- Best External Hard Drive For Mac Os X Yosemite
- External Hard Drive For Mac Os X 10.8.5
- External Hard Drive For Mac Os X 10.6.8
- External Hard Drive For Mac Os X Lion
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.
You may need to boot up your Mac using an external drive or boot volume once in a while, rather than using a start up disk. Booting with an external disk has a lot of significance. Maybe you want to troubleshoot some problems, repair the disk, do partitions, format the entire disk, update, and install OS X.
- Table of contents
- 1. Why you can't mount your external hard drive on Mac?
- 2. How to fix when external disks won't mount on Mac?
- 3. Conclusion
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.
Best External Hard Drive For Mac Os X Yosemite
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.
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.
Note: - please use a USB drive which has more than 12GB of space.You need to have the OS X Mavericks Download file on the application folder on your computer.First, you need to plug in the USB drive to your Mac PC. Make bootable os x usb.
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!
Partitioning your hard drive can be a frustrating and daunting task. However, once you understand how the process works, it’s a lot less scary. So why would you want to partition a drive?
Back when I was in college, like many other students, I had a MacBook Pro for ease of use and its minimalist aesthetic. I didn’t think about the fact that some applications that I needed for school were not compatible on Mac. That is when I thought about partitioning my drive so that I could run Windows on Mac.
In addition, I had an external hard drive that I also wanted to be able to use with both OS X and Windows. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps for partitioning internal and external hard drives on a Mac.
Before you start, you should make sure to backup your entire Mac computer using Time Machine. Even if you don’t mess anything up, the chances are good that the OS will screw up and break your system.
Partition External Drive
If you have a large external hard drive, you can easily partition it so that the entire drive gets utilized. I was using a 1.5 TB external drive with my Mac, but never really used more than 1/4 of the space.
Instead, here’s how I ended up partitioning my drive, which ended up making it much more useful:
- 33%: Mac (Extra Storage) – 500GB
- 33%: Mac (Time Machine Backup) – 500GB
- 33%: Windows (Extra Storage and Backup can go on same partition) – 500GB
As you can see, each partition can have its own file format. If you have an even larger drive, you can create even more partitions for other operating systems like Linux, etc.
To partition the drive, go to Spotlight at the top of your MacBook Screen (Notification Bar) and type in Disk Utility.
On the left hand side, navigate to the tab that says EXTERNAL.
Yours will look a little bit different than mine. Under the External heading on the left hand side, you should have one hard drive instead of 3 (I have already partitioned mine). Navigate to that external hard drive and partition it according to your needs.
NOTE: If your external hard drive is not formatted for the Mac operating system, you may first need to Initialize it and then Erase it. It’s very easy:
- Under the external tab on the left side, select the drive you want to use.
- Then select the Erase option at the top
- Once there, give it a name and format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- For the Scheme, you can pick from GUID, MBR or Apple. If you’re only using the drive for storage, then it doesn’t really matter which one you pick. However, if you plan to boot from the drive, you should pick MBR for Windows and Linux and GUID for OS X. If you plan to use the drive for Boot Camp, you should also pick GUID.
Note that you can also click on Security Options and choose from different levels of security. By default, OS X will use the fastest method, which not does securely erase the drive. If you move the slider to Most Secure, it will meet the DOD standard for erasing data by overwriting the data 7 times. This will prevent anyone or any software from recovering any previously written data from the drive.
External Hard Drive For Mac Os X 10.8.5
OS X may ask you if you want to use the drive for Time Machine backups, but you should choose Decide Later unless you want to use the entire drive for the backups. Now you’re ready to partition the external drive!
Go to the top where it has the options: First Aid, Partition, Erase, Restore, Mount, etc. Select Partition and create the partitions based on your specific needs. In my case, I chose a size of 500 GB, which is one-third of the drive.
Mac downloading apps for previous os x version. Select how you would like to partition the drive (refer back to my percentages, as that’s what I have used in the screenshots here), select Apply and then click Partition. After this, it will take a few minutes to partition, so be patient!
When completed should see the green check mark next to your drive and it should say Operation Successful. Now select Done and you’re done with the first partition.
Now to partition the rest of the space, you will click on Untitled under External and then click on Partition again.
Give the partition a name, pick a size and choose the format. Since this is going to be for Windows storage, I chose MS-DOS (FAT). You can also choose exFAT if you like as that is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
Partition Internal Drive
Partitioning an internal hard drive is pretty much the same in terms of the procedure you have to follow, but it’s a little bit different in how it gets implemented.
Since you already have OS X installed on your internal drive, when you click Partition and choose a size, you’ll notice that you can’t create a partition that is smaller than the amount of space already used on the drive.
External Hard Drive For Mac Os X 10.6.8
My internal drive was already using 359GB of space, so when I typed in 200GB, it automatically changed it to 359GB and put up a message stating that the first volume cannot be removed and the volume could not be split because the resulting volumes would be too small.
So if you want to create an additional partition, the first thing is to create a partition that will include OS X and give you some additional space for installing programs, etc. Below, I left the name as Macintosh HD and made the partition 500GB. That means the partition where OS X is installed with have about 140GB of breathing room for extra data.
Basically, we are just shrinking the original partition, which took up the entire disk to something smaller. Then we will partition the free space as we like.
As you can see, I have made the original partition 500GB instead of 1TB, which frees up 500GB on the disk for creating other partitions. As with the external hard drive, once the partition has been created, click on Untitled, but this time under the Internal heading and click on Partition.
External Hard Drive For Mac Os X Lion
That’s basically all there is to partitioning drives in OS X. Hopefully, it worked for you. Enjoy!