MacBook not recognizing external hard drive

After months with no problem, my MacBook Pro is not recognizing my external hard drive (USB3.0) as my time machine backup. Yet, when I enter time machine, the backups appear.

Thank u! it worked
Cheers!

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Mac Not Recognizing External Hard Drive, I Want to Use the HDD to boot Windows

Let's get this stuff straight first:
The Hard Drive is from a PC that I am not using
The Hard Drive already has Windows 8.1 installed as well as all my documents and data. (from the old PC, of course.)
It does work, however after connecting it to my iMac (late 2014 / 5K Retina) it isn't recognized by Finder, Disk Utility or the (Option) Boot screen.
Yes, I understand I will need to install drivers, so I'll need help doing that as soon as we get Yosemite to recognize the HDD.
What I am wanting to do is use this external drive to run Windows from the boot up screen. But I need OS X to actually recognize the drive in the first place. Then I'll need a little help installing the drivers for Windows onto the Drive, unless those are already installed, since it was originally used in my PC? (I'm not sure how drivers work.)
Nonetheless, if it's not possible to be used as an external boot for Windows, I'd still like to use it to obtain and store files/documents on.
Thanks guys!
-Austin

How do you have the drive hooked up to your computer? Did you but an adapter? If so, is it one that is supposed to work with a Mac? Did it come with a power supply?
Some of those USB adapters don't work well with Macs and that could be causing problems. Test it on a PC if possible, just to make sure the adapter itself isn't bad.
~Lyssa

Itunes not recognizing external hard drive

I have a smartdisc firelite external hard drive that was working perfectly until yesterday when I bought a shuffle and now itunes is not recognizing to go the hard drive to locate the songs. Can someone walk me threw this so I can download some songs from my external drive to itunes and then to the shuffle ? Thank you so much

†ry the refresh script from here http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2005/10/20/itunes-javascripts/

IMac Not Recognizing External Hard Drive

Hi friends,
I recently upgraded my MacBook from 5 years ago to the newest iMac. In doing so, I transferred my computer using Time Machine & my external hard drive. The hard drive is partitioned to allow for storage as well as Time Machine backups. I plugged my external hard drive into a PC to try to access these files and it didn't recognize the hard drive, so I didn't think anything of it and unplugged it.
Now I can't get my iMac to recognize the hard drive at all. I have gone into Disk Utilities to see if it's listed there, but nothing. It usually makes a lot of noise when it's first plugged in (whirring and sounding like it's about to take flight, etc.) but no sound today. However, the white light that indicates it's on is lit. This could be due to being plugged into the wall, however, and not having to do with being plugged into the computer. (This is a decently old hard drive in terms of technology, probably 4 years.)
I should have known better than to infect my hard drive with PC cooties. But that wouldn't have wiped everything clean, right? I'm wondering if my hard drive just happened to bite the dust coincidentally around this brush with fate.
Does this sound like something that is wrong with my hard drive, or with the connection? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have quite a few files I would hate to lose on the hard drive.
Thanks!

Zap the PRAM and Reset the SMC; then, hook up the ext HD, fire it up, and see if that fixes things.

CS2 not recognizing external hard drive as a scratch disk

I have an external hard drive that I want to use as a scratch disk but while I can navigate to have Photoshop open files from the drive, when I go to my prefs and try and select it as a scratch disk, it's not listed as an option - i.e. Photoshop only shows "start up" and "Mac Hard Drive" as choices. But when I go in that same dialogue box, and look for an additional plug-ins folder, I can navigate to the external drive. It's also doing the same thing for a thumb drive I have and two other external hard drives which mount fine.
I have restarted the program, removed the Prefs file, and restarted the program again but it still doesn't see any of the external hard drives.
Any ideas?

mike,
Most drives are not optimized for Mac as purchased. Unless marked otherwise, consider that every drive you acquire, whether a fast-spinning hard drive or USB flash drive comes formatted as FAT so it can be recognized and used by both Macs and Windows machines. Use Disk Utility and reformat it as HFS+ "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Just be aware that if you are reformatting your existing drives, you need to back up your data first or it'll be gone forever.
Neil

Not recognizing external hard drive

When I first bought my SimpleTech 320GB external hard drive, it did work. It connected and updated everything through Time Machine. After about, a month, it just did not show up in my Devices or on my Desktop.
I've tried everything. I went to the SimpleTech site and they said to put it in the direct USB port (which I have been doing). I've tried both USB ports and even got a new USB cord and it's not working.
If anyone has some suggestions, please send them my way. I'm in dire need of some space on this thing so I can install some updates.
Message was edited by: lisuhhx

I am having this same problem all of a sudden. My external hd shows up in disk utility; however, it does not show up under devices or is it recognized any more by time machine. When I try and repair it, the repair fails and list a "invalid node structure" and "volume check failed". I disconnect the external hd's power source and firewire connection, reconnected, and this did nothing.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

MacBook not showing external hard drive connected to Air Port Extreme

I have a MacBook 5.2 running Mac OS X Version 10.5.7. I am running a wireless network Air Port Extreme router Version 7.4.2. I have connected a 1 TB Western Digital 10EAVS External hard drive and a printer to the Air Port Extreme router via a USB 2 hub. My MacBook sees and I am able to utilize the printer, but the Western Digital 1 TB External drive does not show up. I can see the 1 TB External drive via the Air Port Application setup, but it is not showing up on my desktop or in Utilities/Disk Utilities. I have connected the External drive directly to the USB port on my MacBook, and the drive showed up on my desktop instantly. I partitioned the External drive into two partitions and ran Time Machine which successfully backed up my MacBook. I then disconnected the External hard drive from my MacBook and reconnected it to another USB port in the hub connected to the Air Port Extreme. Once again, my MacBook does not see the External hard drive. I can see the External hard drive via the Air Port Extreme application right down to the two individual partitions. I even removed the USB hub and plugged the External hard drive directly into the Air Port Extreme router, but my MacBook still did not see the hard drive. I've restored version 7.4 and 7.4.1 on the Air Port Extreme, but it did not help. Does anyone have any insight what settings might need to be changed on my MacBook to allow it to connect to the External hard drive while it is plugged into the Air Port Extreme wireless router?

Do you have an older "dome" style AEBS or the rectangular model? The former will not work with TM. Early versions of the former may not work until you enable them to see a TM drive by doing the following:
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt paste the following command and press RETURN:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
The drive should now be accessible via TM.

Not recognizing external hard drive after upgrading to mountain lion

I recently upgraded to mountain lion. While my external hard drive originally showed on the desktop it does not anymore, The hard drive is partitioned between my wife (laptop) and my desktop. My wife's part does show on the desktop but mine does not. From reading some of the issues on the Support Community I did a disk repair as it does show up under disk utility. Although the disk repair was performed successfully, it still does not appear. I read some other comments about Fuse but I don't understand what this is about. Any suggestions to get my external hard drive back so I can keep my computer backed up. Thanks.

It is powered (the light is on). I was uploading photos from the drive yesterday, so it worked perfectly fine before the upgrade to 10.6.8 (which I did during the night). Is there anything else to try before I move it to another computer to see if it works? Again, thanks.

Final Cut Pro X not recognizing external hard drive

I'm trying to create a new event in FCPX and the drop down options on the side of where I want to save is not showing my external hard drive. I have used other external hard drives in the past and it works just fine.

Yeah I know but here is what´s happening step by step:
This is when I open it:
And then this:
Here you can see that the ext disk is showing in fcpx. But after 2 sec or so a loadbar pops up...
And then there is nothing to select. Only the internal drive. I do not understand it.
It´s never been like this before. But I tried a different harddrive (Lacie Rugged) and that was ok. So it´s only the main project disk(the mother, lacie blade runner) that fail to show inside fcpx.

Not Recognizing External Hard Drive Mac Book Pro

Good Day!
I have a 2010 Mac Book Pro that I just downloaded the neww OS X Lion for the upgrades ext... I haven't had any other problems exept that before I downloaded the Lion my Mac would recognize my external hard drive (WD passport). And now it doesn't, I even go to the finder and it doesn't even show up under "computer" to make sure there isn't anything wrong with my external hard drive I plugged it into another mac that doesn't have Lion and it would work. Please Help because my external drive has everything 1TG of everything...
Thanks!!!

Hi,
I had already checked in Finder's Pref's for the check mark for External Disks and it is checked. That is for external disks to show up on your desk top.
So still no luck for my Mac to reconize my external hard drive with this new OS X Lion Program. Should I just take my computer into the apple store?
Thank you!!

MacBook Not recognising External Hard Drive

Whenever I plugged in my External HD it would show up under devices no problem.
Now it wont show at all.
There drive appears to be spinning. It has its own power source.
System Profiler show this info:
Product ID: 0x0277
Vendor ID: 0x059b (Iomega Corporation)
Version: 0.00
Serial Number: 6F41FFFFFFFF
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Iomega
Location ID: 0xfd300000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
Any ideas?

Open Disk Utility with it attached. Does it show up there?
Steve

File transfer from MacBook Pro into external hard drive

I can't copy files from the MacBook into an external hard drive.
In the 'Get Info' section, it says read-only. However, the hard drive have just been recently bought.
I had the same problem with our previous hard drive. Although the previous hard drive was 'read-only' I was able to copy and paste files in our old HP laptop.
What can I do in order to copy and paste files from the MacBook into the hard drive?
Hard drive = Toshiba
Capacity = 1TB

In my last paragraph, I said
"Note that Windows PCs cannot write natively to an HFS drive, so if you need to exchange files between Mac and PC, we need to talk about different options."
Windows cannot read Mac Extended (HFS) formatted drives; the Mac cannot write to Windows (NTFS) formatted drives.
The only formats fully compatible between Mac and PC are FAT32 (largely deprecated) and exFAT. If you need full read-write compatibility between Windows and Mac, and you can erase the drive (ie, it's a new drive or you have confirmed backups), reformat to exFAT using Disk Utility.
If you have a drive with files on it and you cannot erase them at the moment:
- if the drive is formatted for the Mac, you can purchase MacDrive for the PC
- if the drive is formatted for Windows (NTFS), you can purchase Paragon NTFS for the Mac.
Matt

Using Carbon Copy Cloner which is quicker firewire 800 Macbook Pro to external hard drive or Macbook Pro to same via Airport Extreme?

Using Carbon Copy Cloner which is quicker firewire 800 Macbook Pro to external hard drive or Macbook Pro to same via Airport Extreme?

Firewire 800 is the fastest and most reliable. Also it's bootable if you hold the option key down on a wired or built in keyboard. Not bootable via Airport obviously or if Filevault is used.
It's only your first clone that's usually takes the longest, it's shorter when it updates as you only do the changes which you can control to keep a pure clone if you wish.
Most commonly used backup methods

How do you transfer movies from macbook to a external hard drive it won't recognise

how do i transfer movies from macbook to a external hard drive? it just wont recognize

So your MacBook Pro is a 2012 model (I'm assuming since you only bought it a week ago!)?
There are some known issues with the USB 3.0 ports on the 2012 models where they do not recognize USB external drives. This tech note may be of some help - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5172#12.
Some people that are using pre-release versions of Mountain Lion, to be released in the next couple of weeks, have written here that their USB 3.0 port problems are 'fixed' with the new version of OS X 10.8.
Try the Apple FAQ first and if that doesn't solve your problem, you may have to wait a couple of weeks to see if 10.8 does.
Sorry,
Clinton

Can not get external hard drives to connect to my computer 17" Mac book Pro 10.7.5

can not get external hard drives to connect to my computer I am using a 17" Mac book Pro 10.7.5.
I have 2 iomegas and 1 LaCie. Changed cables. I can feel the external hard drives running and
I can hear them running but I can not get them on the computer any more. They did work at one time.
Can any one PLEASE help?

Nothing appear on my desktop.
I did Repair and Verify the HDDs in Disk Utility>First Aid from the
Utilites App about a dozen times ans they all said everything was good
except for the last time there were erors found and I ran the
Disk Utility from the Start Up Disk and the repairs were made and everything
was subposed to te good and still Nothing on the desk top.
Ginger

MacBook not recognizing external hard drive

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