I am in the process of making my new film in Imovie. But after yesterday, I can't get my external hard drive to be visible on my computer and in Imovie. What do I do? I've tried a few different things but can't get it to work.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.1
Thanks! See if the external disk is showing in System Information. To check, choose Apple menu (top left) > About This Mac > More Info, scroll down, and choose System Report. Scroll down on the left sidebar of System Information and look for "USB".
Does the external drive show here in the USB Device Tree?
-Jack
Thanks! See if the external disk is showing in System Information. To check, choose Apple menu (top left) > About This Mac > More Info, scroll down, and choose System Report. Scroll down on the left sidebar of System Information and look for "USB".
Does the external drive show here in the USB Device Tree?
-Jack
Thanks for the info! What do you see in Disk Utility in the "External" section?
To open Disk Utility, in the Finder, choose Go > Utilities, then double-click the Disk Utility icon. (Disk Utility is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.) Alternatively, click Launchpad in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the search field, then click the Disk Utility icon.
If you'd like, it may be helpful if you can upload a screenshot or take a photo of what you see here. If you can, you can upload your screenshot or photo here by using the "Image insertion" tool.
-Jack
A couple things:
Is this a self powered or bus powered drive, i.e. does it use an external power supply or not?
Have you tried plugging the drive into another computer?
Have you tried a different cable?
FWIW, when I have seen such behavior in an external drive it usually means that the drive is failing or has failed. In some cases it is the drive itself or more often it is the electronics that control the drive.
Just because the drive is "just months old" does not mean that it cannot fail, it happens. If you look at user reviews on any retail website for any external drive, HDD or SSD, you will always see a few one star comments that the drive failed within months of use. While generally not common, drives can die at a young age.
I will assume that nothing was done or changed which might have caused this. If so, the disk could be failing. Open Disk Utility and see if it is shown there. If so, run the Disk Utility Repair function. Sometimes it is necessary to rerun it several times until an ok result is reported. I hope you are backing everything up.
Hey there!
Have you tried to restart your Mac?
If the issue persists after that, let us know what model of external disk you're using.
-Jack
I can't find the hard drive on the computer at all. The external hard drive is blinking like it is not properly connected.
Hey Jack,
Yeah i try that many times. The name of my external disk is Toshiba Canvio Basics only some month old.
Like u see, i can only see my macbook - and i have put my hard drive in my computer. It can´t find the external hard drive
I don´t think so?
Choose the “EXTERNAL_USB” device and see what it says.
Its on danish :) What does it mean?
I just bought a new hard drive. It comes out when I put it in - no problem. But I don't know how to run Imovie editing on my external hard drive instead of the computer.? Can you help me here?
External hard drive
