1. External Hard Drive For Macbook
2. External Drive For A Mac
3. Best External Hard Drives For Mac
4. External Hard Drive Mount Mac App Download

Click on the drive icon to highlight the drive and the window will display the information about the current drive and the file system. 4.) If the drive partition(s) is still visible in the left column as the second indented row under the hard drive itself, but is not mounted on the Desktop, you can try to run a repair on the partition using. Apr 16, 2020  Connect the drive to your Mac (if it is an external drive or memory card). If it is your internal hard drive that you have reformatted, consider using Target Disk Mode or Disk Drill's Portable Mode to increase your chances of data recovery on your Mac’s formatted hard drive. You can also create a bootable drive for data recovery with Disk Drill on any other Mac to recover the formatted.

Summary: This post introduces 5 solutions you can try when you are unable to mount an external hard drive on your Mac. Also, to avoid further data loss, you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover lost data from this unmountable external drive first.

After you connect an external hard drive to your Mac, if everything is working fine, the operating system will automatically recognize, read, and mount your external drive, as well as show it in the Finder and on the desktop. However, if your disk gives up the ghost just like the users below, the external disk will not be showing up as normal. And if you check it in the Disk Utility, you will find your drive unmounted there.

'I was able to use my 3 TB external hard disk drive to backup my data last week. But now it doesn't mount after I migrate from Mojave to macOS Catalina. I dug around and tried a lot of stuff but still can't mount this external hard drive on my Mac. Can someone explain how to get this drive mounted so I don't lose the data?'

Why an external drive is not mounting on Mac?

There are numerous reasons for the external hard drive not mounting issue. The following are a few of the most common ones:

Hardware and connectivity issue

Most of the time, you can't mount your external drive on a Mac just because the connectivity is not in proper condition. This issue may be affected by a loose fitting, a broken USB cable, the wear on USB ports, etc. Sometimes, such connectivity issues could make your external drives keep disconnecting, or much worse, it would make your external hard drive unmountable eventually. After all, it is essential to have a firm and tight connection.

Corrupted disk

Another possible reason for an unmounted disk may come from the problematic hard drive itself. Wonder how could it be? Well, it is possible that you're unable to mount a drive just because it is corrupted and unrecognizable by macOS. You can recall if your external drive has experienced one of these things: an unsafe removal when you are transferring files, an improper ejection, a sudden power outage, or even a virus infection. If so, your disk might be corrupted and it should be the culprit that you are unable to mount your external drive probably.

Incorrect formatting of the disk

In some cases, an unsupported file system will make your external drive unmountable. It is reasonable because if your Mac can't even read your disk's file system, how can you mount and access this hard drive on your Mac? This factor may not be as possible as the other causes, but it does happen.

Unable to mount external hard drives on Mac, how to fix?

Even though the reasons for a not mounting disk are different from case to case, certainly there are some things you can do to fix this issue. The following are five effective solutions to the 'external hard drives won't mount on Mac' issue, and some of them are just basic checks.

Solution 1: Check and fix connectivity issues

The first thing you can do is to make sure that your disk is connected to your Mac properly. Here are some things you can try.

• Reconnect your external hard drive to your Mac and ensure that it fits the USB port snugly.
• Connect the external hard drive to a different USB port or a different Mac. If you are not sure if there is a problem with the USB port/hub, you can plug a working external drive in to a port/on a hub, unmount and eject it. Then plug the unmountable external hard drive into that port/hub.
• Replace the USB cable or adapter in case that it was damaged or broken.
• Connect it to a Windows PC and see if the storage device is powered on and working.

Solution 2: Check the file system of the external hard drive

Well, if you don't know exactly what file system your disk is formatted with while your external hard drive can't be mounted now, you can go to Disk Utility to have a check if it is formatted with an unsupported file system. Remember that macOS is friendly with APFS and HFS+ and is in a neutral attitude with FAT, FAT32, and exFAT. However, it is a different story if you need to access and write to NTFS file system on Mac. By default, macOS only enables NTFS drive read support but disables write support. In this case, you can download a free NTFS driver for macOS to mount this external hard drive in read and write mode.

Still unable to mount the external hard drive on Mac? Then it should be some problems with the drive itself. You can try the following solutions to troubleshoot this problem.

Wait! Have you recovered your important data from this unmountable drive?

Before you go any further to fix this unmountable hard drive, you'd better make sure you have backed up your data on this drive to avoid data loss. The reason is that when your external drive won't mount, you lose the only access to all your files on this drive. In this situation, if you have important files on the external hard drive, any operations on the drive could overwrite the original data and cause irreparable data loss.

Forget to back up before? You can also use Mac data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover lost data from the unmountable external hard drives.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is afree external hard drive data recovery tool that enables you to recover lost data from external drives, especially when a hard drive is unmounted, formatted, inaccessible, unreadable, or corrupted. It's fully compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7. In addition to external hard drive data recovery, it also can recover lost data from internal Mac hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, pen drives, etc.

Tutorial to recover lost data from unmountable external drive on Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.

To use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, you need to install this software on your Mac. You can just download the installation package and install it with no fuss.

Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

After successfully downloading this program on your Mac, you can drag it to your Applications folder to install it, or you can double-click its icon to launch it.

Step 3: Select the unmountable external drive and click Scan button to scan all lost data.

When the Mac data recovery software is launched, all connected storage devices will be listed in the interface. You can see the name, file system, and space allocation of your hard drives and partitions. Locate your unmounted external hard drive, select it, and click 'Scan' to scan for lost data. Two scanning modes are allowed: Quick scan and Deep scan. Quick scan mode saves time for users and is applied when data is recently deleted. Deep scan mode finds more files at the cost of more time, and it's used when file system is corrupted or partition table is lost. Anyway, this software will automatically choose the most efficient way to scan for files according to the disk condition.

Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click Recover to get them back.

With the preview feature, you can check whether your files on this unmountable disk are in a good condition or not. It saves time and money for users. The software will show if your file is corrupted so that you would not waste energy to recover it or pay for this data recovery product.

Step 5: Have a check to ensure you have got all lost data back.

Now you either have a copy of a data backup in hand, or have recovered your important files with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. Therefore, you can go ahead to repair this unmounted external drive without worrying about data loss.

External Hard Drive For Macbook

Solution 3: Repair the external hard drive with Disk Utility

When an external hard drive is not working properly, you can use the built-in disk repair tool - First Aid to check and repair disk errors.

Step 1: Launch Disk Utility.

Step 2: Choose the unmountable external drive on the left sidebar.

Step 3: Select First Aid in the top center and click Run.

Solution 2: Repair the external hard drive with Terminal

Sometimes, Disk Utility may not function as desired. Fortunately, you can still try to repair the corrupted external hard drive with Terminal.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Terminal

Step 2: Enter: diskutil list (This will list out the available volumes).

Step 3: Check the volume identifier from the table that appears.

Step 4: Enter:diskutil repairVolume [diskvolume identifier]. For example, if the volume identifier of an external hard drive is disk2s, you should enterdiskutil repairVolume disk2s.

Solution 3: Reformat the external hard drive

If yourexternal hard drive can't be repaired with Disk Utility and Terminal, the file system of this drive might be seriously corrupted. The only way to fix this unmountable external drive is to reformat it.

Warning: Reformatting will erase all data on the external hard drive, so please make sure you have backed up important data.

1. Launch Disk Utility from Utilities.

2. Click the icon of the unmountable external drive on the left part of the window.

3. Click the Erase function on the top of the Disk Utility window.

4. Complete the related information (name, format, scheme), then click Erase button.

Conclusion

When you can't mount an external hard drive on your Mac, you can try the 5 methods introduced in this post. But no matter which solution you are going to try, to avoid data loss, you are always advised to back up your files or recover your data from this unmountable drive first with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

But if unfortunately, none of these solutions can make your hard drive work again, or your disk is not even detected or showing up in Disk Utility, then this drive might be physically damaged. Under this situation, you should send it to a local disk repair service and see if they can help.

Good luck!

Most Android smartphones come with 64 GB of storage. But if you have an old smartphone, chances are you’ll have either 16 or 32 GB variant. Thankfully, you can easily expand the memory by using external storage, like a pen drive or a hard drive. This comes in handy when you are traveling and want to watch your favorite movies on the go.

Related: How to Use USB Flash Drive on Android and iOS

Now connecting a pen drive to an Android is simple. Simply buy a cheap OTG cable, then use it to connect your Android and Pendrive. Next, open any file manager such as Solid Explorer, look under the device menu, you will find your Pendrive. That’s it.

But what about connecting an external HDD to Android?

For instance, I want to use my 2 TB hard drive with my Android. Will, that work?

Well, Yes and NO.

Usually, external hard drives don’t work right out of the box with Android devices. Though in my testing, I found this to be a gray area. Since every Android runs a different version of OS and has a different manufacturer, it’s not possible to say anything for sure. For instance —

#1 Some low-end devices (like my dad’s moto e) do not support OTG. And there is nothing we can do here. To find out, if your device supports OTG or not, you can use USB OTG Helper. The app is free on Google play and does not need ROOT.

#2 Mid-range devices (like moto g) support OTG with pen drive but don’t detect external HDD formatted with NTFS and HFS+. We can fix this.

#3 And finally some high-end devices (like my Nexus6) support both FAT32 and NTFS volume without using any software. But, it can not read other formats like HFS or exFAT. We will see how to fix that.

Why my External HDD Don’t Work With Android?

When you connect an external hard drive to Android, you may face 2 problems.

#1 Hard Drive is not detected

You will either hear a clicking noise or the lights on your hard drive will not blink, this means the disk inside your drive is not spinning properly.

Reason: Unlike pen drives, External HDDs needs a lot more power. And if they are not externally powered then it will take power from the device itself. So, if your smartphone is not powerful enough to power an external HDD, then it will not work.

For instance, my WD 2TB hard drive works fine with Nexus 6 but doesn’t work on my raspberry pi without external power.

Solution: Use a powered USB hub or externally powered OTG cable.

#2 Hard drive is detected but not Opening

Reason: File system error. There are many file system out there and every O.S prefer one of their own. For instance, Android supports FAT32 by default and since pen drives are also in FAT32 format, we don’t face any problem with pen drives.

But, most external HDDs uses the NTFS file system (Windows default FS) and sometimes in HFS (MAC default FS). So this mismatch in file system results in the error.

Related: Why External HDD Do Not Work with All Operating System

So let’s see how to fix it. Well, we have two option here.

#1 Format your Hard drive

You can format your Hard drive to FAT32 using your computer and then use it on your Android. Since FAT32 is compatible with all OS, it will work right away with your Android, in fact, after this, you will never face compatibility issues with any platform.

Related How to format Hard drive on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android

However, I don’t recommend formatting HDD to FAT32. Why? Well, because FAT is an old file system and lacks important features like journaling (prevent data loss), encryption. And the maximum single file size is limited to 4GB.

#2 Use 3rd Party Apps

With this method, you can retain your original File System of your HDD. Simply use a free app like Paragon NTFS or Stick Mount to use it on your Android. I have been using this for months and never had any problem. So let’s see how it works

External HDD on Android

1. USB Media Importer (Paid)

This app is designed for Nexus devices, but based on its play store reviews, it also works with non-nexus devices like moto-x and many others. Though, before you spend money, make sure you try the USB Photo Viewer. It’s from the same dev but free.

Once you install this app, it will auto-detected an external drive and you can start using it right away. However, this is read-only i.e. you cannot copy data from your Android to external HDD. Moreover, it also does not support HFS formatted drives.

Bottom line: First, try other free alternatives and if they don’t work, go for it.

2. Total commander with USB – plugin

This is the most popular (and also a free) way to use NTFS formatted HDD on Android. Here you need to install two free apps from Google Play.

External Drive For A Mac

First, install the total commander app – it’s a file browser that will help us to browse the content of our drive.

Next, install USB plugin for Total Commander— it’s an extension for the file browser that will do the actual job i.e. mounting the external Hard drive.

Once done, connect your hard drive to your Android using OTG cable. Again the app will recognize your volume and you will see a notification at the bottom saying, open the drive with Paragon UMS. However, if you don’t see the notification, then simply open the app and refresh it. It should work.

There is also an option to get write access. However, since this app is still in beta, the write feature didn’t work for me. But the good part is, along with NTFS, it can also read HFS formatted drives.

3. Stick Mount (Root)

This app is made by chainfire (the developer of SuperSU). Basically, stick mount helps you to mount an NTFS partition on Android. So, you will still need to have a file manager to browse the content of your drive.

Install Stick mount from Google play and then insert your external drive and it will automatically mount it. Usually, it mounts the drive under Sdcard > USB storage, but you can find the mount location by opening the app and tap on mount option.

Bottom line: It’s free and works well. However, it still does not let you write data on your drive, neither does it support HFS drive. So better try the next option.

4. Paragon HFS, NTFS, and exFAT (Root)

Paragon is popularly known for its software to access HFS drive on Windows and NTFS drive on MAC. And guess what, they have an android app as well but this time it’s free.

This app is similar to all the other app. Install the app, connect your external HDD and it will automatically mount it and show you the path. There is also an option to format your drive, but it’s hidden under settings.

Bottom line: This is the best way. It’s free and lets you both read and write, support both NTFS drive and HFS. However, even though it’s in the name, it actually does not support exFAT (since its Microsoft propriety format) but you can use stick mount for that.

Best External Hard Drives For Mac

If nothing works?

Usually, an external HDD require you to plug in a cable to your computer (or in this case to your Android). But thanks to modern technology, we now have Wireless Hard drives. And it does what it says, i.e. it when you press a button on this HDD, it’ll create a Hotspot, which you can connect from your smartphone and then browse all the content of the drive using a File manager app.

External Hard Drive Mount Mac App Download

You can stream your HDD from multiple devices (usually not more than 3 devices). And it also has a built-in battery, so you can use it while traveling in a car or train. However, on the flip side. It’ll cost twice as much for the same storage. For instance, a typical Seagate 1 TB external HDD cost you around $60, while a Seagate Wireless Plus 1TB will cost around $140. The HDD supports NTFS by default. So, you can not use on iOS devices.