Summary: There are several reasons why your Mac won’t recognize external hard drive. If you are experiencing external hard drive not mounting in macOS Sierra or High Sierra, read on this post to get potential solutions to this problem. In addition, you can also learn how to recover lost external hard drive data on Mac computer.
You plug in your external hard drive to Mac computer and try to create a Time Machine backup, only to find it refuse to mount and doesn’t show up in Finder. You may feel very confused because everything seemed all right the last time you used it. Relax, you are not alone. There are a lot of users have the same issue of external hard drive not showing up in macOS Sierra or High Sierra. How to fix this issue? Here are several tricks you can try to troubleshoot external hard drive not mounting problem on Mac.
How to External Hard Drive Not Showing up in Sierra or High Sierra
1. Check your Finder preference
First of all, you need to make sure your Finder preference setting to correct. Go to Finder > Preferences > General and ensure that “Hard disks” and “External disks” are selected.
Mac Won’t Recognize External Hard Drive – How to Fix
2. Check the USB hub
Also need to make sure your external hard drive is plugged into the USB hub properly, or it may not receive enough power to mount. You can try connecting the drive to another USB hub or plug it into a self-powered USB hub.
3. Run Disk Utility
If your external hard drive doesn’t show up in Fifer, open Disk Utility to see if it appears here. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and run Disk Utility. If your drive shows up here but isn’t mounted, click Mount. If your drive fails to mount, click First Aid to find and correct minor errors with your drive.
4. Install the latest drivers for your drive
If your Mac won’t recognize external hard drive after High Sierra update, the possible reason is that your drivers for external hard drive are not up to date. You can visit the related website to download and install the latest drivers for your drive.
5. Reset NVRAM
Resetting NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) can be a general troubleshooting step for many Mac issues. To reset NVRAM, Shut down your Mac firstly. Next, turn on your Mac and immediately press these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you hear the second startup chime, then release the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.
Other External Hard Drive Problem on Mac
People usually back up important files to external hard drive to keep the files safe. But what if your external hard drive files get lost due to virus attack, accidental deletion, file system corruption or other reasons? If you unfortunately come across data loss with your external hard drive, you can use Stellar Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery, an effective data recovery tool to help you salvage external hard drive files on Mac.
Worked on Mac computer, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery software is able to access and recover data from various storage devices and different file systems including HFS, HFS+, FAT, ex-FAT, or NTFS.
Here are steps to retrieve files from external hard drive with Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery:
Step 1. Install Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery on your Mac and plug in your drive.
Step 2. Open the software and select file types to recover. Then click Next to continue.
How to Recover External Hard Drive Files on Mac
Step 3. Select your external storage device and click Scan.
How to Recover Lost Files from External Hard Drive on Mac
Step 4. After the scanning process completes, select the files you want to recover and click the Recover button to save the files to destination.
How to Recover Files from External Hard Drive on Mac
Note: The free trial version only supports scanning & previewing lost files in your external hard drive, to completely recover your files, you need to purchase the full version of Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery. Buy it now >
