'I have a Seagate external hard drive and it wont show up in my Mac. When I plug in the USB cable into the computer, the HDD starts to spin, but it never shows up in the finder or on the desktop. If anyone has any useful information, that would be greatly appreciated.'
It’s a common issue that users may encounter that Seagate external hard drive not recognized/showing up on Mac. Why does the issue happen? There are many clues you can follow and troubleshoot the issue. On this page, we will just share you the tips to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
Potential causes for the issue
7 Easy Ways To Fix “Seagate External Hard Drive Not Recognized” Error Solution #1: Connect External Hard Drive To Another PC or Mac. Sometimes, the USB port of your system does not work. Solution #2: Scan External Hard Drive With Virus Cleaner/Anti-Virus Software. If you are confident enough that. Fix the issue with Terminal 1. Find Terminal in Applications Utilities Terminal. Once open, type in the command diskutil list. It will show all the disks. Put in another command into Terminal diskutil info disk. (please change. to the correct number of your disk)to show. Hi, all my USB drives and external hard drive are not being recognized after updating to MacOS Catalina. They cannot be mounted as well using Disk Utilities. I'm using MacBook Pro 2015. Please help to address this issue asap.
If your Seagate external hard drive cannot be recognized on Mac after connecting it to the computer, then there are some potential reasons for the issue. For example:
Hardware damage of the Seagate external hard drive.
Connection is not stable because the issue of cable or port.
Incompatible file system of the Seagate external drive for Mac.
File system of the Seagate external drive is damaged/corrupted.
System settings/preferences is not configured correctly.
Errors of the operating system on the Mac machine.
There are some problems with the mainboard of the Mac.
As you can see, there are many issues will cause the Seagate external drive not recognized on Mac. Actually, there are more issues that will lead to the problem. However, please don’t worry. Here are many options for you to try and fix the issue. You can try the methods one by one to do the job.
Check the connection of the drive
Actually, there are some problems of the connection will cause the external drive cannot be recognized. For example, If the cable or port is just bad. So please first change the cable and port to check if the issue is related with the connection or port. Normally, if there are issues with the connection, then the disk would not be able to be detected on Mac even in Disk Utility.
Also, sometimes the power supply is not enough will cause the connection not table. Then if your connection cable has 2 plugs, please connect both of them to the Mac to check if it works. Also you can try to use a USB hub that has standalone power supply. It will make the connection more stable.
Besides, there is another quick solution that may work sometimes. Strange but true, some users found that their USB external drives would work when they plug it in exceptionally slowly. It sounds crazy, but you can have a try as it’s really simple to follow.
At last, if your Seagate external hard drive still cannot be recognized on Mac after reconnecting with different and working cables and ports, then please also have a try on another computer. If there is still no luck, the disk should be damaged somehow. You can then try to fix the drive with some other methods, please just read on.
Check system settings
Sometimes it’s the simple things that trip us up. So before performing any complex troubleshooting, let’s look at some settings. Go to Finder >Preferences.
Other in my mac storage. Under both the General and the Sidebar tabs, see the section 'Show these items on the desktop: (or sidebar:)'. Please check and enable the options for External disks.
Now verify that if your Seagate external disks could show up in Finder and desktop.
Fix the issue if the drive could be detected in Disk Utility
The easy and effective way to check if the disk could be detected in Disk Utility first. If the disk cannot even be recognized in Disk Utility, there would be connection or other issues, then you need to check and try some other solutions. If the Seagate external hard drive could still be recognized in Disk Utility, then you can try more solutions in Disk Utility directly to fix the issue.
Option 1. Try to mount the external hard drive manually.
Sometimes, the system will fail to mount the Seagate external hard drive somehow. Then, you can just go to Disk Utility and try to manually mount the drive by your self.
Option 2. Repair the not showing up external drive.
My External Hard Drive Not Recognized On Mac
You can just use First Aid in Disk Utility to fix some issues of external drive. After fixing the external drive with First Aid, then you can reconnect the disk to check if it can be recognized again on the Mac.
Option 3. Please try to reformat the external drive.
Sometimes, if the file system of the external drive is not compatible with Mac, then it cannot be show up on desktop or finder normally, such as the NTFS file system. Also, if the file system of the Seagate external drive is corrupted, then you also cannot see and access it directly on Mac.
To format Seagate external hard drive on Mac, it’s very easy. You can just use the Erase button in Disk Utility to accomplish the task.
If you want to format external drive completely, you can also have a try with another simple third-party data erasure software - TS DataWiper for Mac. Please download and install it on your computer first.
TS DataWiper for Mac
After that, please run it and choose the Disk Format option, select your Seagate external hard drive and click the Format button to format it directly.
However, before you format a drive, please check and recall that if there are important files on your not recognized Seagate external hard drive. If so, we suggest you try to recover the lost and wanted files first to another computer. How to recover the data? We suggest you download and try with TogetherShare Data Recovery for Mac first.
Windows 10 Does Not See External Drive
TogetherShare Data Recovery for Mac
Powerful & easy-to-use data recovery software
After installing the software, please run it directly. Then you can refer to the following simple and short guide to recover lost data with the software. It can recover lost data from not showing up external hard.
Step 1. Connect and choose Seagate hard drive.
First, connect the not showing up external hard drive to the Mac. Please ensure to choose the Seagate external hard drive to scan and recover data.
Step 2. Scan the Seagate external hard drive.
After selecting the hard drive, please then click the Scan button to continue. It will scan the hard drive directly with different scan methods. Please just wait patiently.
Step 3. Preview and recover lost photos.
Once the scan is done, you can check and recover all the wanted files. Please ensure to save the recovered files to another hard drive to avoid further damage to the lost data.
Reset NVRAM and SMC
NVRAM is random-access memory which stores information such as screen resolution, startup disk selection, and recent kernel panic information. The SMC is the System Management Controller which is how the Mac interfaces work with some of the hardware components. So you can try to reset the Mac NVRAM and SMC and see if it can fix the issue.
How to reset NVRAM?
Shut down Mac, turn it on and immediately hold down these four keys together for a minimum of 20 seconds: Option-Command-P-R. It might look like your Mac restarts. If the Mac plays a startup chime just like you turn it on, release the keys after hearing a second startup sound.
Steps to reset SMC
Also, you might reset the System Management Controller (SMC.) See these steps below to do the job. If the battery is non-removable, you can do as follows.
1. Shut down and unplug the power adapter. 2. Press Shift-Control-Option keys and power button at the same time. Hold for 10 seconds. 3. Release all keys and reconnect your Mac to the power adapter. 4. Turn on your Mac again.
If the battery is removable, there is the steps to follow.
1. Shut down the Mac, disconnect the power adapter, and remove the battery. 2. Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. 3. Return the battery and reconnect your Mac to the power adapter. 4. Start your Mac directly.
After resetting NVRAM and SMC, you can then reconnect the Seagate external hard rive to the Mac and check if it will show up normally this time.
Fix the issue with Terminal
Sometimes, you can check and find the disk is recognized normally in System Information. Navigate to the Apple in the upper menu > About this Mac > Storage. You may find the correct size/space information. However, the Seagate external hard drive is still not showing up correctly in Finder. Then we can try to fix the issue with Terminal.
1. Find Terminal in Applications > Utilities > Terminal. 2. Once open, type in the command diskutil list. It will show all the disks. 3. Put in another command into Terminal diskutil info disk* (please change * to the correct number of your disk)to show the detail information of the disk. You can then ensure if it’s the not showing up Seagate external hard drive. 4. Type in the command diskutil eject disk* to eject the external hard drive. 5. Type in the command diskutil list again to check if the external drive is ejected and not in the list. 6. Please unplug the external drive from you computer, then reconnect it. Normally, it will work as usual.
To avoid the issue that Seagate or other external hard drive not showing up normally on Mac, we suggest you first don’t pull out your external drive directly from Mac or Windows machine without ejecting first. If you encounter such an issue unfortunately, there are still some methods to try and fix the issue. You can try and check if any solutions work for you as above.
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HomeYodot Mac Data RecoveryMac Cannot Recognize ExFAT Drive
“I have formatted my external hard drive with exFAT file system on my Mac machine running with OS X 10.7. Later I upgraded to OS X 10.8. Whenever I plugged the ExFAT drive to my Mac system, an error pops-up saying that “iMac doesn't recognize this drive”. I tried to fix this issue through permissions in Disk Utility, but no use. Few of my vital files are present on the ExFAT drive along with music, movies and photos. I am at loss; I have no clue, what else should I do to access my drive. I am looking for help. Please guide me.”
It’s damn difficult to bear the brunt of losing your irreplaceable data all of a sudden. But you should never lose hope at any point of time. According to the great saying, you can find solution for every problem in the world! Then why not for unrecognized ExFAT drive? Have a look here.
Why Mac cannot recognize the ExFAT drive?
There might be two causes here.
1) Mac might be missing some necessary driver software to read the ExFAT drive, after you upgraded from previous OS X
2) There might be some issue with your ExFAT drive
How to go with further troubleshooting?
1. Check Apple website for availability of any update/driver software for current version of your OS X. If you find any, install them on your machine and try to access the ExFAT drive. If you are unable to open the ExFAT drive even after installing adequate update and driver program, then jump to next method.
2. Plug-in the ExFAT drive into another working Mac Machine and see it is detected. If the drive is recognized, copy your entire data from it. Detach the drive and format it on your host Macintosh (on which your drive was not detected).
In case, your drive fails to show up on any other Mac machines then it seems like the problem lies within the ExFAT drive. It might be corrupted or became unreadable. Still don’t worry. You can bring back the corrupted ExFAT drive to normal state (working mode) by formatting/re-formatting it. Also you need to be concerned about data saved on the unrecognized ExFAT drive. As you can safeguard entire data present on your undetected ExFAT drive, with the help of Yodot Mac Data Recovery application.
Tool to recover undetected ExFAT drive on Mac system:
Yodot Mac Data Recovery can easily backup whole data from your undetected ExFAT drive, without causing any intact either to drive’s internal structure or to files stored on it. The program is well fitted to restore unrecognized Samsung hard drive, Toshiba external disk, Seagate portable drive, ScanDisk media card, HP Pen drive, Kingston USB etc i.e. it supports variety of storage devices as well as various brands; so you can undoubtedly trust the software to achieve guaranteed data restoration on any storage media. The retrieving ability of this utility is unbounded, thus you can recover any files like Office document, Portable Document Format (PDF), Outlook data files, archives, audio, video, images, RAW pictures etc of more than 300 types. Not just from corrupted storage, even inaccessible, dead, crashed, non-booting and un-mountable Mac machines data can also be retrieved by this software, with no difficulty. The smart interface of the program offers you a great data retrieval experience, effortless recovery process and preview of recovered data, so that you can review its recovering capability before you save regained data. The companionable toolkit is well-suited for all latest editions of OS X from Leopard to Sierra.
Steps to restore undetected ExFAT drive on Mac:
Mac Not Recognizing Usb Drive
Get Mac Data Recovery on your Macintosh system
Attach undetected ExFAT drive
Go for Volumes Recovery selection on main screen
Select ExFAT drive and its all shown volumes from list
Choose Normal Scan and click on Mark All key
All files present on your ExFAT drive will be listed in two views
Mark files that you need
Save those files on Macintosh hard drive
Note:
It’s suggested to keep an untouched backup of entire data prior to start OS upgrade
Don’t forget to install necessary updates as well driver software after upgrading your OS