external hard drive NOT mounting to mac

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Level 1

8 points

external hard drive NOT mounting to mac

I have never had problems with my external hard drive (I just bought it a few months ago), but suddenly it is not mounting on the iMacs at my work or my Macbook pro at home. The drive does NOT show up in Disc Utility, but when the drive is connected via USB, the light on the drive comes on and it is clearly operating. It will not mount on any mac product all of a sudden. I have no idea why this is happening someone PLEASE HELP thanks

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Posted on Mar 3, 2015 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:20 AM in response to smithdn5

you have a MacBook Pro, we are Mac Pro users.

It uses bus-power? has its own power brick?

Formatted for Mac (HFS)? Used on PC Windows and Mac?

Do you have it backed up?

Has there been an inadvertent outage or crash?

MacBook Pro

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Answer 2

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:24 AM in response to smithdn5

What shows under USB in System report?

Does HD drive work on other computers?

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Answer 3

smithdn5 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:33 AM in response to The hatter

It uses bus-power, has a partition with half formatted for a mac and half for windows. It is not backed up, and hasn't crashed or even been improperly ejected. It is just not picking up on my computer. I had it plugged into an iMac yesterday and out of nowhere it recognized it after 2 hours

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:37 AM in response to smithdn5

You might also consider using NTFS for Mac OS X from Paragon-Softare and/or their HFS+ for Windows drivers that let you seamless mount, write and use a drive on both platorms.

NTFS for Mac - the built in Apple driver does not work as well even in read-only and has trouble with mounting external drives.

Bus-powered units always seem to have issues. Depending on the Mac and where it was plugged in, whether it is USB2 or 3.

Self-powered units are more reliable.

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Answer 5

Mar 3, 2015 10:18 AM in response to smithdn5

try to format it with NTFS in windows and plug in in your mac

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Answer 6

smithdn5 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2015 10:49 AM in response to smithdn5

To clarify, I have a partition and one half is formatted as exFAT and the other as FAT32. I will try formatting to NTFS in windows (my drive will only open in windows).

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Answer 7

smithdn5 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2015 11:17 AM in response to smithdn5

I reformatted one halves to NTFS and it still is not working

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Answer 8

Mar 3, 2015 11:19 AM in response to smithdn5

Yes windows Formatte it using FAT and try to plug in on mac

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