External Hard Drive Not Mounting Mac? Here’s How To Fix It

It goes with out saying that you must join your exterior arduous drive to a pc to entry any recordsdata inside it. However within the case of Mac, there are occasions when the arduous drives don’t mount on the system, leaving customers with an unresponsive drive and inaccessible recordsdata.

Normally, once you plug in an exterior drive on a Mac, it routinely will get mounted to the system. However at any time when it doesn’t, it’s often due to unsuitable desire settings or corrupted SMC information.

Nonetheless, you may pressure mount the exterior drive by completely different strategies, all of that are listed beneath.

Why is My Exterior Exhausting Drive Not Getting Mounted? 

Exterior Exhausting Drive Not Mounting Mac? Right here’s How to Repair It

There are a number of completely different steps you may take to troubleshoot your misbehaving exterior arduous drive. We advise you to observe every of those steps from prime to backside till certainly one of them fixes your downside.

Make Certain There Are No {Hardware} Malfunctions

The very first thing you are able to do when your exterior disk isn’t mounting on a Mac is to guarantee that there aren’t any {hardware} malfunctions. These embody a probably broken Mac port in addition to broken arduous drive cables.

For this, you may attempt connecting the arduous drive to a different pc and see the way it responds. You could possibly additional join different exterior peripherals to that individual port in your Mac to guarantee that there’s no downside with any {hardware} elements.

Restart and Reconnect

Restarting and reconnecting your exterior drive may be the one repair you’ll want. That’s as a result of restarting your system begins a brand new person session, discarding any bugs/glitches which may have been current within the earlier session.

Moreover, we suggest you pressure stop the Finder as effectively. This can restart the file explorer and would possibly assist your system mount the arduous drive. So, right here’s the precise workflow you might observe:

1. Unplug your exterior drive.
2. Restart your pc.
3. Open Finder.
4. Maintain Shift and click on the Apple icon on the menu bar.
5. Then, Pressure Give up Finder.
   
6. Reconnect your exterior drive.

Verify Your Finder Settings

A Mac’s Finder preferences often go below the radar. Right here, you may view and modify a ton of system accessibility settings, certainly one of which is the choice to allow exterior disks.

Once you allow exterior disks, your system has the choice to mount the disk routinely, and it’ll additionally mean you can entry the drive immediately from the desktop display.

1. Open Finder.
2. On the menu bar, go to Finder > Preferences.
3. Click on on Common.
4. Allow Exterior disks.
   
5. Now, go to the Sidebar tab and allow Exterior disks right here as effectively.

Mount Your Drive Utilizing Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a vital macOS device to trace, alter and enhance your disk’s well being. So this device presents you the choice to forcefully mount your exterior drive to your pc as effectively.

Disk Utility will be accessed from the Highlight, and right here’s how:

1. Join the drive.
2. Press Command + House to deliver up the Highlight.
3. Sort and go to Disk Utility.
4. From the sidebar, choose your exterior arduous drive.
5. Click on on Mount.
   

First Help Your Exterior Drive

To discard any prospects of inner arduous disk points, you may run a First Help check. Because the identify suggests, the First Help device goals to revive your disk well being by scanning for and fixing any points that may be at the moment current in your exterior drive.

First Help can also be accessed through the Disk Utility device, and right here’s the way you run this check:

1. Join the exterior drive.
2. Press Command + House to deliver up the Highlight.
3. Sort and go to Disk Utility.
4. From the sidebar, choose your exterior arduous drive.
5. Click on on First Help.
   
6. Then, Run the First Help.

Reset SMC

The SMC is chargeable for ensuring that each one the {hardware} elements in your Mac work to their full capability. So, at any time when your exterior disk reveals undesirable points, you may reset the SMC to repair the issue.

Nevertheless, the precise technique to reset the SMC in your system would possibly differ relying in your system traits. So,

On Macs With T2 Chips

1. Shut down.
2. Unplug your exterior arduous drive and the facility cable.
3. Maintain left Management button + left Choice button + proper Shift key for 7-10 seconds.
4. Now, with out leaving the above buttons, maintain Energy for 10 seconds.
   
5. Energy in your pc.
6. Replug the exterior drive.

For Macs With M1 Chips

1. Shut down.
2. Unplug your exterior arduous drive and the facility cable.
3. In the event you’re utilizing a Macbook, shut its lid for 30 seconds. However, if you happen to’re utilizing an iMac, depart it turned off for 30 seconds.
4. Energy in your pc.
5. Replug the exterior drive.

On Macs With out Any T2/M1 Chips

1. Shut down.
2. Unplug your exterior arduous drive and the facility cable.
3. Maintain left Management button + left Choice button + left Shift key + energy button for 10 seconds.
   
4. Energy in your pc.
5. Replug the exterior drive.

On Macs With a Detachable Battery

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Unplug your exterior arduous drive and the facility cable.
3. Take away the battery from the again panel.
4. Maintain Energy for five seconds.
5. Re-attach the battery.
6. Energy in your pc.
7. Replug the exterior drive.

Erase Your Exterior Drive

Erasing your exterior drive will delete each file and folder inside it. Nevertheless, doing so will clear your drive with a file format appropriate to your Mac pc.

In the event you often use a number of working techniques, you might need set the exterior drive to function with a file system that doesn’t help the macOS. On this case, the one factor you are able to do is erase your complete drive and set the right format to your drive to function on.

In style file techniques, such because the NTFS file system and in addition the ext3, usually are not supported on a macOS. So, we suggest you set the file format to both APFS, exFAT, MS-DOS, or Mac OS Prolonged.

1. Join the drive.
2. Press Command + House to deliver up the Highlight.
3. Sort and go to Disk Utility.
4. From the sidebar, choose your exterior arduous drive.
5. Click on on Erase.
   
6. Set a Title to acknowledge your exterior arduous drive.
7. Select a Format to your drive.
8. Then, Erase the drive.

Update macOS

New OS updates are often included with compatibility patches and new security measures. So, if in case you have a few Mac updates piled up, we suggest you put in all these updates as quickly as doable. Not solely will it repair your exterior arduous drive compatibility points, however you’ll additionally discover that your pc begins to carry out higher general.

1. Open Finder.
2. From the menu bar, go to Apple > About This Mac.
3. Click on on Software program Update.
4. Wait till the system scans for brand new OS installs.
5. When it returns a listing of updates, click on Update Now to improve your system.