You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

External Hard Drive

Hi there. I have an older external hard drive that I have used to store older iPhone videos and pictures. I can plug it into my MacBook Air, and it shows the drive. I can click on it, and see that it has 144GB used up already. But no folders show up. Nothing shows, just that the drive is there and that 144GB is used. I contacted LaCie/Seagate and they tell me that maybe the O/S I'm running isn't compatible with their hard drive and I should reformat. Pretty sure formatting the drive will erase all the data, which I obviously don't want to do. Any ideas on what I can do?

Posted on Feb 6, 2021 12:20 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 6, 2021 6:21 AM

Open Disk Utility. Then in the window, select "Show all devices".


On the left side locate your drive. You should see two items:

the physical drive itself and the actual data volume.


Select the "drive" first and click on "First Aid". This should be

quite quick.


Next, select the "volume" under the drive and repeat "First Aid"

on it.


It's possible that the file catalog may be messed up and this would fix it.

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 6, 2021 6:21 AM in response to Hunter_sMom

Open Disk Utility. Then in the window, select "Show all devices".


On the left side locate your drive. You should see two items:

the physical drive itself and the actual data volume.


Select the "drive" first and click on "First Aid". This should be

quite quick.


Next, select the "volume" under the drive and repeat "First Aid"

on it.


It's possible that the file catalog may be messed up and this would fix it.

External Hard Drive

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.