May 01, 2020 A lot of Mac users and lovers recommend using the third-party app Kext Utility to solve their problems recognizing external drives. Readers who could not mount their USB 3.0 and 2.0 FAT and FAT 32 External Drives on their Macs ran the program Kext Utility and after rebooting these USB drives worked! Kext Utility runs on Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Same here, all drives appear on the bus in the system, but only the seagate mounts. Terrible part, the missing drives are my Time Machine and Downloads. So literally, I cant update my apps, use iTunes, backup my machine, etc. I'm thinking about rolling out of the beta. How to fix external hard drive not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave issue? Solution 1: Check if the hard drive is properly plugged in. Since the connection between your Mac and external hard drives relies on cables, loose connections could be the cause that your external hard drive is not recognized by your Mac. Jan 20, 2018 I have an Apple MacBook Air 13.3in with 128 GB SSD. I have yet to move from Sierra to High Sierra OS, thankfully, as seems to be some problems. I back some stuff to the iCloud but decided to get external hard drive too and was about to plump for a. Oct 14, 2017 Very Nice. BUT, problem not fixed. My iMAC late 2012 with Solid State Drive, with High Sierra system froze everytime I tried to use FINDER or SPOTLIGHT, especially it I accessed my two external hard drives (one Western Digital, one Seagate). BTW, both drives work fine with my MacBook Pro. Spent days going back to Sierra operating system.
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Summary: If your external hard drive is not mounted on Mac, you can't access data stored on it. Here is how to fix external hard drives, including external hard drives, SD cards and USB flash drives, etc., not mounting on Mac issue without data loss. You can also download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover lost data from unmountable external hard drives first.
Usually, an external hard drive will be mounted automatically on your Mac once you plug it in, and you can access data on this drive. However, this time, your external hard drive is not mounting or recognized by your Mac. It's annoying when you find that you are unable to mount external hard drive on Mac, just like the user below.
'I have a 500 GB older HP external hard drive, formatted as macOS Extend journaled on MacBook Pro 2014 and I have been using it to do Time Machine backups. Now after updating to macOS Mojave, this external hard drive just won't mount. The main drive shows in Disk Utility but the backup partition is not showing up. I can't do First Aid as it doesn't show up. Any ideas? Thanks! I need help to recover my important files from this unmountable external hard drive.'
So, this article will give you some information about why your external hard drives won't mount on your Mac, as well as teach you how to fix this disk problem as this table shows.
- Table of contents
- 1.Why an external hard drive is not mounting on Mac?
- 2. Basic suggestions on external hard drive not mounting problem
- 3. How to fix external hard drives not mounting on Mac issue without data loss?
Tips for fixing external hard drive not mounting issue
Before you go further, there are some tips that deserve your attention. When your disk become unmountable on Mac, you should not go straight to reformat this external hard drive, especially when you have important files on it. This is because reformatting will wipe the data on this drive and cause serious data loss if you don't have a copy of a data backup.
On the contrary, you should stop using this external hard drive right away. The reason for such cautiousness is that any further operation is very likely to overwrite your original files and make them irrecoverable.
Key takeaway:
- Do not format this external hard drive before you get your data back.
- Do not save new things to this drive, or perform other operations like deletion, file removal, etc.
Now, let's go into details about the external hard drives not mounting on Mac issue.
Why an external hard drive is not mounting on Mac?
You probably go crazy because you don't know why this external hard drive is not mounting on Mac. As a matter of fact, this problem could be caused by many factors, such as damaged file system, virus attack, unsafe ejection or any other improper operations.
Here are some common ones.
- A damaged file system: If your external hard drive is attacked by virus or if you abruptly eject this drive, it's likely that the file system of this disk would be damaged or corrupted. As a result, the operating system is unable to recognize this disk, and the disk will not be mounted or read by macOS.
- Connection problems: Another reason that your external hard drives is not mounting on Mac could be a dirty or loose connection between your cable, USB-C multi-adapter, Thunderbolt 3, or other connecting ports. A clear, clean, snug and fit tightly connection is the premise of mounting an external hard drive successfully.
- Hardware issue: Also, problems related to hardware could also make the disk unmountable, especially when your external hard drive has too much bad sectors or have been physically damaged.
But no matter what the reason is, the first and most important thing for you probably is to fix this disk problem.
Basic suggestions on external hard drive not mounting problem
In case you miss anything necessary, you can also have some basic checks as following when you are unable to mount an external hard drive on your Mac computer.
1. Re-plug your external hard drive to another port or try another USB cable. A faulty connection, though it is foolproof, is often the key to fix the external hard drive not mounting issue, in that users always forget to check if the port is wobbly or if the cable is broken.
2. Try a super slow jam. Strange but true, some users found that their external will mount properly when they plug it in exceptional slow motion. However, if they try and plug in the external hard drive normally, the Mac don't recognize the disk.
3. Check your Finder Preferences. When your external hard drive is not mounting on the desktop, you can open Finder, choose 'Preference' (or press Control +, ) and check 'External disks' both in General tab and in Sidebar tab to show your external hard drive on your Mac computer.
How to fix external hard drives not mounting on Mac issue without data loss?
After knowing what possibly makes your external hard drive unmountable, you can set out to fix this issue on your Mac. There are three solutions suggested in this part, and you can try them one by one to troubleshoot this disk problem without data loss.
Solution 1:Manually mount this external hard drive in Disk Utility
If your external hard drive is not mounted on the desktop or in the Finder, you can try to mount it manually in Disk Utility which is a native disk management tool in your Mac. This is one of the easiest solutions, so you can have a bash.
1. Click Go at the upper left of your desktop and go to Utilities, then launch Disk Utility on your Mac computer.
2. Click on 'Show All Devices' in View option to list or connected drives.
3. Choose the unmountable external hard drive in the left sidebar.
3. Select Mount in the top center of Disk Utility.
However, if you find that your external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility, it is very likely that your disk is suffering some physical damage. In this case, you need to send it to a local data recovery service. But if the Mount option is grayed out but you can see this external hard drive in Disk Utility, you can try another solution then.
Solution 2:Repair this unmountable external hard drive with First Aid
The second suggestion is First Aid in Disk Utility. First Aid is a very simple tool that is built in your Mac, and it is able to detect and repair directory damage and other disk errors. You are advised to run the tool more than once to ensure you are receiving a consistent result. Follow the instructions and you can correct various disk-related errors via this useful software.
1. Go to Utilities and launch Disk Utility on your Mac computer.
2. Select the unmountable external hard drive on the left sidebar.
3. Select First Aid in the top center and click Run.
Solution 3:Fix the external hard drive not mounting issue by reformatting
If your external hard drive still can't be mounted in Disk Utility after you perform First Aid or First Aid failed to repair it, your drive should have some serious errors like file system corruption.
Under this circumstance, many Mac-noobs would choose to search on Google for solutions when Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Most of you are told to reformat this drive. However, it's not a good idea for people who have important files on this drive. It could be precious family photos, valuable work documents, or any other files.
Instead, if you don't have a copy of a data backup in hand, using this step-by-step guide to recover lost data from this unmountable external hard drive is better than format it directly.
How to recover lost data from unmountable external hard drives on Mac?
As long as your external hard drive doesn't have any hardware problem, fortunately, you can retrieve your files with professional Mac data recovery software - iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac with no fuss.
Best external hard drive Data Recovery - iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
- Recover lost data from unmountable, formatted, inaccessible, unreadable, corrupted external hard drives.
- Supported storage devices: external hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards, SD cards, etc.
- Supported file types: photos, videos, audio files, documents, emails, etc.
- Suppported Mac OS: macOS 10.15/1.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Read-only & risk-free
Tutorial for external hard drive data recovery on Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
1. Free download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
2. Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
3. Select the external hard drive that is not mounting and click 'Next' button to scan for all lost data.
4. Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Note: You need to save the recovered files to another usable drive. By this means, you will not lose them again when you move forward to the steps to fix not mounted external hard drives in the following part.
5. Have a check to ensure you have got all lost data back.
After having successfully restored all data on this drive, you can set out to erase this external hard drive to fix the disk not mounting on Mac issue.
Tutorial to reformat unmountable external hard drives on Mac
1. Launch Disk Utility.
2. Click the icon of your unmountable external hard drive on the left sidebar.
3. Click on the Erase button function on the top of the Disk Utility window.
4. Complete the related information (name, format, scheme), then click Erase button to finish reformatting.
After reformatting, your external hard drive will be assigned with a new file system. And you can go ahead to mount this drive on your Mac normally.
Conclusion:
If your external hard drive like a hard drive, an SD card, a USB flash drive, etc. is not mounting on your Mac, don't be panic. Most of the time, you are going to fix this disk problem with the solutions above. Moreover, if you worry about data loss when the disk becomes unmountable, you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover your files first. Remember that, no matter what disk problem you meet, you should perform hard drive data recovery before reformatting the problematic drive.
Summary:This article will show you 8 solutions to troubleshoot the external hard drive not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave error and how to recover lost data from unmountable external hard drives with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
By Molly | Posted to Mac Data Recovery, updated on March 8th, 2019 |
Normally, when you plug in an external hard drive to Macs, you'll see it mounted on the desktop, in Finder and in Disk Utility. Then you can read, edit, copy and delete files on the mounted external hard drive. However, if you areunable to mount external hard drives, you cannot access your important data on this drive at all. The worst thing is that you don't even have any data backup when your external hard drive is unmountable. But now you can ease your mind, in this page, you will see 8 feasible solutions that you can try to make the external hard drive mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/Sierra.
- Table of contents
- 1. How to recover lost data if Mac won't boot after Mojave update?
- 2. Read more about Mounting a disk
How to fix external hard drive not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave issue?
Solution 1: Check if the hard drive is properly plugged in.
Since the connection between your Mac and external hard drives relies on cables, loose connections could be the cause that your external hard drive is not recognized by your Mac computer.
If the unstable connection is the case, your external hard drive would not be mounted even with a slight disturbance. Sometimes the cable itself will become hot because of a faulty connection. Therefore, you need to make sure that the connection, i.e. the USB cable, is in good condition.
Solution 2: Check if the USB port/USB hub is unmatchable, damaged or lack of power.
If your external hard drive or USB flash drive is not mounted on Mac, try plugging it into another USB port or a USB hub. That's because there're USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports and they have some differences: USB 3.0 has higher transfer rates, provides more power, more bandwidth, etc. than USB 2.0. As you can see, insufficient power supply or damaged USB ports could also lead to external hard drives not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra.
To check this error, you can unplug the problematic external hard drive and plug a functional external hard drive into this USB port to see if it can be mounted normally.
Solution 3: Check if your Mac is set to show mounted drives on the desktop.
It's also possible that your Mac has alreadyrecognized the external hard drive butnot showing up on Mac desktop or Finder. Under such circumstance, you should go to Finder > Preferences > General and make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. Then you'll see the external hard drive mounted on the desktop.
You can also set your Mac to show external hard drives in Finder. Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and make sure the 'External disks' option under 'Locations' is ticked.
Solution 4: Check if the external hard drive is NTFS formatted.
NTFS (New Technology File System) is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft. However, for some reasons, macOS comes with read-only support for NTFS; its disabled-by-default write support for NTFS is unstable. Even though the NTFS formatted external hard drive can show up in Disk Utility, external hard drives might not be mounting as normal.
Hp laserjet 1020 driver mac os x. You can go to Disk Utility and check the file system of the external hard drive is NTFS or not, if this is the case, you can back up the files on the NTFS external hard drive and format it to Mac supported file systems (APFS, HFS+ or HFS) or file systems supported by both Windows and Mac, like FAT32 and exFAT.
Nevertheless, the best phenomenon is that you can read and write NTFS both on Macs and on Windows without fuss. So, a good NTFS for Mac application will enable you to write NTFS external hard drives on macOS without reformatting.
Solution 5: Check if the external hard drive is mountable in Disk Utility.
You can check if your external hard drive is mounting in Disk Utility. If your external hard drive appears there but is not mounted, you can click the Mount icon then the external hard drive will be mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave.
However, if the external hard drive appears in Disk Utility but is unmountable or no volumes of that external drive listed, you got both good news and bad news. Good news is that showing the external hard drive in Disk Utility means the drive has no hardware problem, while the bad news is that the file system of this drive probably is corrupted.
But don't worry, macOS has a built-in repair tool, called First Aid, to fix minor disk errors. You can try to fix the external hard drive not mounting issue with this useful program. Just go to Utilities > Disk Utility and click First Aid.
Solution 6: Fix the unmountable external hard drive with Terminal.
If your external hard drive can't be recognized by your Mac and First Aid failed to repair it, you can try to remount via Terminal by following the steps carefully as below:
1. Go to Applications > Utility > Terminal.
2. Type in diskutil list. Look for the section labeled /dev/disk_ (external, physical), remember the disk number.
3. Type indiskutil info disk_. Replace '_' with your external disk number. This is to check if your system recognizes this drive.
4. Once confirmed, type in diskutil eject disk_ to eject the external drive.
5. Physically remove the external drive and then re-plug it. Hopefully, your external hard drive will be mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave.
Solution 7: Check if the external hard drive is corrupted.
If unfortunately, none of the above solutions worked, it's very likely that the files system of the external hard drive is corrupted or damaged too seriously to be recognized by macOS Catalina/Mojave. It could be the result of file system broken, virus attacks, improper ejection, etc. And if you have no important files on this drive, you can directly assign a new file system for this external hard drive by reformatting.
1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
2. Select the unmountable external hard drive and click 'Erase' on the top.
3. Provide the required information to format the drive.
4. When finished, you can mount the external hard drive in macOS Catalina/Mojave and use it again. Wacom intuos3 driver mac os x 10.7.
Solution 8: Recover lost data and reformat the unmountable external hard drive.
But what if you have invaluable data that you don't want to lose on this inaccessible external hard drive? In this case, recovering data from this drive with professional data recovery software, such asiBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, would be your access to this unmountable external hard drive.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is able to recover lost data fromnot mounted external hard drives in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra,recover lost data from corrupted external APFS drives,recover lost data from unreadable external hard drives,recover deleted/lost data from APFS drives, andrecover lost data from formatted APFS files, etc.
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.
Step 2: Launch this program. Select the unmountable hard drive and click 'Next'. The program will start scanning this drive for lost files.
Step 3: After the scanning process finishes, you can double click the found files and preview them.
Step 4: Choose what you want to get back and click 'Recover'.
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Step 5: Go through the recovered files and make sure your desired files are recovered from this external hard drive successfully.
If, unfortunately, your data lost from external hard drive in macOS Catalina/Mojave, whether the disk was formatted accidentally or files were deleted mistakenly, you can recover lost data from unmountable hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. But compared with data recovery software, the best way to escape from data loss is to back up your files on a regular basis.
Read more about Mounting a disk
Mounting a hard disk makes it accessible by the computer. This is a software process that 'activates' the disk, which makes the folders and files on the disk readable by the computer. If a hard drive is physically connected, but not mounted, the computer will not recognize it.
Even though most operating systems, such as macOS, will mount newly connected disks by default, you still can't avoid accidental problems in that the hard drive is connected through devices like cable, USB port, etc. To fix external hard drive not mounting issue, you need to exclude the errors one by one, and to avoid external hard drive not mounting on macOS Catalina/Mojave, remember to safely unmount the external disk before ejection to avoid possible file data corruption.
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Still have questions?