
This article will teach you how to fix your harddisks or external hard drive not showing up on Mac using built-in tools such as the Disk Utility or the Terminal.įixing a problem with an external drive on Mac or other external disks can be really hard, particularly for non-tech-savvy users. Luckily, there are many things you can try before fixing the external hard drive or external disks issue.

If this external drive isn’t showing up on Mac system, some deeper issues might need to be fixed. Why you must fix it immediately: Data on your Mac is stored on a hard drive, whether it’s internal or external.

What you might not know: There can be many reasons for an external hard drive not reading a Mac - poor connection, faulty cable, dirty USB, or, in the worst-case scenario, corrupt hard drive data. But sometimes you meet the "external hard drive not showing us" issue. WARNING: Formatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting.What you know: When you plug in an external drive disk utility into your Mac, you expect it to pop up and be showing up on mac in Locations in Finder - next to your remote disk and the computer itself. Check step 2 to confirm Disk Utility is Showing All Devices NOTE: If you don’t see Scheme, then make sure that all devices are showing and the non-indented entry is selected. Select the non-indented entry, you will see Media in the nameĬlick the button labelled Erase in the menu which will bring up this window.Click View in the upper left and select Show All Devices.To open Disk Utility - Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility Note: If you would prefer a video tutorial of these steps instead, please click the thumbnail below. IMPORTANT: Reformatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting. Click here to see other formatting options for your operating system.Looking for a different formatting option? When using between macOS and Windows, drives should always be formatted on macOS because not all Windows allocation unit sizes (cluster sizes) are supported by macOS which will prevent the drive from mounting.ExFAT drives must be safely ejected to prevent corruption because ExFAT is not a journaled file system.Starting with Big Sur, APFS is now the default for Time Machine.ExFAT is not compatible with Time Machine.

It is important to keep the following in mind when formatting to ExFAT:

