Hard drive won't appear in File Explorer, BIOS or PC. This is happing all over the place, at least to the 500GB hard drives. Go figure. put 2 lines of masking tape on top of the DATA side of the HDD connector, then plug in the ribbon cable and turn on the machine. Step 8: Wait for your Mac to boot up, open "Terminal" application from "Utilities" drop-down menu. Great explanation of the problem in this video, and solution for fixing it. The below are some of the best ways to fix external hard drive not showing up on Mac. The USB cable is damaged. I tried with an older rotating hard drive, connected it using the flex cable, and it did boot and worked as it should. Although you can fix the "hard drive not showing up" issue according to the solutions we mentioned above, we advise you to recover data at first. Shut down your Mac and then unplug the power cord and all USB connections. In the end I purchased a replacement for the cable and the problem was solved. To my surprise it was detected by the OS when doing an "Option" boot and I was able to load OS X. In this case, none of software is helpful. If you choose any other drive, the partition option will become unclickable. The hard drive is not recognized at boot up, so I get the famous question mark. Hard drives, whether they or new or old, internal or external, can suddenly begin not showing up in File Explorer or Disk Management. What's more, this program can also recover lost data from formatted or corrupted Macintosh HD external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. A 2014 macbook pro, changed the flex cable still the same results, 05/24/2017 by Worked for me!!!!!!!!!!! But who cares these days?? Find a USB drive and someone with a Mac and make yourself an OS X (or MacOS) install disk. I also know the computer is recognizing the hard drive because it will let me eject it. Now Im back in track! But of course I would prefer to put it inside and connect it with SATA. In many cases, an external hard drive doesn't show up on your Mac. Internal hard drive disk not recognized. The USB port is not working. Erase the internal hard drive and reinstall macOS. After trying everything I could, even buying a new HD, I founded this article and went to the Apple distributor here in Barcelona looking for the cable. Simple rebooting can do wonders on your Mac. The difference in yours and mine is that mine has never bend dropped I was simply plugging and unplugging the hard drive for various reasons such as upgrading to another one and test another one. Here is the fix for External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac issue. 2.Checked a different seagate external hard drive on the Mac pro notebook and the external drive is not showing up in the finder or on desktop. If the internal drive is APFS, use Disk Utility to ERASE IT to "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition map", then clone the external drive to the internal. Since this original answer in 2010 I have changed the replacement cable to the 2012 model one as it is more substantial. Fix (Old/New) Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 10. After taking everything to the Apple Store, they said that lots of the macbook pros from 2009, the hard drive cable/ribbon were just going bad and they replaced the cable for free. Try connecting the hard drive to a different USB port — it could be a hardware issue. Do this: Hold down the Option while powering on your Mac. Look in the column on the left to see if the hard drive appears there. Amazing! If the internal hard drive disappeared from your iMac or Mac mini, you can check the internal hard drive in Terminal, especially for a internal Fusion drive. Step 1: Download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on another Mac computer. 4. This time luck was on my side and yes I got the cable. This was after many hours of frustration and a trip to the Genius bar where the drive failed their diagnostics. saved me a client. If your external hard drive not showing up in Finder but visible in Disk Utility, go to Finder window and view below the favourite list. Try the drive in another Mac — if it works there, the problem is with the USB ports on your Mac. Check the internal hard drive in Terminal. If the internal hard drive is nowhere to be found, the problem may be due to a … Sometimes, an This worked great! Well, there are a number of reasons why you can't see the hard drive on your Mac. HDD back on. Then wipe your internal drive and install the OS (which will automatically install a recovery partition). If unfortunately, I bought a new hard drive and it didn't work either. From the above description, we can see several factors can cause the hard dive or external hard drive not showing up issue. I never did throw the old cable back in to test if the tape was a singular fix (I was just happy to see the SSD show up in Recovery again), but I sure kept the potentially-fine cable for a future fix. I also sprayed some connector sprayto make sure there was no problem with erosion on the pins or hard drive. Hope this helps! Data recovery from corrupted internal hard drive. I had replaced the hard drive and the cable and I still could not figure out why it is not working. Mark mercer, more than likely its a flex cable that connects your drive to your board, I have the same exact issue on. Internal hard drive not showing up in Disk Management – This situation can come up if the drive is not connected correctly. Why External Hard Drive Not Showing up on Mac. If your (external or internal) hard drive not showing up Mac and you want to fix it, please read this page. I tried to connect another hard disk and got the same error message. make the division between DATA AND POWER on the tape and plug into ribbon cable. If you can't see the internal hard drive but you can start and use your Mac normally, the good news is that your macOS volume (which usually is the Macintosh HD) is working fine. When your Seagate hard drive not working, it is usually about external hard disk not detected, not recognized, or not showing up. Drive would not boot up correctly, i could reformat and reinstall snow leopard but when i would try to reboot, nothing. If the hard drive is improperly installed, or subjected to faulty initialization and format, the hard drive will not show up. Solution 2. Step 2 Expand Disk driver and locate the hard drive or external hard drive which cannot be detected by Windows. Hit on the "Apple" icon available on the top left corner of your Mac screen and then opt for the "Restart" option from the appearing drop down menu. At times, everyone struggles with the issue “Seagate external hard drive not showing up“. Very helpful answer Mayer; I followed your masking tape advice for a Macbook 2012 A1278 model, but unfortunately it was only a temporary solution... the drive disappeared again after 2 hours of usage. Same thing here, I can't see the drive in the utility tray, i put it in my other older (2008) macbook 15 it worked and I formated it in 1 minute. Different thing are happening to different people here. I've tried the drive in all 4 of my internal bays and looked to see if shows up under BootCamp but no luck yet. Go figure. Cost me £20 for the cable and a lot of wasted time reinstalling the system all over again etc etc. THE TAPE GOES ON THE UPPER SIDE THAT IS ONLY PLASTIC. When you can't access the internal hard drive because the Mac is not booting up, you can try these solutions. Solution 4. As one last ditch effort, I tried plugging in the old thought-to-be-damaged hard drive into into an external USB SATA dock. Besides this, there can be a change that data present on an external hard drive is corrupt, which is one of the reasons why your Mac can't detect an external drive. The HDD is not spinning at all. Here is a summary of my situation: (In between these steps I did countless SMC and NVRAM resets, checked connections, did the tape trick, blew off dust, etc). Luis Ramirez If it works, you should see a FireWire icon bopping around on the target machine's display. You can make the hard drive show up by partitioning it. This is what worked for me i first reset the SMC by unplugging the macbook from the power adapter and i held down Shift/CTRL/OPTION/ AND THE POWER BUTTON DOWN for 10 seconds simultaneously, then let them go at the same time. But you can try to boot up your Mac in Safe Boot or reset the PRAM / NVRAM, and then see if the internal hard drive is showing up on your Mac. Have reformatted the disk as MacOS extended journaled, 1 partition - disk now recognised. Recover Data from Hard Drive Not Showing up. Basics. The hard disk doesn't have a drive letter or the drive letter conflicts with other disks. Hello, same problem, MBP would not recognize the HD. So without any delay, let’s have a look at them. The reason is that when an internal Fusion drive is split, you can't see it showing up on Mac normally. I had the same problem. The SuperDrive being greyed out is probably because the drive is empty. I haven't used it in a few months, but now when I plug it in, it doesn't show up anywhere. Summary: In this blog, we’ll share different methods to address the ‘external hard drive not showing up on Mac’ issue on macOS Big Sur, Catalina and other lower versions. Hi there, ... Drive would not boot up correctly, i could reformat and reinstall snow leopard but when i would try to reboot, nothing. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh. Instead, it would be split into an extra SSD and a hard drive, making the internal fusion hard drive invisible. 20 years of building and repairing PCs I never had this happening or heard of it that a SATA cable is 'going bad'. I had these issues on two occasions for 13” Macbook Pros from 2012. "Sharing and explaining", could be Potus' right hand man, when it comes to dealing with people and all the systems affected. Robin, where did you get the cable from ? So without any delay, let’s have a look at them. Fix The Seagate Hard Drive with Disk Utility . PS: This was a helpful link btw on how to reset nvram and SMC. When your internal hard drive is not showing up in Terminal or in Disk Utility under Recovery Mode, then your hard drive should have some serious corruption. is simple. This worked for me. Read all the stuff in here about new cables etc . I may not have read this good enough but found out. This article has the most comprehensive solutions to Seagate internal and external hard drive not working problems on both Windows and Mac. The last thing I had done was connected my macbook to my big screen tv via mini display port to display port/hdmi/dvi adapter by gigaware. But I am fine now hope this helps someone... '''Fine job, my son. If your additional drive is new or completely erased, then to be visible in (My) Computer / This PC, it must be partitioned. I will order a new cable just in case...but this enabled me to get a CURRENT time machine back up. As long as you have a hard drive running on your computer, it's only a matter of time before you get the problem. 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