JelkavN

Q: I can not find my external harddisk

Hello,

I've got a new, unused external harddisk. It has it's own powerfeed, and goes into USB.

A friend got it for me (he knows his computers!), it's a harddisk he had for which he bought a cover.

It says it's pc and mac compatible, and my friend tested it, and it worked on his windows pc. He said all I needed to do was to confert it so it would be mac-compatible.

Today I wanted to do that, but I can not find de disc anywhere on my macbook! It does not show up in Disc utility or anywhere else I checked.

So I figured it was maybe automatically conferted to a windows format when my friend plugged it in to test it. That's why I tried my husbands windows-laptop, so I could maybe configure it there to something my macbook can read. But the disc doesn't show up anywhere on my husbands laptop as well!

The harddisc is turned on, the little green light says it's on...

 

What can I do to find it?

 

p.s. I'm still running OSX 10.6 (that's why I need it. I want to backup my documents before updating to the newest OSX)

 

Thanks!

Jelka

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 28, 2016 11:05 AM

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Q: I can not find my external harddisk

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  • by Tesserax,Helpful

    Tesserax Tesserax Aug 28, 2016 12:13 PM in response to JelkavN
    Level 9 (53,898 points)
    Wireless
    Aug 28, 2016 12:13 PM in response to JelkavN

    If the external drive is not readable by either a Mac or PC, then it is either corrupt or it has not been partitioned and formatted yet.

     

    Since it cannot be found in the Disk Utility, my guess at this point it is the former and will not be useable. However, if it did work on your friend's PC, have him format it for FAT32. You should then be able to access it with Disk Utility and reformat it in HFS+ for your Mac.

  • by JelkavN,

    JelkavN JelkavN Aug 28, 2016 12:14 PM in response to Tesserax
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Notebooks
    Aug 28, 2016 12:14 PM in response to Tesserax

    I figured it would be something like that.

    My friend is on vacation now, so I guess I'll have to wait until he returns...

    Thank you for the reply!