My external hard drive works on pc but won't even show up on my mac? What can I do?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
The USB port is fine, the cord is fine, the external HD works fine on a PC.
When I plug into my mac, the device powers up, and then goes on stand-by.
But I still can't see it anywhere on my computer, even though my computer is giving it power!
He's already stated:
1. It doesn't show up on the computer.
2. It doesn't show up in Disk Utility.
How will he erase the drive even if he wanted to? Hard to see how your information would help.
If it is in the wrong format it must probably still show up though, if your mac does detect it, go to disk utilities> choose the device from the left hand side > go to the "erase" tab and change format to "Mac OS extended (Journaled) then hit "erase".
IMPRTANT! : this will erase ALL of the files on your external hard drive
If this dosent work, make sure your external hard drive's USB port is compatibe with both USB 2.0 and 3.0 and also make sure your mac USB socket isnt damaged either.
Hope this helped🙂
I'm afraid I don't understand that. HGST is possibly the drive maker (Hitachi.) Any chance the drive was formatted for a Linux system?
Try a different USB cable as well as a different port.
Connect the drive to the computer and restart the computer. See if it picks up the drive at least in Disk Utility. If it does then you could repartition and reformat it to work on a Mac.
What are the three items that appear in Disk Utility? Are they the two items for your internal drive, and the third is the optical drive (ghosted?)
I don't know why the drive doesn't appear. I would suggest trying the drive in a different enclosure. Any cheap USB 2.0 enclosure will do if it supports a notebook sized drive.
I have checked in disk utilities, and it doesn't show up there either. I think it may be in the wrong format?
What connection method - USB, Firewire, etc. How is the drive formatted? Mac can read FAT, ExFAT, and NTFS.
It's a USB connection, the connection is fine and the device is receiving power. On my friend's pc it says file: HGST
In disk utilities, only the internal hd appears.
I know the external hd has data on it, I don't care about losing the data though. Disk utilities shows the same 3 items, even when the external hard drive is not connected.
Is the USB port compatibe with your hard drive?
Disk utilities says:
250.06 GB Hitachi HTS5...
Macintosh HD
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-898
My external hard drive works on PC but won't even show up on my mac?
