Not recognizing external hard drive

Good advice, was lucky to find your post so quikly🙂

Today I have realized that my ntfs 500 gb seagate goflex is no more recognized by my macbook pro 15 retina, but same drive was working with desktop PC under windows 7. Not even by disk utility!

I read this support page until the end with no solutions.....

what I did worked for me :

go to web page seagate simply download mac driver for the seagate

restart

that is it.

weird thing we have 2 15 retina macbook pros same ntfs WD disk is recognized by one of them and not one of them.

hey folks, there was some good information here however I still have a problem. When I go to plug in my hard drive, I go to Disk Utility and the hard drive is seen but the "repair" option is greyed out.

I would be very greatful if anyone would give me some advice. And if I am able to fix the problem I will personally email you the lyircs to "Space Jam", the hit song by Quad City DJ's.

thanks

Unmount the volume, and the control should become active.

This helped me. My back up disk was not recognised after I have to reinstall Mevericks.

I copied my data from external hard drive (EHD) which I used as time machine to a windows machine (manually) and connected EHD to mac. I erased the volume through disk utility and mac later recognised it.

This means now I have move again my files from windows pc to EHD but saved me buying another disk.

Similar problem here. My Seagate 1TB portable HDD was NTFS formatted and worked fine on my Windows PC, but my RMBP 2013 wouldn't recognise it. I reformatted it to exFAT - still no joy. Then the other day my partner tried it on his older Macbook Pro and was prompted to 'Verify' it, which he did, and formatted to Mac OS. I plugged it into my Mac and it worked, but with the 'Verify' popup again. I reformatted it again as exFAT so I can use it for both Mac and PC and it seemed to work fine on both Mac and PC yesterday. Copied files off PC today, plugged in to Mac - got the 'Verify' popup again! Unplugged and tried again, now I'm back to square one - drive isn't recognised by Mac but is by PC. What the **** is going on??!! Is this a Mac issue or a problem with the HDD? 😠

hells-bells wrote:

but is by PC. What the **** is going on??!! Is this a Mac issue or a problem with the HDD?

What were you thinking again? 😕 You formatted the same HD a dozen times and now youre complaining about it not working between PC and Mac?

Keep it simple, ok.

buy a few HD, they're cheap as dirt.

Keep a couple for your Mac, formatted in Mac OSX, and keep it that way.

Keep another formatted in Exfat for both PC and Mac transfers.....and keep it that way.

Seriously? That's your advice?? This HDD has NEVER worked properly with my Mac - long before multiple (but far from "a dozen") re-formats. Would be great to know if it's a Mac issue or a Seagate issue, so I can either raise the problem with Apple or take the HDD back for a refund.

Try repartititioning the HD on the Mac. Use MBR and format ExFat. I did this on my Seagate and it works fine on both Windows 7 and Mavericks.

This helped me! Thanks so much!

Just thought I'd mention, I've experienced this problem just recently and I found a workaround for myself and thought I'd share.

When I first bought my MBP, my EHD was already in use by my Windows PC, formatted in the NTFS system. I reformatted it after a while for other reasons on my windows PC. When I tried transferring some files to my Mac, it did not recognize the drive at all in Finder (other than in disk utility)

So I reformatted on my Mac in the ExFat and hooked it back up to my Windows PC. However, I could not drag files to the EHD. There was an error with the file system. Since I work with the hidden files showing on my Windows PC, I noticed that when you format with Mac, or use a hard drive with Mac, it creates some files and folders that are hidden.

Experimenting, I dragged those files to the desktop, reformatted my EHD to NTFS and dragged those files back onto my newly formatted drive. I unhooked it from my Windows PC and plugged it into my Mac and viola! It worked. So, it's recognizing it and working on both systems.

Hope this helps someone! My paypal address is....just kidding! 😉

Brandon

Thanks Ella - this fixed it for me!

Well, it said that the repair failed and I'd have to reformat the hard drive, then I noticed it was appearing again… odd

Heads up to anyone else that tries this, you may have a different menu set up (as I did) - I had to go -

FINDER

APPLICATIONS

UTILITIES

DISC UTILITY

Teachercreature737 has it right. I have a Lacie and I just tried to use it with the usb it came with. NO GO. I just went and dug out my Lacie extension usb, and it ended up being a power booster chord. and my iMac desktop instantly recognized it. even the power of a desktop didn't work with it, (so MacBooks, there is no way.) the light on the ext hd was solid before, and now, with the power booster usb extension, the light is blinking and transferring data. if you need the product info of this chord, here tis' ..Belkin Hi-Speed USB Revision 2.0 Shielded 28AWG/1P+26AWG/2C AWM E101344-C Style 2775 80c 30V www.belkin.com ID#49749. as with most things, you probably can't buy this at an apple store. I got mine at a mac mall store with the ext hd. if you aren't in an extreme hurry, find it on the belkin website.

Quarantine1 thanks for this information that resolved the issue with my Seagate 500Gb Time Machine backup drive which uses a proprietary USB connector designed for USB 3. Unfortunately I have several of these lying around and must have attached the wrong one since the last time I backed up the Mac. The symptoms were as you described, absolutely no recognition of the disk by Finder or Time Machine. With the changed cable Time Machine happily began preparing the backup and the disk is seen by the MacBook Air 2013 again. It seems that very similar looking cables have different power ratings or internal connector classes. Unhelpful. I wonder how many have ditched a perfectly functional piece of equipment because the wrong connector has been used. BTW a USB 3 powered device wont work in a USB 2 port as the power rating is too low.

Thanks again

I got it working...

Using a very short USB 3.0 cable fixed the issue. I'm using a 2013 27 inch iMac. To me it sounds like these new Macs don't put out enough USB power.

I learned this by buying a Seagate slim backup that uses just USB power. With that said, the cable has to be very short. So, by using this same cable on the AC/BUSS powered drive, it works.

Although I don't regret buying an additional 2TB drive. I know it will be used. It's a bummer that this was the solution that was figured out by an average user.

I hope this helps.

Seagate needs to replace that longer USB 3.0 cable with a shorter one, or throw it in as an option.