time machine won't recognise my hard drive

Question

time machine won't recognise my hard drive

Samsung M3 Slimline 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive

Time machine said it can't back up as it can not find hard drive. I checked finder and can not see it, but if i look in time machine preferences, I saw it to be able to delete it. Kept trying to select it, but then had to cancel as nothing seemed to happen. I decided to actually delete it and now when I plug it into the Mac - nothing. Husband checked it on another laptop and it seemed ok, albeight it was Microsoft.

Can you help me get the hard drive recognised or is there something wrong with Time Machine or the hard drive? Hard drive is 18 moths old and I haven't used it a lot.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Apr 22, 2016 1:06 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 22, 2016 1:08 PM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

Time Machine requires that the backup drive is formatted for Mac (Mac Extended format). Open Disk Utility from your Utilities folder or search for it in Spotlgiht, and you should see your drive there. If you click it, what format does it tell you - Mac, or something else like NTFS or MS-DOS? If you need to reformat it for Mac, all your files will be wiped, so you may want to copy them off first if you want to do that.

Make sure too that you have the preference to view drives on the desktop. In the Finder, click Finder menu, then Preferences, and under "Show these items on the desktop", make sure "External drives" is ticked.

Matt

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Answer 2

Apr 22, 2016 1:56 PM in response to Matt Clifton

found SSD-2 in Spotlight but it won't open says unidentified developer. Is this one for my hard drive?

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Answer 3

Apr 22, 2016 1:57 PM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

ps hard drive 'was' working - I don't think I've backed up since updating to El Capitan

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Answer 4

Apr 22, 2016 2:11 PM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

went to samsung and tried to download 'Activation software' safari can't open it!

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Answer 5

Apr 22, 2016 4:06 PM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

Plug in your external hard drive.

Open disk utility.

Does it show your external hard drive?

If disk utility sees your external drive, select info from top menu.

What does it show under file system?

Kim

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Answer 6

Apr 23, 2016 9:55 AM in response to KimUserName

found the disc utility, all its doing is buffering, saying loading. There is nothing in the disc utility as I don't have anything els.

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Answer 7

May 1, 2016 10:06 AM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

LATEST NEWS

I had backed up my computer to my Samsung/Segate hard drive just before upgrading to 'El Capitan', now the hard drive is not recognised and no matter what suggestions I try, including downloading from Segate new drivers - n o t h i n g - my hard drive will not be recognised by time machine:((( I've resorted to buying yet another drive from Apple, oh and guess what, that works. I now have a useless £45 hard drive:(( I've also spent well over an hour on the phone to an Apple tech testing out my Mac book Pro - no problems apparently and oh yes, we've had a lot of complaints, try going to Segate and downloading some new drivers!

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