that the port on your Mac isn't the problem. Effort plugging into a dissimilar port. Or if you but accept the one, plug another device in and see if that works ok.

iii: Effort some other Mac so try a PC

The next step is to endeavor plugging the drive into another Mac. If it also fails to mount at that place you will know that in that location is a trouble with the drive while if it does mount then the problem is with your Mac.

The next step is to endeavor plugging the drive into a PC. If the bulldoze mounts on the PC information technology's likely that yous take discovered what the problem is: the drive is formatted for PCs and can't be read past your Mac.

iv: Employ Disk Utility to access the drive

If the various checks above advise that the deejay is faulty and so you can utilise Apple's Disk Utility programme to access the disk and potentially fix any is causing the upshot. Here'southward what to practice:

  1. Observe Disk Utility by opening Spotlight (cmd+Space-bar) and start typing Disk Utility, press enter to open the program.
  2. Look in the column on the left to encounter if the hard drive appears there.
  3. If yous tin can see the difficult drive in Disk Utility check underneath it for a volume. If it is at that place click on it and select Mount. If your Mac has already mounted the drive the option Unmount will exist displayed instead. (If at that place is no volume listed your Mac is not able to access the drive. The Mount option will be greyed out.)Disk Utility Mount Hard Drive
  4. Your options are First Aid, Erase and Restore. Kickoff Aid will check the disk for errors so repair the disk if necessary and this is the option to choose. (Restore allows you to erase the contents of the drive and replace that with data from somewhere else. Erase deletes all the data stored on the drive. If you need the data on the drive practice non choose Erase or Restore!)
  5. Click the First Aid tab and select Run.Run First Aid Mac
  6. If after running Starting time Aid the Mac finds errors you could ready y'all may come across the option to Repair Disk. If yous do, get ahead and run the repairs.

v: Alter the drive format

If your Mac is unable to repair the deejay if is likely that the bulldoze is either formatted using a file system that the Mac cannot read, or it is well and truly broken - if information technology'south the latter we propose y'all follow this tutorial near recovering data from a damaged deejay.

Hopefully though the drive is fine but the format is wrong. Here's a bit of groundwork on file formats:

  • Windows PCs use NTFS file format.
  • Mac computers, prior to Sierra, used the HFS+ file format.
  • In High Sierra Apple introduced a new file organisation called Apple tree File Organisation (APFS).
  • exFAT or the older FAT32 are formats that can be read by Window and Mac computers.

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

It is possible that the difficult drive has been formatted using a different file system (i.due east. on a Windows PC). In that case, if you need to access the data on the drive you'll demand to connect your bulldoze to a Windows PC that does recognise it and re-create the information earlier moving on to the adjacent step.

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

  1. Open up Disk Utility (equally per the steps above).
  2. If y'all don't require the information on the hard drive, select the deejay and click Erase.
  3. Before Disk Utility starts to erase the disk it volition selection a format for yous. You tin can change this if you click on the Formatting options. Cull your format, probably exFAT if you want to make certain information technology'south uniform with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is probably the all-time option.Drive formats Mac and PC
  4. Requite the bulldoze a proper name.Name drive
  5. Click on Erase and wait for your Mac to erase and so reformat the bulldoze.

six: Try a data recovery app

If yous have been unable to access the data on the drive then you might want to effort ane of the options included in our circular up of the Best information recovery apps for Macs.

Our recommendations include EaseUS Information 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.

7: Always disconnect your bulldoze properly

We take final suggestion to brand that is more of a guard against this mistake happening once again.

Make sure that your external bulldoze doesn't get damaged in the future by always unmounting the deejay properly after using information technology. Don't merely unplug the USB cable. To unmount your drive yous can correct-click (command-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Squirt. Obviously nigh drive issues are caused when the disk is removed without ejecting it properly.

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