
Use a USB power cable if you suspect this to be the issue.ĭepending on what you find here, you can troubleshoot either the drive or your Mac.įirst, make sure Finder will display drive icons. A USB cable carries 5V, and if this is the sole power source for the drive, it may not be enough.

After all, no one wants to waste half a day because they didn’t realize something just wasn’t plugged in properly. Get into the habit of doing this with any computer issues, as it can save time, money, and hassle in the long run. Troubleshooting an External Drive with a Mac First, we will check the basics, and from there, we make sure that macOS is set up to display external drives, can mount the drive, and that the drive has no errors on either the disk itself or its file structure.

If your external drive still doesn’t appear, we have a couple of simple troubleshooting tips to fix an external hard drive not showing up on Mac.
