How to Open an External Drive That is Not Showing On MacBook

When you attach any external hardware into your MacBook USB ports, you can see the notification on your desktop. You can also see the finder tab on the bottom left of the screen. If your device does not preview on your Mac screen, then it means your device is not formatted correctly or has corrupted data.

In this blog, we will teach you the causes behind the external Drive not attaching to the Mac and how to solve the issue.

How to Open an External Drive Not Showing On MacBook

There are several reasons behind the flash drive, hard Drive, UBS drive, and SSD drives, not previewing on your Mac. Maybe it is not formatted correctly, it may be corrupt or the cable might be faulty.

Here are the steps to identify the issue and fix the problem to stop external Drive from launching your MacBook:-

 1) Edit Preferences

Here is an easy way to fix the Hard Drive to move on your desktop. Here are the steps that show you how you can mount the drive on your desktop:-

1. Launch the Finder application.
2. Tap on the Finder menu that appears on the top of your desktop screen.
3. Hit Preferences.
4. Tap general and make sure to check there is a tick on the side of the External Drive.

If there is already setup the external Drive automatically appears on your screen, now follow the steps given:-

2) Check The Cable

The first option is always to check the USB connection plugged in, maybe its problem with the cable.

One main reason why drives fail to move is not getting enough power. If the power is supplied through the USB-A cable, then you need to check your power adaptor. If you are using old MacBook then you need a USB power cable, it is split with a USB connector that requires to be plugged into MacBook as well as you the driver to supply enough power to the drives. Always remember that the driver doesn’t have an external power supply.

Make sure that cable is not faulty and it would help if you tried another cable with your driver to fix the issue. In the same way, if you have a USB port, then check after replacing it.

3) Use Another Mac and PC

In this method, you need to use Another Mac to plug in the driver. If you again fail to plug in to mount the Drive on your desktop, and then it may be an issue with the Drive. And you try to plug in the PC if the driver mounts on your PC that means the problem with your Mac is by driver formatted issue and not readable by MacBook.

4) Using Disk Utility to Access Drive

If you have checked your device, my many methods mentioned above, and you find your Disk is faulty, and then use Apple Disk Utility Program to access disk power to fix the issue with the Drive.

Here are the steps on how to fix the issue by using disk utility to access Drive:-

1. Launch the Spotlight by tapping on the cmd+Space-bar key at the same time, and enter Disk Utility in the column then hit enter to start the program.
2. Check in the left column on the screen to find the Hard Drive appear or not.
3. If you find the hard Drive in Disk Utility, then you need to check the underneath volume. If you do not see any Volume in the list that means your MacBook is not able to obtain the Drive.
4. The first option shown as First Aid, Restore and Erase. First Add worked as check disk error and solved the issue; Restore permits you to erase and replace drive data and contents. And Erase permanently deletes all the data available in the Drive.
5. Tap the First Aid option and choose Run.
6. If First Aid finds errors in your Mac, then you can fix the issue and repair your Disk.

Ava Williams is a Microsoft Office expert and has been working in the technology industry since 2002. As a technical expert, she has written technical blogs, manuals, white papers, and reviews for many websites such as office.com/setup.

Source : MacBook