My notebook won't recognize my external hard drive

my notebook won't recognize my external hard drive. I can safely remove it, but when i look for it on my computer its not there?

Disable Time Machine from System Preferences.
Choose Select disk button, remove the old TM backup disk and add the new one.

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MacBook Air won't recognize iOmega External Hard Drive

I just bought my macbook air and I wanted to transfer my data over from my old MacBook. The MacBook died so I was using my backup. The problem is that the Air won't recognize the ext hard drive. I connected the ext hard drive to my AirPort Extreme for the migration assistant but I keep getting a connection failed message. I tried plugging in the drive to the air directly using USB but it won't recognize it at all. The drive won't mount. The drive begins spinning and the light is on so the drive does work. It always worked with my old MacBook. I did alway connect it with FireWire so could that cause a problem since I have to connect it with USB to the Air?

I had a similar issue with mine but it was because I tried to connect to an external drive that was already connected to my iMac via FW800. When I disconnected the FW cable and plugged in the USB, everything worked perfectly.

USB won't recognize my external hard drive!!

Greetings all,
I am having trouble gettng my PB to recognize my external hard drive through the usb port. The drive is formatted for pc but supposedly this shouldn't be a problem...as per every manual I have looked at regarding this topic. I connected it to a friend's iBook today and it picked it up right away. That just makes the problem even more irritating. The usb port works fine when connecting my camera so it obviously works. I haven't tried to reformat the drive yet because, like I mentioned, it works fine on my friends iBook.
Would someone please offer some comments or suggestions on to resolve this issue?
Thanks

Hey everybody,
Check out the Bluetooth-USB-FIREWIRE-RAM discussions......look for "external USB 2.0 problem".......there are quite a number of people who are expereincing this problem which seems to be only with the newer 15" PBs.
If anyone knows how to get APPLE techies to examine this issue and let us know that they are working on the problem......please let me know.
I have had this PB for about a month or so and in addition to the external USB drive issue I have already had the logic board replaced due to a faulty lower RAM slot.
I am loving the OS and I am new to macs......but overall I am extremely dsappointed with the quality of this $3000 machine.
I hope APPLE will wake up and acknowledge these issues.
I have talked with APPLE "SERVICE" reps who were completely unaware of these recurring issues. This just boggles me considering how easy it is to open up any discussion board and notice posts highlighted in blue with large numbers following them.....implying some sort of problem and many dissatisfied customers.

My MBP won't recognize my external hard drive

I have an external hard drive that used to work just fine on my MBP, but now it won't recognize it. When I plug it in (USB), the green light turns on the hard drive, but nothing happens on my MBP. Maybe it is recognizing but not letting me know? I did check disk utility but it's not there either.

Drives "unmounted" sometimes suffer volume structure damage or similar. Sometimes it's correctable without re-formatting the drive, but not always. Depending on whether or not it contains stuff you want to keep, I'd think you have two choices:
1. If you don't mind losing what's on it: Reformat the drive (which will erase the contents), using Disk Utility, or just accept the "initialize" option you are offered.
2. If you want to try to retain the drive's contents, you'll have to try to repair the disk by whatever means available to you. Disk Utility (which is part of the OS, so you own it already), DiskWarrior, and TechTool Pro may be able to detect the drive. If so, try to Repair Disk, Repair Volume Structure, etc. If the disk can't be recognized, you'll probably have to resort to the previous method.
But if this doesn't work, wait for more advice before doing anything rash, as others may think of things I didn't.

Computer won't recognize my external hard drive. I've tried three different drives, including Mac super drive

Computer won't recognize my external cd/dvd writer, althoughI have tried three altogether, one being the the Apple usb superdrive.

Neither hard drive is working on the mac pro. They do not appear in disk utility.
My chords seem fine. I don't have another cable to try on the Mac Pro. but both cables worked on my 2011 macbook pro with my external hard drive. my 2TB didn't work on my macbook pro however... it didn't even appear in disk utility. I wonder though if that has to do with the usb 3. I know my laptop has USB 2 and my external hard drive is USB 3 and i'm not sure if its backwards compatible.
I have tried all of the USB ports on the Mac Pro, the hard wear seems fine.
I will try resetting the SMC shortly and see if that works.

Final cut x won't recognize new external hard drive

Final cut x recognizes five other external hard drives except my new one. I bought the same brand as the last two. Every program on my mac recognizes it except Final cut x. I do not have the most recent Final Cut X, but don't see why that would matter. I have a year long project that I need to finish and can't afford an issue on a conversion.
Any ideas?

I installed it three different times with the mac installer. I don't see anything that says video on it. The only things listed though are the ones that came with the hard drive. I appreciate your time.

My bran new Mac Pro, won't recognize my external hard drive?

Hello,
I just got the new mac pro about a month ago (the cylindrical kind) it has 16 MGs of ram and 250 GBs. I got a 2 TB external hard drive for time machine, and i already have a 500 GB portable hard drive for transferring files. They worked fine initially, but the computer has stopped seeing them all together. I've already restarted my computer several times. I plug them in, they light up, but the icon doesn't appear on the desktop or finder or even in disk utility. I've tested my portable drive on my laptop and it works fine, so its not the external hard drive or the cords. I also tested a flash drive and an external CD drive in the USB ports and they work fine, so i've deduced that its not a hardware issue. The best i can come up with is that its a softwear issue, but i have no idea how that would even work. Has anyone else heard of this?
On a side note: before the computer stopped reading my hard drives, they kept unplugging themselves and saying "this hard drive was not removed properly" and then they would reappear without me touching them. I'm pretty sure this is the root of the problem. I'm out of ideas and google hasn't revealed anything to me, so if anyone knows whats going on i would really appreciate it.
Thanks.

Neither hard drive is working on the mac pro. They do not appear in disk utility.
My chords seem fine. I don't have another cable to try on the Mac Pro. but both cables worked on my 2011 macbook pro with my external hard drive. my 2TB didn't work on my macbook pro however... it didn't even appear in disk utility. I wonder though if that has to do with the usb 3. I know my laptop has USB 2 and my external hard drive is USB 3 and i'm not sure if its backwards compatible.
I have tried all of the USB ports on the Mac Pro, the hard wear seems fine.
I will try resetting the SMC shortly and see if that works.

My Mac Book won't recognize my external hard drive

I currently have an external hard drive that I'm connecting to a usb port and nothing happens. I can see that the lights on the actual hard drive are on and it's spinning but the mac isn't showing up as an available drive.

Go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and see if the drives show in the left column. Also from the Finder under the Apple/About This Mac/More Info select USB in the left column. Is the HD list there?
Is the hard drive new?
Is there and OS on it?
Do other peripherals work from the hub?
Will it work when plugged in direct?
Joe

My iMac won't recognize my external hard drive connected by FireWire 400

I have an external hard drive connected to my Intel-based iMac through a FireWire 400 cable. The drive doesn't come up on the desktop after turning on the hard drive power.
If I connect through the USB cable, it appears quickly on the desktop. Why isn't this working through FireWire? I had some trouble with this in Tiger as well, but was somehow able to get it to work.

The drive does not appear in Disk Utility.
And I don't think I'll be installing DiskWarrior until Leopards countless bugs are fixed, especially after reading THIS:
Alsoft: There are some DiskWarrior "compatibility issues" with Leopard
After previously stating "you can run the (current version of DiskWarrior under Leopard) knowing no harm will come to the hard drive or to your data," Alsoft has now posted a message to its Web site stating "there are some compatibility issues when running an installed copy of DiskWarrior 4.0 while started up from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Alsoft currently recommends that you do not run DiskWarrior 4.0 while the computer is started from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard."
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071026153956503

My macbook won't recognize my external hard drive.

I have just bought my new macbook, but have some problems with the 300Gb external hard drive. There are 4 partitions on that respectively of sizes 10, 60,90 and 120Gb. When I connect it to my macbook by the USB2 cable, only the the first partition formatted as FAT32 shows up while the three others don't even mount. According to Disk Utility, these three volumes are formatted as NTFS. It gives me the folowing messages respictively when I try to verify or repair each of those three volumes:
** Reporting that the volume is fine without checking anything.
** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
I tried both Macfuse and Paragon to read/write NTFS formatted volume on MAC but no success yet:(
BTW There's some thing wierd about the format. In my windows XP the format of all the three volumes are said to be FAT32. I have no problem in mounting them there!
Any help by you is highly appreciated.

Start a Finder window and on the menubar, Finder > Preferences > General Tab > check External disks.
Regards,
Captfred

New to Mac :), OSX 10.4.3 won't recognize my external hard drive!!

Please help,
I just bought a new mac (powermac g5 2ghz, 1gb ram) and i have two external hard drives plugged in and they are not showing up anywhere? Do i need a specific driver? I am downloading the update for 10.4.3 (combo) even though i already have 10.4.3 because i read this might fix it, but it seems to take forever to download, in the meantime, any advice?
Thanks in advance!
Jana

i just read this on macfixtit and reinstalled 10.4.3 using the combo update and it worked for me.
Solutions
Reverting to a previous version of Mac OS X Though it is a relatively tedious and time-consuming workaround, downgrading to an earlier version of Mac OS X (preferably Mac OS X 10.4.2) as described in our tutorial "Reverting to an earlier version of Mac OS X" is an almost fail-safe solution to this problem.
Re-applying the Mac OS X combo updater Despite a lack of success for some users with this workaround, re-applying the Mac OS X 10.4.3 combo updater continues to resolve this issue for many.

10.1 won't recognize my external hard drive!?

I have all my events and projects on my Lacie thunderbolt 3TB external hard drive. It works great. But now with 10.1 my hard drive isn't even recognized. Please help! Thanks!

Yep, they used to be picked up automatically. Someone else had the same issue. The answer was that my files needed to be updated manually. https://discussions.apple.com/message/24228507#24228507

MY MAC WON'T RECOGNIZE MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

Hello. I'm the main user in my mac mini so I was trying to avoid my girlfriend from using the external drive, so looking around signed with my girlfriend user, I controled click the external HD icon in the finder and click on information, then I saw an option that I thought could give me the chance to avoid her from looking around at the external drive with her user, after several times trying to do so with my name and my password (I'm supossed to be de administrator) it kept telling me that I was not a sistem administrator. the external drive kept working but I ejected it to see if what I did would work (the other user not beeing able to see into my external HD) but my surprise is that no longer my mac recognizes the external HD. Do you have any clues on what is going on? It can be somethig with the permissions because looking at it with disk utilities it says that no owner activated neither S.M.A.R.T. Can anyone help me?
thank you
Hugo

Follow the instructions in the section of this FAQ which is relevant to your situation.
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Time Machine won't recognize new external hard drive

I recently had a problem with My Passport and had to buy a new one. I have plugged it in and reformatted it and now Time Machine won't recognize it even though it shows on my desktop and the disk utility doesn't see any problem. Any ideas?

Disable Time Machine from System Preferences.
Choose Select disk button, remove the old TM backup disk and add the new one.

IMac won't recognize my external hard drive, and cannot backup onto it.

Time machine fault with Western Digital "my book" external drive
In trying to select a backup disc I follow these steps:
I have the drop down panel from Time machine preferences which asks me to select "time machine" by clicking on the "use for backup" button.
When I do this message appears,
"You do not have appropriate access privileges to save file “.0016cb83cfe5” in folder “Time Machine Backups”.
How do I set up "My book" to start backing up again? It was originally installed and backed everything up without a problem, but although the icon still appears on my desktop time machine will not backup.
Hope there is a simple explanation folks!

Welcome to Discussions compuvic!
I believe you're experiencing a problem that happened with the 10.5.6 update. There is a workaround found by V.K in [this thread|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8668572#8668572]. If you follow the instrux it should work.
/p

My notebook won't recognize my external hard drive

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