External Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows or OS X?.
Mac or Windows computer won’t recognize your external hard drive or flash drive? This is a common problem, especially when connecting hard drives between Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can also happen on one system where it worked fine for a long time and then suddenly becomes unrecognizable by the operating system.
Sometimes it’s easy to fix, and sometimes it’s a little more difficult. In this article, I will try to review various Mac and Windows solutions to solve this problem. How a disk is formatted and what file system is used are the most common reasons why a disk is not recognized.
Designate the drive letter
Another main reason is that the drive is simply not recognized by Windows or Mac, and therefore not even visible on your system. This is usually a driver or hardware problem. To find out if your problem is with formatting or not being recognized, go to Disk Management in Windows or Disk Utility in OS X and see if the disk appears there.
If your drive appears here but not in Windows Explorer, you may need to assign a drive letter to it. Windows usually does this automatically, but sometimes due to other connected devices, your external hard drive is recognized but not assigned a drive letter. In Disk Management, just right-click the drive and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Pick a letter for your drive and you should be fine. If the drive appears but you receive messages that the drive needs to be formatted, etc., read the next section below.
On a Mac, the drive should automatically appear on the desktop. If not, go to Disk Utility and check if it appears under the “External” heading.
If the drive appears here but does not appear on the OS X desktop, click First Aid to try to repair the drive. If there is a file system on the disk that OS X does not recognize, you need to remove it and format it with FAT or HFS +.
If the disk does not appear at all in Disk Management or Disk Utility, you have a different type of problem. Scroll down to the Not Displayed section.
Format the drive
When it comes to file formats, there are a few major formats that are used roughly 99% of the time: FAT32 and NTFS for Windows and HFS + (Mac OS Extended) for Mac. OS X can now read and write to FAT32 formatted drives, but can only read NTFS volumes.
Windows is worse in the sense that it can’t even read or write HFS + volumes by default. You can force Windows to do this, but you have to buy third-party software. The only other option is to format the hard drive and use the FAT32 format for better compatibility.
When you connect an HFS + formatted drive to Windows, you will receive a message stating that the drive needs to be formatted to be usable.
If you see this message, it means that Windows does not recognize the file system on the disk. Make sure you connect the drive to the correct operating system and back up any data you might need before formatting.
So what is the best format to use so you can see your hard drive across multiple operating systems? The most compatible legacy format is FAT32, but it limits the maximum file size to just 4 GB. You can read my previous post on how to format an external hard drive with FAT32.
If you need support for large files, you should use the exFAT format. It is newer and supports much larger files, but only works with newer versions of OS X and Windows. You need OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or higher or Windows XP or higher.
On Windows, you can choose exFAT as the file system format in addition to NTFS and FAT32 When you format a disk in OS X with Disk Utility, you can also choose the exFAT format if you like.
Drive not showing
If you connect the drive to your computer and nothing happens, one of the following events may occur: a problem with your hard drive, the correct software or drivers are not installed on your system, or something is not working properly with the operating system. Let’s start with some common problems and how to solve them.
Windows – Device Manager
Sometimes, old drivers can cause the device to malfunction when connected to Windows. You can try to fix this by first going to Command Prompt (Start and type CMD) and running the following command:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices = 1
Once you’ve done that, open Device Manager (run and type in Device Manager) and then click View – Show Hidden Devices.
Expand Portable Devices, right-click all the grayed out items and select Delete. Restart your computer and try connecting your hard drive again.
In addition to portable devices, you can expand Disk Drives and try to remove the device from there if it doesn’t appear as expected in Windows Explorer.
Windows – USB device
If you are connecting a USB drive to Windows and you receive the “USB device not recognized” error, be sure to check the link for how to fix this specific problem. Windows tries to blame the device for the malfunction, but this is usually a Windows problem.
USB ports / secondary computer
You can also try plugging the drive into a different USB port on your computer to make sure this isn’t a problem. If you are connecting to a USB hub, disconnect it and try connecting the drive directly to your computer.
The only way to know for sure if the problem is with your computer or your hard drive at this point is to connect the drive to another computer. If the drive doesn’t work on another computer, there is most likely something wrong with the drive itself.
Leadership tools
If you find that the problem is with the drive itself, you can try downloading diagnostics from the manufacturer of the drive. Almost all major brands like Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, etc. have these diagnostic tools.
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/ Western Digital DataLifeguard Diagnostic Fujitsu Diagnostic Utility (Toshiba)
You can also read my previous post on checking your hard drive for errors for more information and additional tools for checking hard drives. If the disk is damaged or has bad sectors, these tools can fix it.
USB 3.0 drives
If you have a USB 3.0 external hard drive, there are a few additional considerations to consider. First, make sure you are using the correct cable. I ran into several clients who had this problem and solved it simply by using a different USB cable. So try a few cables before giving up.
Second, you may need to update your driver in Windows. Go to Device Manager again, expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers, right-click the one that says USB 3.0 in the text and choose Update Driver.
Energy issues
The only other possibilities for this type of problem are a power outage or complete hard drive failure. Make sure that a suitable external power adapter is connected to the hard drive and that the LED on the front of the drive is on, not orange or red. Also, try using different cables as some of them can transfer more power than others.
Hope this article helps you find out your external hard drive on Windows or Mac. If not, please leave a comment and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!
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