External PC Hard Drive won't show up on my Mac

My friend copied a bunch of files on his home PC to his external USB Hard Drive.
I plugged it in to my USB hub, turned it on, but my Mac won't recognize the drive. It doesn't show anything.
How do I get it to see this drive so I can pull the files off?

Not all USB drives work well with Macs.
Have you tried direct connect?
Do you have a USB2 controller? one of the first things to add.
Is it FAT32 format? NTFS? something else? You should be able to read both of those.
Have you looked to see if it shows at all in System Profiler or Disk Utility?
How about after a restart with it plugged in and already on?

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External Lacie Hard Drive Won't Show On Desktop

Hello,
I have a LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface. I know this topic has been posted before but nothing seems to be working for me. The hard drive will not show on my desktop, but it does show up in the Disk Utility. It's there, but I can't access it.
I have disconnected the drive many times. I have repaired the permissions on both drives more than once. I have swapped cables between firewire and USB. I have tried shutting down everything, unplugging everything and waiting 15 mintues before turning everything on. (Three times) (I have tried turning the computer on before connecting the drive, no good. I tried again with the drive already plugged in, no good, and also tried turning the computer on, then plugging the drive in and turning it on.
I have another LaCie Hard Drive, The one that has the design by F.A. Porsche and is 250GB. This drive connects perfectly. I don't understand. Hope someone out there can help me out, take care,
Tom

has the Lacie HD been formatted by another computer?

My external Seagate hard drive won't show up on my iMac

I've had my Seagate external hard drive connected to my iMac for some time now and have been using it for Time Machine Backups.... Recently I noticed the drive would not show up in the finder and backup began to fail because it couldn't find the drive.

Hello Jwlane64,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information on this, take a look at:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170
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My external USB hard drive won't show up in Finder, even though it's visible in both the Disk Utility, which says the drive is fine, and in Terminal.
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It has all my iTunes and iPhoto files!
Many thanks

I have a very similar issue. I have a seagate external usb drive 500 GB that is partitioned. One FAT 32 the other MAC OS Extended (Journaled). It has suddenly for no apparent reason stopped being able to mount the Mac OS volume. The FAT 32 vol. works fine. Disk Utility says that it is fine when I do a repair or verity etc. When I click on mount, it won't work. It says mount failed. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting. Same thing happens once that is done. ??????Any ideas?????

After installing snow leopard my external hard drive won't show up on screen or backup

Afer installing leopard my external hard drive won't show up on my desk top. It also won't backup my hard drive with time machine. I need help.

Try going to finder preferences, general, make sure show these items on desktop external disks is clicked. You can also go to sidebar (same pane) and click it there so it will show when you open your HD. Time Machine>system preferences>time machine>turn it off click select disk, make sure the correct disk is selected, the turn TM back on. Hope this helps.

HELP! External hard drive won't show up in finder!

Last night, I was updating my macbook (from August 2008, still runs on leopard) and it needed to restart. I forgot to eject my LaCie Porsche 1tb external hard drive first and, when it rebooted, I got the error of death (aka "disk was not ejected..."). When connected to the USB port, the drive lights up, I can hear it spinning, but it won't show up in finder and I can't see it in Disk Utility to repair it (after the first error of death, the computer wouldn't even acknowledge that I had the drive plugged in). I've tried plugging it into the different USB ports and even on a different macbook, but no luck in getting the computer to recognize it long enough to use Disk Utility or DiskWarrior. Any tips on how I can get my macbook to read the drive again?

If the external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility when connected to two or more different computers, then the problem is with the hard drive, it is broken. Get a new one.

External Firewire hard drive won't mount after 10.4.10 update

I see many posts about USB drives not mounting after 10.4.10 update. Just lending my voice to that issue (my USB drive won't work either) as well as the 10.4.10 update breaking Firewire drives.
Hope a fix is coming. No backups are scaaaary.

How to fix the problem of a missing external Hard Drive (Firewire) after it vanishes from you desktop after installing 10.4.10 update.
I have a iMac PPC (Non intel). Aparently my system upated installed the wrong version of 10.4.10 and thus my external firewire hard drives a 320 GB Westerndigital My Book, and Acomdata 80 GB, and aWestern Digital 160 GB media center all vanished from the desktop.
The instructions below should be credited to several different people. I found various version of these steps in the Discussion. I combines a few of them into this one 10 step fix and it worked for me. I hope it works for you.
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3) Restart holding down the Command (Apple) + Option + P + R keys for three startup bongs, then release the keys and your computer will start up as usual.
4) Verify and repair disk Permission using Disk Utility. (Several things were repaired here)
5) Instal 10.4.10 Combo PPC
6) Restart Again
7) Again repair Disk permissions (None of mine needed to be repaired fyi this time)
8) Unplug Power cable and Firewire cable from External Hard Drive (leave along for 1 minute)
9) Reconnect power to Firewire External Drive first then the Firewire cable to the drive second, then the firewire cable from the Drive to the computer last.
10) Turn on your Firewire Drive... you will head it spin up and eventually show up on your desktop just like it did before the 10.4.10 update.

External USB hard drive won't reformat, won't appear in Finder, error: Unable to write to the last block of the device message

So I just got a new MacBook Air and since I had an external USB hard drive (TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 1TB) lying around, I decided to use it for back-up. Since I only have just the one hard drive, I decided to partition it into two - one for Time Machine backups, and one for general files (formatted FAT so I could use it with Windows). However, the partitioning failed and I ended up with a partition named disk1s2. Plus, it won't appear on Finder anymore, but it appears in Disk Utility.
I have tried to reformat it, but I always get the message "Unable to write to the last block of the device".
Here's the info about my drive:
Name: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Type: Disk
Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
Disk Identifier: disk1
Media Name: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Media Type: Generic
Connection Bus: USB
USB Serial Number: 1220069C
Device Tree: IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC@14
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: Yes
Location: External
Total Capacity: 1 TB
Disk Number: 1
Partition Number: 0
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported
And here's for disk1s2:
Name: disk1s2
Type: Partition
Disk Identifier: disk1s2
Mount Point: Not mounted
File System: Mac OS Extended
Connection Bus: USB
Device Tree: IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC@14
Writable: Yes
Capacity: 999.86 GB
Owners Enabled: No
Can Turn Owners Off: Yes
Can Be Formatted: Yes
Bootable: Yes
Supports Journaling: Yes
Journaled: No
Disk Number: 1
Partition Number: 2
Here's what it says when I run diskutil in Terminal:
Device Identifier:        disk1
Device Node:              /dev/disk1
Part of Whole:            disk1
Device / Media Name:      TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
File System:              None
Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
OS Can Be Installed:      No
Media Type:               Generic
Protocol:                 USB
SMART Status:             Not Supported
Total Size:               1.0 TB (1000204884480 Bytes) (exactly 1953525165 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
Read-Only Media:          No
Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable:                Yes
Whole:                    Yes
Internal:                 No
OS 9 Drivers:             No
Low Level Format:         Not supported
I didn't have any data in it prior to the failed partitioning attempt, so there aren't any worries of data recovery. But I'd really like to be able to use this drive again, and save some money (external hard drives are expensive where I live). Anyone with any ideas?

I'd also like to add that repairing the disk using Disk Utility does nothing but tell me to reformat the drive. So I'm stuck in a loop here.

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Yes, I am trying not to lose all of my stuff, but when I go to install OS X from the disk, the hard drive is not there to install it to. The only time the drive shows up is when I use disk utility from the installer disk and it can't repair the drive. The only option that I can see is format. I am going to try Target disk mode again later today and see if I can retreive everything from the drive, that is if it shows up. I didn't show up the last time I tried that.

My external hard drive won't show up on my MacBook Pro

So, I'm trying to transfer my music from my PC to my MacBook Pro. I put all my music on an external hard drive, but for some reason when I plug it into my MacBook it won't show up on the desk top. I've already changed my preferences in Finder so that hard drives and disks will show on the desktop, but still nothing. I looked in utilities to see if the hard drive was there, and still nothing. The hard drive is a Toshiba and is fairly new, the light goes on when I plug it into my laptop, so I'm very confused. Can anyone help me with my predicament?

Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

My external hard drive won't show up on the desktop!!

Alright!
I bought a 250Go external hard disk at the same time as my alumnium iMac around september 2007. Since then I had no problems.
I also created partitions on my hard disk:
1 - Mac = Mac OS extended (Journaled) 202 Go
2 - PC = MS-DOS (Fat) 30 Go
When I turn on on my hard disk, both icons usually appear on my desktop but since yesterday, ONLY my PC icon appear.
I went in the Disk Utility and it seems that the MAC partition is always here but won't show up on the desktop. It's like it's become invisible or something.
Should I be worried? Because I use the MAC partition to back up all my files with Time Machine.
I find it annoying so anybody can help me out? Thanks!!

Patrick, I have same issue with my (Intel) MacBook's internal HD. Tried your Script solution but recv'd Systems Events ERROR "Can't set disk "MacBook HD" to true".
The (missing) HD is Boot Camp Partitioned and running Fusion. BTW, Fusion/WinXP will no longer open - "File not Found" error. Also, I didn't immediately notice the disappearance because my MacBook started booting from one of ext HD's (w/o me changing the startup drive).
Any ideas greatly appreciated. I haven't tried the Terminal solutions posted since I'm not Terminal savey.

New external hard drive won't show up in disk utilities...

I have a 2010 macbook pro 13" and just bought a 1tb toshiba canvio external hard drive.
The hard drive itself has a USB 3.0 hub running out of it and the specifications say that it needs to run into at least a 2.0 hub, which I have.
I know I will need to reformat the external drive to get it to work on a mac, but it won't show up at all when I plug it in... the drive starts spinning but there is no recognition by my mac.
Does anyone know what this is and how to fix it?

So far all MacBook users have been able to use this drive as a USB 2.0 by using a USB 2.0 cable with a micro usb connector (same as smartphones, Kindle, Nook) on one end. Connect the micro connector to the opening on the left side of the USB 3.0 connector on the Canvio - if you look closely you'll see that side is exactly like the USB 2.0 micro receptacle. That's all you need to connect as a USB 2.0 - the other connections are for USB 3.0 which no Apple system has yet (Dec 2011). Connect the other end (a standard USB type A plug) to your MacBook and it will work. If you want to use it for Time Machine, you'll have to reformat it. None of the supplied software will work with Mac You can read more at this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3510032?start=0&tstart=0

My external hard drive won't show up on my macbook air, and my iPhone when connected won't show up as connected in iTunes, help

When I connect my external hard drive to my MB Air it is to recognizing it. It did 2 days ago and it is compatible I have been using it for a month now. Also when I connect my iPhone 6 to it, it won't show up in iTunes anymore......please help

Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

External drive and hard drives won't show up

I've had off and on problems opening my Pioneer blu-ray burner and my two LaCie external hard drives on my MacBook Pro 4,1 running Snow Leopard. Now, I can't get them to open at all. The cables, the HDs and the drive are all fine on my desktop.
Any suggestions?

Do they show up on the device list in System Profiler? In Disk Utility?

My Passport External Hard Drive won't show up

I've been using a My Passport external hard drive for the past two years, and it's always worked perfectly fine. All my files are on it since my Macbook Air can't fit much. But just recently, I plugged it in and the disk runs, and the LED light flashes, but it doesn't show up on my computer at all. What should I do? I don't think it's a bad cable because otherwise it wouldn't run at all.

There is also a chance that the cable may have a poor
connection, as there are several contacts inside and
the cable ends may not be making a connection. As
power to run the device may get there, data may not.
A spare known-good cable is also something to try;
be sure to follow the shutdown/restart as previously
suggested since the device may not appear correctly
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A shutdown (then dis or reconnect) lessens the likeli-
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ability to use the external drive at all. When it doesn't
appear on the desktop at all, you have to be careful.
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External PC Hard Drive won't show up on my Mac

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