[100% Workable] 7 Methods to Solve External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac

October 17, 2025Nicole Jones

An external hard drive can be a lifesaver for storing and transferring files. However, there are times when your Mac might not recognize it. This can be frustrating, but there are several troubleshooting steps you can take to resolve the issue of external hard drive not showing on Mac. Follow us to read more!

Part 1. Why Your Mac Not Reading External Hard Drive
Part 2. How to Fix Mac Not Recognizing External Hard Drive
Part 3. Bonus: How to Recover Data from a Crashed Drive
Part 4. FAQs about Mac Not Detecting External Hard Drive

Part 1. Why Your Mac Not Reading External Hard Drive

Multiple reasons can cause this; here are some leading ones:

• Mismatched drive format - some drive file system formats, like NTFS, are not compatible with Mac.

• Damaged USB cables or ports can block regular connections.

• There are issues in the drive itself.

• Some software glitches or bugs will prevent the drive from being recognized.

• Some external hard drives need an additional power supply, especially when they are connected to a USB hub.

Part 2. How to Fix Mac Not Recognizing External Hard Drive

1. Edit the Finder’s preferences

Step 1.

Get Aiseesoft Data Recovery on your desktop via the button above. Run it.

Step 2.

In the General section of Settings, check whether you have ticked the options for Hard disks and External disks.

Step 3.

Then, move on to the Sidebar section and tick the Hard disks and External disks options too.

This method only works when your hard drive is compatible with Mac and it’s in good condition.

2. USB check-up

When Mac’s settings are fine, you need to check or even clean your USB connection conditions.

• Test different USB cables and USB ports on this Mac.

• If necessary, use compressed air to clean USB ports to wipe any dust or debris.

• Test this external hard drive on different Macs.

3. Reset NVRAM

Stands for nonvolatile random-access memory, NVRAM is a medium that stores local settings like volume, screen resolution, and hard drive information. Therefore, NVRAM is often the source of most hard drive issues. For example, the Mac may not detect your external hard drive. Here, you can try the following steps to reset it.

Step 1.

Restart your Mac.

Step 2.

Hold Command + Opt + P + R simultaneously when you hear the startup sound. This will restart your Mac.

Step 3.

Then, you will hear the startup sound again, and you can let go of all keys.

You need to notice that this can’t work if your Mac uses Apple Silicon.

4. Run First Aid

Related to file, app corruption, startup, and external hard drive problems, this is Mac’s built-in disk repair tool to find any errors that may cause Mac not to read external hard drives and try to take action to fix them.

Step 1.

Restart your Mac.

Step 2.

Go to Applications and find Utilities to launch Disk Utility.

Step 3.

Find First Aid from the upper toolbar, and click it.

Step 4.

Hit the Run button and choose Done when it finishes.

If First Aid detects any error, it will report it to you. For example, if it shows an “Overlapped extent allocation” error, it means some files in the hard drive are damaged. You can check them in the DamagedFiles folder and would better delete them.

If First Aid fails, there are two solutions. You can run this program again to fix your hard drive. Also, you can change the format of your hard drive to restore the present operating system. But you need to back up all the original data on your disk for recovery after the process finishes.

5. Reboot your Mac

If there is no problem with your USB and hard drive, you can try to restart your Mac. Because even just a little glitch can make your Mac not show the external hard drive.

Step 1.

Pull out your device from your Mac and wait for a while.

Step 2.

Click the Apple icon at the top-left corner and choose Restart from the scroll-down menu.

Step 3.

Once restarted, try to connect your drive device again.

6. Use Terminal

When all the above fail, there are also Terminal apps for regular users to solve this problem. Though it may be complicated to operate, the Terminal solution often works well. Here are some general steps of this method.

Step 1.

Go to Applications and find Terminal of Utilities. Insert diskutil list, which is the command to extract and analyze information of any drive connected to your Mac.

Step 2.

You will see a list of your disks. Then, continue to search for a line of /dev/disk_ (external, physical). Insert your disk identifier in the underscore.

Step 3.

Insert another command of diskutil info disk_, and type the external drive you want to find in the underscore. When your Mac system detects it, this step will show your external drive’s information.

Step 4.

Eject that drive by typing diskutil eject disk_. The underscore still needs your drive’s name. Then, disconnect your external drive and reconnect it.

7. Engage Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a professional Mac program to solve this problem.

Step 1.

Go to Applications and select Utilities. You can see all possible external drives on the sidebar and find your target one.

Step 2.

Choose volume and you will see a menu appear. If your drive has been connected successfully, there will be an option to unmount this device.

Part 3. Bonus: How to Recover Data from a Crashed Drive

All the above methods are mainly to help your Mac show the external hard drive and process the internal data. However, what if your hard drive is damaged or the file system is corrupted? Here, we highly recommend a versatile tool to help you recover all lost data. Aiseesoft Data Recovery comes with the ability to recover all file types from any scenario. With a high success rate, you don’t need to worry about data loss anymore.

It’s easy to operate. All you need to do is download this software and select the file type for deep scanning. Aiseesoft Data Recovery offers a preview window for you to check clearly before recovery.

• Recover lost data in hard drives, computers, flash drives, memory cards, and more.

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• Super fast scanning speed with a thorough process.

• Reliable recovery tool without any share of important data to its server.

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Step 1.

Download Aiseesoft Data Recovery to your desktop and launch it. From the main interface, choose the hard drive you want to recover and click the Start Scan button.

Step 2.

After a while, the scanning result will be shown in a new screen. Click those you want to recover.

Step 3.

Hit the Recover All button to get all these lost files back on your computer.

Part 4. FAQs about Mac Not Detecting External Hard Drive

Why isn't my Mac finding my external hard drive?

It may be caused by poor connections, a corrupted file system, a damaged USB cable, or even the worst situation – a broken hard drive.

How to tell if a hard drive is corrupted on a Mac?

There are multiple phenomena for your reference: unusual noises, overheating, slow loading time, missing files, and system crashes. You can try different fixes to repair the damaged external hard drives.

How do I force my Mac to find my external hard drive?

Go to Finder on the menu bar and select Settings from the scroll-down list. From the pop-up window, navigate to the General section and tick the box of External disks in Show these items on the desktop area. If not, you can conduct data recovery on Mac.

Summary

At last, external hard drive not showing on Mac can be a bothersome issue sometimes. But we listed 7 useful solutions to help you get rid of this trouble; you must be able to find one that suits you most. Also, we recommended a powerful data recovery tool, Aiseesoft Data Recovery, to manage all complex data recovery scenarios. You can download it for free and try it now!

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