So, you just bought an external hard drive or a portable SSD and wanted to use it on your Mac. But somehow, macOS doesn’t allow you to write data to the drive.
Best USB-C Hard Drives for Mac iMore 2019 The current line of MacBook Pro only has Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, but that's OK, because USB-C is fast, future-proof, and will likely replace standard USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, power, and more. For adding a 2.5' hard drive or SSD to your Mac Pro 2009-2010 From $17.75. Add an Optical Drive. Easily add a portable optical drive with Blu-ray capabilities to any new Mac laptop, or you can upgrade any laptops optical drive with a new internal optical drive.
External Hard Drives For Macbooks
That’s all because it’s been initialized with Windows NT File System (NTFS), which is primarily for PCs. Apple Mac machines support a different file system.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to format your external drive for a Mac compatible file system i.e. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Just follow this easy step-by-step guide and you’re all set.
Important note: If you have useful files stored on the external drive, be sure to copy or transfer them to another safe place prior to formatting. The operation will erase all data and your files will be gone for good. You could use a recovery program like Data Rescue to retrieve them, but the odds of recovery vary.
Pro tip: If your external drive has a large volume, like mine – a 2TB Seagate Expansion. I highly recommend you also create multiple partitions. I’ll also show you how to do that below.
Most External Hard Drives Are Initiated with NTFS
During the last several years, I’ve used several removable drives, including a 500GB WD My Passport, 32GB Lexar flash drive, and a few others.
Three weeks ago, I bought a brand new 2TB Seagate Expansion to backup my MacBook Pro before I updated to the latest macOS, 10.13 High Sierra (also see those High Sierra issues I encountered).
When I connected the Seagate to my Mac, the drive icon showed up like this. Boot camp for mac.
When I opened it, the default content was all there. Since I wanted to use it on Mac, I clicked the blue logo with the text “Start_Here-Mac”.
It brought me to a webpage on Seagate’s site, where it clearly indicated the drive was initially set up to work with a Windows PC. If I wanted to use it with Mac OS or Time Machine backup (which is my intent), I’ll need to format the drive for my Mac.
I then right-clicked the external drive icon on Mac desktop > Get Info. It showed this format:
Format: Windows NT File System (NTFS)
What is NTFS? I’m not going to explain here; you can read more on Wikipedia. The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app Paragon NTFS for Mac.
How to Format an External Drive to Work with Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended)?
Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility.
The quickest way to do this is a simple Spotlight search (click the search icon on the upper right corner), or go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Highlight your external drive and click “Erase”.
Make sure your drive is connected. It should show up on the left panel under “External”. Select that disk and click the “Erase” button, the one highlighted in red in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Format.
A new window will pop up asking which file system you’d like to format the external drive to. By default, it’s the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Select the one shown below.
Pro tip: If you want to use the external drive for both Mac and PC, you can also select “ExFAT”. Learn more about the differences between these file systems from this thread. https://izbsvkw.weebly.com/blog/vlc-for-mac.
By the way, you can also rename your external drive.
Step 4: Wait until the erasing process is complete.
How to bypass security installing app on mac. For me, it took less than a minute to format my 2TB Seagate Expansion.
You can also check to see if the format was successful. Right-click on the icon for your external drive on Mac desktop, then select “Get Info”. Under “Format”, you should see text like this:
Congratulations! Now your external drive has been formatted to be fully compatible with Apple MacOS, and you can edit, read, and write files to it as you want.
How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac
If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility.
Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Make sure you select the disk icon right under “External”. If you select the one below it, the Partition option will be greyed out and become unclickable.
Step 2: Add partitions and allocate volume for each one.
After clicking “Partition”, you’ll see this window. Located on the left is a big blue circle with the name of your external drive together with its volume size. What you need to do next is click the add “+” button to increase the number of partitions on your external disk. Then allocate the desired volume to each partition. You can do that by clicking the small white circle and dragging it around.
After that, you can rename each partition and define a file system for it.
Step 3: Confirm your operation.
Once you hit “Apply”, a new window pops up asking for your confirmation. Take a few seconds to read the text description to make sure it reflects what you intend to do, then click the “Partition” button to continue.
Step 4: Wait until it says “Operation successful.”
To check whether the operation is really successful, go to your Mac desktop. You should see multiple disk icons show up. I chose to create two partitions on my Seagate Expansion — one for backup, the other for personal use. You can find more info in this post: How to Backup Mac to an External Hard Drive.
That wraps up this tutorial article. I hope you find it helpful. As always, let me know if you have any issues during the formatting or partitioning process.
An internal hard drive is the most important part of a computer which is used to store data and support computer to work in a normal manner. If your iMac or MacBook does not recognize an internal hard drive and the drive is not showing up or mounting on Mac, not only will the system be unable to boot, but also the whole data stored on the computer will become inaccessible. Fortunately, there are still means of getting the data on the internal hard drive back and fix the internal hard drive not showing up/mounting issue.
Solution 1: Change the Finder settingsBest Hard Drive For Macbook
If your Mac computer works in a normal state but the internal hard drive is not showing up in Finder or on desktop, this is because the system is not set up to display hard drives in Finder or on desktop. Here is a simple fix for this:
Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab and select 'Hard disks' to make external hard drives show on the desktop.
Solution 2: Check whether the internal hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility
The internal hard drive still not showing up/mounting on Mac? Then you can blame your hard drive. You can make use of Disk Utility to perform any disk volume-related tasks. Normally, if a disk is listed in the left side bar of Disk Utility, you can leave out the hardware problems.
Tips: https://woocelestial.weebly.com/blog/bedienungsanleitung-canon-mp610-pdf-download. If your Mac won't boot, you have to boot into Recovery Mode and launch Disk Utility.
Scenario 1: Internal hard drive can be found in Disk Utility
If you find the internal hard drive showing up in Disk Utility, the drive may has some file system corruptions. Thankfully, Macs provide several clues to help you isolate and troubleshoot most logical issues.
Mount the internal hard drive on Mac
Sometimes, aninternal hard drive won't mount on Mac, it's time to force it to. In Disk Utility, right click the hard drive and choose Mount. The internal hard drive should now appear under devices in the Finder.
Run First Aid to repair the internal hard drive
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If the internal hard drive is still not mounting on Mac, you can run First Aid to verify and repair various issues related to hard disk problems.
Step 1: Boot your Mac into Recovery Mode. Start your Mac and hold down the Command and R keys simultaneously until you see an Apple logo or spinning globe. Then release the keys.
Step 2: Blk360 program for mac. Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities menu.
Step 3: Select the corrupted internal hard drive from the left-hand panel.
Step 4: Click First Aid on the top of the window and wait while it verifying and repairing errors.
Data recovery from corrupted internal hard drive
If unfortunately,Disk Utility can't repair the disk, the corruptions on the internal hard drive are so serious. In this situation, all data on the drive is so fragile that any operation will overwrite it. If you don't back up any data, please perform data recovery firstly.
iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery isfree Mac hard drive data recovery software which helps you recover documents, pictures, audios, videos, emails from the unmountable, unreadable, formatted, corrupted Macintosh HD, internal hard drive, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. Even when yourMac won't boot, the program can regain access to your machine without taking out the internal hard drive. It is compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 and OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Solution 1: If you have only one Mac computer
If you have only one Mac computer, please directlyrun iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery in recovery mode and recover lost data from the unbootable Mac computer.
Reboot this Mac and press Command +Option +R keys.
Click Utilities in the top menu and select Terminal from the drop-down menu.
Run the following command:
This will launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery through iBoysoft Server.
Select the internal hard drive and recover data with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery with its wizard.
Solution 2: If you have two Mac computers
Step 1: Download iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on another Mac computer.
Step 2: Install and launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on the healthy Mac computer.
Step 3: Click iBoysoft Data Recovery on the menu bar and then select 'Create Boot Drive'.
Step 4: Insert a USB drive into the healthy Mac computer.
Step 5: Follow the wizard to create a bootable recovery drive on the USB drive.
Step 6: When the creation process completes, you can insert the USB drive into the unbootable Mac computer, and then press the Power button and Option key (⌥) to start the Mac up.
Step 7: Select iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery from the boot options.
Step 8: Follow the wizard to scan for the lost data on the corrupted internal hard drive.
Step 9: Choose the files you want to get back, and then click Recover button. Sync ios for mac download.
Erase the internal hard drive and reinstall macOS
After retrieving data from the corrupted internal hard drive, you can reformat the disk to make it usable again.
Step 1: Boot your Mac to Recovery Mode.
Step 2: Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities menu.
Step 3: Select the corrupted internal hard drive from the side bar.
Step 4: Click on Erase from the top.
Step 5: Setup the required information to reformat the disk and click Done when finished.
Step 6: Go back to macOS Utilities screen and select Reinstall macOS.
Scenario 2: Internal hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility
If your internal hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility, the drive may have hardware problems. In this case, none of software is helpful. You can try steps below to reboot your Mac computer.
Boot up your Mac in Safe Boot https://postbrown886.weebly.com/blog/download-ringcentral-for-mac-os.
Safe Mode checks through your startup drive to make sure there are no problems there. It helps you resolve problems that are stopping your Mac from starting up. To boot up your Mac in Safe Mode, begin with your Mac switched off or restart it. Press and hold the Shift key. Then release the Shift key as soon as the login window appears. If you have FileVault turned on, you need to log in twice.
Apple Macbook Air Hard Drive
Reset the PRAM / NVRAM
Best External Hard Drives For Mac
NVRAM or PRAM stores the information about system settings, including system date and time, screen resolution, etc. If it get corrupted, you Mac won't boot as usual.
Step 1: Press the Power (Eject) button.
Step 2: Immediately press and hold down the Option (Alt) + Command + R + P keys together for 20 seconds (or until the screen goes all black and comes back to gray again, or you hear the startup sound (in some old models).
Step 3: Release the keys simultaneously.
Step 4: Wait while your Mac boots.
Step 5: Get to System Preferences and re-configure the settings as needed.
Send the internal hard drive to a local technician for help
Hard Drives For Mac Book Pro
If these solutions above fails to fix internal hard drive not showing up on Mac, Unfortunately, you have to send the internal hard drive to a local technician for help or replace it with a new one.
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