

By default, it doesn’t display much, and the setting to not show external disks may be enabled. Use a USB power cable if you suspect this to be the issue.ĭepending on what you find here, you can troubleshoot either the drive or your Mac.įirst, make sure Finder will display drive icons. A USB cable carries 5V, and if this is the sole power source for the drive, it may not be enough. Check that the drive is receiving enough power.Make sure your drive doesn’t have or use a power-saving or sleep function.Try attaching the external drive to another computer to see if it works on that one to rule out damage to the drive itself.

Some imported drives come completely empty, and while macOS should detect and offer to format them, it doesn’t always work.

Troubleshooting an External Drive with a Mac First, we will check the basics, and from there, we make sure that macOS is set up to display external drives, can mount the drive, and that the drive has no errors on either the disk itself or its file structure. If your external drive still doesn’t appear, we have a couple of simple troubleshooting tips to fix an external hard drive not showing up on Mac.
