Macbook External Disc Drive

If you're looking for a Mac-friendly external hard drive that's built for durability, take a look at LaCie's Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C portable hard drive. With its distinctive rubber bumpers and brushed aluminum chassis, the drive offers drop resistance up to 5 feet, crush resistance that can withstand up to a 1-ton car, and IP54 water. May 01, 2020 Try using Terminal to eject the disk, then shut down your Mac, wait 20-30 seconds and unplug the external drive from the Mac, and power your Mac back on. Wait for your Mac to fully boot, then reconnect the drive to your Mac and see if it now recognizes it. Sep 21, 2020 The LaCie 2TB Mobile SSD drive is an external USB-C drive with more than enough space for all of your digital files. An Apple Store exclusive, its brushed aluminum exterior makes it look like it. Jul 24, 2020 If you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs. It provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives.

• External Disc Drive Macbook Pro
• Macbook External Disc Drive For Macbook Air
• Macbook Air External Disc Drive

Sep 28, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

Nowadays, several people who are using the external hard drive, having trouble while connecting them with Mac. Even a few days ago, I got the same issue while attaching an external hard drive with my mac book pro, such as 'the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.'

Before discussing the solutions, I would like to put some light on why is this problem occurring?

Why does my external hard drive keep disconnecting?

If you connected your external hard drive with your Mac, and it's not responding like discussed above, definitely there is a kind of particular problem behind the scene, that you didn't recognize yet. I evaluated some possible cusses that are going to mention below.

• The hard drive didn't plug-in properly
• Data cable is damaged or exposed( try different cable)
• USB cable connector got damage.
• Hardware or software issue.
• A USB port( Thunderbolt port) is damaged, it might be a hardware problem of your Mac, so try a different port.
• Your Mac might be working slow.
• If your external drive connected through a wall outlet, use a different wall outlet
• This problem might because of your mac or USB port( thunder-bolt), so try different Mac to assurance.
• Test your external hard drive on different Mac or pc; sometimes, this problem occurs due to hard drive damaged.

Apple software office package. Whenever these kinds of problems occur, your external hard drive doesn't show on your Mac. It is incredibly annoying when you are transferring data between two devices. Furthermore, the risk of data corruption can be increase while transferring data from the external drive to Mac.

For preventing this kind of risk and problems, There is numerous website which are providing not-effective methods. Still, I have some experimented solutions that work for such type of problem.

Solution 1: Make sure your Mac distinguish the external hard drive

This kind of approach makes you able to check whether your mac port or hard drive is physically damaged. If your mac book/ pc port or external drive is damaged, your Mac will not identify the external hard drive. And you will get the same dialogue on-screen as I showed above. You must have to check the Mac to recognize the external hard drive through the following steps:

Step 1: Click on the apple icon on the upper-left corner of your screen.

Step 2: Click on About this Mac.

Step 3: Click on the Overview button, and after that, select the system Report option. Through this action, a screen will appear, system information window.

Step 4: After displaying the system information window, double-click on the hardware option to expand the system information category.

Step 5: Select the storage if the hard drive you inserted is displaying in the right of the panel, which means there is no issue with your Mac's port or connected hard drive, so you just need to move on the following method. If it didn't display in the right panel, that means there is a problem with your Mac's port or drive for considering this issue; you can do the following things:

Attach the external hard drive to a different computer to check whether it is working or not. If it is not working or displaying on another computer, then your external hard drive has a software or hardware problem. The only option to resolve this problem is to replace your external hard drive with a new one.

Use a new hard drive on your Mac's USB port to check whether the device is working on it or not. If it does not work, there is a severe problem with your Mac hardware. Try another available port of your Mac, or take it to repair workshop for further inspection.

Solution 2. Resolve this issue by using Disk Utility

Sometimes, this kind of problem can because of missing of the disk partition table. You can even utilize the Disk utility function, which is a built-in Mac to repair your external hard drive. It is advantageous to fix numerous hard drive problems such as external hard drives to keep disconnecting issues on your computer or laptop.

Here is instruction, how you can repair your external hard drive by using Disk utility.

Step 1: Click on the initialize button when the error message dialogue appears. After that Disk utility window will open.

Step 2: Click on the view option in the menu bar, and choose Show all devices.

Step 3: the left pane of the display screen, click on the external device. After that, click on the First Aid tab option.

Step 4: Click on the Repair Disk in the in the bottom window for a start repairing process.

Step 5: This step will take several minutes for processing. After done repairing. Check back your external hard drive with connecting it again.

Solution 3.Change finder settings in your Mac

There is one of the most common methods that people usually use to resolve external drive issues. Change the finder settings make your external drive recognize on your Mac. It is also a well-knowing cause that makes your mac system unable to understand the external devices. For fixing this issue, you need to follow some instructions to resolve it by changing the finder settings.

Step 1: First, open your Finder window in your Mac. Go to the finder preference.

Step 2: When finder preference got open, now click on general settings option.

Step 3: In the last phase, you must have to assure that the external disk option enabled or not. If it is allowed, then the process got to end here, but if it does not, then make it let instantly and save all the changes.

Solution 4. Recover or backup your drive data before format

Sometimes, corrupted files can be a significant cause of such type of error on your Mac. File corruption can cause by a malicious virus, improper shut down your Mac, or forceful restart. To resolve such kind of issue, you need to recover your data first and, after that, perform hard drive format. But the question is rising on this point that how can we repair and recover our corrupted, lost data.

For dealing with this problem, you will need to contact third party software because Mac does not have such features to make it recover your drive data. If you are still sticking with; what kind of software you need to recover your data, I will recommend you Recoverit software.

Recoverit data recovery software makes you able to recover more than 1000 formats of files from a variety of modern storage devices and operating system such as Mac OS, MS Windows( all version), digital cam, USB drive, Drone cam, SSD drive, CF or SD card, etc.

Furthermore, you can repair and recover the various type of files like video, audio, photos, documents, emails, and many others.

Recoverit will take several seconds to initiate on your Mac to start itself when it got launched. Now you are three steps far from your lost data.

Step 1: Select your device

First, make it launch Recoverit data recovery software on your Mac.

To recover your specific data from your external hard drive, you need to select the partition or hard drive by clicking on your external hard drive. And then click on the 'Start' button to initiate the recovery process.

External Disc Drive Macbook Pro

Step 2: Scan the location

On this step, Recoverit software will start scanning your files all around the drive. Using an advancing search algorithm will find out all your lost, corrupted, encrypted, deleted, or formatted data.

During the scan, if you get your specific data, then you can pause scanning at the spot.

Step 3: Preview and Recover Files

Recoverit software allows you to preview all the recoverable data or files before recovering them. You can simply select all targeted files such as video, audio, documents, etc. manually by clicking on the 'Select' option to recover all those files chosen by click on the Recover button. After click on it, you will retrieve all your recoverable selected data will back.

Furthermore, it will recommend you to save it on another location rather than original locate to prevent overwriting data.

Solution 5. Change the format of your external hard drive

This type of issue usually occurs due to the external hard drive's format, especially if it is NTFS. Mac does not support NTFS format officially. If your external hard drive is NTFS formatted, it might be readable for you but not writeable. And it might be possible that you get such type of external drive disability error usually occurs when you insert your external hard drive in Mac. You can fix this problem by, change the format of your external hard drive from NTFS to exFAT, that supported by both Windows and OS X.

Note: Keep in mind that changing the format of your external hard drive can erase all the data permanently. You must have to make a backup of all data of your external drive. For doing this, you will need a windows computer who can easily support NTFS format to save you all data in it.

For ensuring the drive format, follow some steps:

Step 1: Click on the search option in the upper right corner of your mac screen. After then, a spotlight search window will appear

Step 2: Type the Disk utility in your keyboards and press enter. Disk Utility window will open.

Step 3: Select your external disk drive and then select on the info tab of Disk Utility function.

Step 4: Check whether the file system is exFAT or NTFS. If NTFS, then follow some steps below to change its format.

There are four steps you will follow to change the format of your external drive from NTFS to exFAT.

Step 1: Open Disk Utility.

Step 2: Again, select the disk drive from the sidebar and click on the erase option.

Step 3: Choose the format EXFAT and click on the Erase button. This process will take several seconds to format all your drive data. You need to be patient for this procedure completes.

Step 4: Now, you can check if your Mac can read external hard disk drive.

If the concerning problem persists, then try the next following method.

Solution 6. Fix error with terminal

if your external hard drive is disconnecting you on Mac, you can even check and resolve this error through USB and with the terminal. For solving this issue, you need a few steps to follow that discuss below:

Step 1: The very first, you need to open Terminal application in utilities, then type:

Step 2: And then you will find the number of your external hard drive or USB by type: diskutil info disk2 and press return.

Important: Here, you need to replace 2 with your external disk number.

Step 3: And now you will type: diskutil eject disk2 and press return.

Step 4: Type the diskutil list on the keyboard and press return. When the USB drive gets disappear in the Terminal list, you will close the window instantly.

Step 5: You will simply shut down your mac Terminal application and then open the console to evaluate the drive errors.

Step 6: At last just, click on 'Faults and Error' to make sure whether there is still any problem or not.

Performs all the steps we discussed above; you will plug in your external drive in Mac again. If the error shows again after reconnecting the external hard drive, then it is pretty sure that your external drive is entirely secure. So, now you can connect it with another mac to ensure its visibility.

Essential Suggestions to Reconnect External Hard Drive

1. The right way to connect External Hard Drive on Mac

Usually, when you connect external hard drive on mac port quickly, it ruins the external hard drive cable and sometimes ports also and make it disabled on your Mac. That is why whenever you connect your external hard drive on Mac, you should do it in a very decent way so that the usability age of cable and port might extend, and also your Mac will be able to recognize it frequently.

2. Right Way to Prevent External Hard Drive Disconnecting Randomly

Simply just click on the finder, at the left bottom of the screen. Click on the eject external icon by selecting your external hard drive name.

3. Right Ways to Prevent External Hard Drive Lost on Mac

• Keep you mac ports clean and dust-free
• If your Mac is getting heat up during connecting or disabling, you must take it to repair shop to assure about motherboard problem issues.
• Keep making your files backup on a regular base on multiple locations.
• Install antivirus application on Mac and update it monthly.

Conclusion

In final words, I hope you got to fix your mac error 'the disk you inserted was not readable by a computer.' There are several other ways to resolves this issue, but recommend methods are highly workable. If you are still having this issue, you can feel free to comment below. We will love to help you to resolve this issue with multiple solutions.

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Most of the time, when you connect an external hard drive to your Mac's USB port, you soon see it mount on the desktop. Apple likes to ensure these are easy to find, so they also appear in the Finder in the left-hand column under Devices, since Mac's treat them the same way as another computer.

However, sometimes, an external hard drive doesn't show up. It's annoying, especially when you need to transfer something right then. And besides, there can be a risk that data on the external USB pen, hard, or flash drive is corrupt, which means you can't transfer what you need between devices at all.

Corrupt data can be one reason your Mac won't recognize an external drive, but there are other reasons too. Let's take a look why this is happening and how you can get an external drive to appear on your Mac and get recover data to access to your documents.

How to fix an external disk drive that won't show up on a Mac

Why an external disk drive is not showing up? There could be a few reasons why a USB flash drive isn't making an appearance.

Open an External Drive Not Showing on Mac

Get a huge set of top utilities for troubleshooting external hard drives not mounting on a Mac

Start with the basics:

Macbook External Disc Drive For Macbook Air

1. Check whether the drive is properly plugged in. It sounds obvious, but since this relies on a wire - either a USB cable or HDMI cable - if it's not connected properly then it won't appear on your desktop.
2. Faulty cable. Assuming it's plugged in correctly, not wobbly or loose, the cable could be at fault. Try connecting the same device with a different cable.
3. Damaged USB or flash drive port. It could be a hardware issue with the Mac. If you've got another port, try connecting the device to that one.
4. Reboot your Mac. Sometimes, if a USB disk won't boot, the cause is macOS issue. Hopefully, some data damage that can be fixed by restarting. Choose the Apple menu > Restart. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS's memory and starts it up fresh.
5. Incorrectly formatted drive. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. It could be that you are trying to connect something only fit to interact with Windows devices. If you've got a PC or laptop, it's worth connecting and seeing if you can access the files through another device. The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go to
   Apple (in the top toolbar menu) > About This Mac > Storage.
   See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report.
6. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop. It could be that your Mac already recognizes the device, but just isn't showing its icon on the desktop screen. Even if that is the case, the drive will still appear in the left-hand column of the Finder menu under Devices. You should be able to access your drive that way, and, in the Finder menu under Preferences > General, you can check External Drives to ensure that from now on it shows up on your desktop too.
7. Reset NVRAM. To do this, shut down or restart your Mac, switch it back on and immediately press these four keys together for at least 20 seconds: Option, Command, P, and R. It should look as though your Mac has started again; if it has, release the keys when you hear the second startup chime. Hopefully, the hard drive has shown up now.
8. Check Apple's Disk Utility to see if an external drive is showing up. Disk Utility is within System Preferences, or you can find it using Spotlight. If it is visible, then click the option to Mount, which should make it visible on the desktop and in the External Drives option in the Finder menu.

Unfortunately, if none of those options has worked and the external drive still isn't visible, then it could have crashed, or be well and truly broken. But there might still be a way you can recover the data on the external drive.

How to show connected devices in Finder

1. Go to the Finder menu and select Preferences (Cmd+comma).
2. From General tab tick External disks to ensure that from now on it shows on the desktop.

In the Sidebar tab you can choose which folders and devices will be shown in the left-hand column of the Finder window.

How to add cloud storages to Finder

You can also mount cloud storage as local drive on your Mac. By connecting Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon to your computer, you get more space for securely accessing and sharing files. For your ease, add cloud drives to Finder with CloudMounter app, so that you keep them close at hand. You can read detailed instructions on managing cloud storage as local drives here.

Repair the failed external drives with First Aid

If your drive is having problems, you can try to fix them yourself with First Aid and therefore get access to your files. First Aid tool will check the disk for errors and then attempt a repair as needed. It helps to verify and repair a range of issues related to startup HD and external drive problems. If you are able to fix the hard drive or SSD in your Mac (or an external drive) using Disk Utility you will hopefully be able to recover your files.

Macbook Air External Disc Drive

To run Fist Aid on an external hard drive:

1. Open Disk Utility. You can searching for it using Spotlight Search or via Finder > Application > Utility
2. Check on your external hard drive, click the First Aid tab and select Run to start running diagnostics.

If First Aid successful in fixing errors, the external drive should be available to mount. If the utility unable to repair issues, your drive truly is broken or formatted using a file system that the Mac cannot read - in this way we suggest you follow the next steps to recover data from a damaged disk drive.

How to recover data from a crashed drive

Thankfully, there is an app for that. Disk Drill is the world's premier data recovery software for Mac OS X. Powerful enough to retrieve long-lost, mistakenly deleted files from Macs, external hard drives and USB drives and camera cards.

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An easy way to recover lost files on an external hard drive

Providing you already have Disk Drill Pro version, which you can get automatically by downloading from Setapp:

1. Connect your drive to the Mac.
2. Quit all other applications on the Mac, especially those that may be trying to access the external drive (e.g. iPhoto, Words)
3. Launch Disk Drill.
4. Click on the external drive that you are trying to recover files from. If it has partitions, you will see all of them. If, however, you still don't see any volume to the external drive then you may need to try some of the steps above again or read the Disk Drill Scanning FAQs.
5. To avoid the external drive being accessed during the recovery process, click Extras next to the drive or drive partition or file, then select Remount Volume As Read Only. A padlock will appear, protecting the drive during the process.
6. Now click Rebuild (or Recover) next to the file(s) you are trying to recover. Once the scan is finished - it may take some time if the files are large - a list of files will appeal.
7. Next, click Mount Found Items as Disk button on the bottom-left below the scan results.
8. Disk Drill 'strongly suggest saving the files to a different drive than the one you are trying to recover files from. Saving to the same drive substantially lowers your chances of recovery.'
9. A drive icon will appear, which once you double click will give you the option to open the files as you would do before they were lost. Drag them to another location, such as your desktop or a folder on your Mac.
10. Open the files to ensure they have been recovered properly and safely eject the external drive.

Disk Drill does have other ways to recover lost files but assuming there aren't complications, this method is the most effective. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available from Setapp, along with dozens of Mac apps that will make your life easier. Never have to worry about a crashed or corrupted external drive again.

A few more tips on getting your files back

1. Macs and third-party apps that look after Macs, such as Disk Drill and iStat Menus come with a S.M.A.R.T. (also known as Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status monitor. If a SMART check reports errors, then it could mean the hard drive is at risk of failing completely. Within Disk Utility and Disk Drill, there are several solutions for this: Repair Disk Permissions and Repair Disk. If neither work, it's recommended that you backup all of the data from the disk, erase, then run a SMART check again. The external hard drive should show up as Verified.
2. Partitions can get lost within hard drives, temporarily hiding all of the information contained within. Disk Drill can help to identify and restore this information.
3. Within Disk Drill, you can restore data when a hard drive is damaged or add formatting, which is also something Disk Utility can help with.
4. CleanMyMac, another useful app available from Setapp, can help you identify external hard drive errors and repair them. It is an essential tool worth trying when you're having external hard drive difficulties.

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Alternative ways to recover data from an external hard drive

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) if your Mac shuts down when you plug in an external hard drive. Then use a different port to connect the external hard drive. If you've got a battery that you can't remove:

• Shut down and unplug the power adapter
• Press Shift-Control-Option and the power button at the same time. Do this for 10 seconds
• Release all keys
• Plug the power adapter back in and switch your Mac back on

For Macs with removable batteries, you need to switch them off, remove the battery, then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. After that, put the battery back in, plug in the power adapter and switch the power on again.

What's your file format? One reason your Mac isn't recognizing the hard drive is the file format. Windows uses NTFS file formats, while Macs, up until the introduction of Sierra, have used HFS+. Now, Apple has introduced the Apple File System (APFS) for newer operating systems. It is possible to format a hard drive so it can be read on Mac and Windows computers, providing you format using exFAT. However, if you're having problems accessing the files and the issue is due to formatting, you will need to connect it to a device it can be read on, and then format the files correctly for the computer you are going to use it on next.

How to make Ext2/Ext3 drives readable on Mac

The common issue is Ext2- and Ext3-formatted drives are not readable on macOS. There are two ways to access such external drives on your Mac – via Linux OS or FUSE system. The easiest would be installing Linux to a secondary drive or virtual machine.

If you go with Linux installation, dual boot your Mac with Linux on another drive and use FAT32 as a transfer intermediary. If you don't have a drive to install Linux to, use virtual machine as an interface for it. Transferring can be done the same way – with FAT32, or via network.

Another option for reading Ext2/Ext3 disks is mounting disk with Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE). Basically, it works as an extra interface enabling file system access via specially installed modules. Here's how to mount drives with FUSE:

1. Install FUSE for macOS or MacFUSE as well as fuse-ext2 module.
2. Use the following Terminal command to enable Disk Utility's debug menu and see all partitions: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
3. Attach your Ext2/Ext3 drive and locate the device name via Disk Utility.
4. In your user account, create a folder to be used as a mount point.
5. Use the following Terminal command to mount the drive as read-only: fuse-ext2 /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint
6. For write support, use the command: fuse-ext2 -o force /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint

And that's not the only case where Terminal helps you access external drive.

Employ the handy all-powerful Terminal, which always comes forward with solutions for difficult problems. Especially if System Information does recognize the USB or hard drive, but continues to hide it from you, disconnect the drive and try to find it using the Terminal, which you can find in Applications > Utilities.

• Once in the Terminal, type in the command diskutil list
• A list with information about volumes and drives should appear
• Look for a section labelled /dev/disk_ (external, physical)
• Make a note of the whole line after the word disk
• Now put the following command into the Terminal diskutil info disk followed by the number or digits assigned to that disk
• Now you should see detailed information about the drive, therefore confirming that your Mac can and does recognize it
• Eject using the Terminal by entering the command diskutil eject disk followed by the number or digits assigned to that disk
• Physically remove the disk from you Mac
• Plug it back in and your Mac should recognize it

Console is also reliable when it comes to solving tricky problems, although it isn't always that easy to use. You can find Console under Applications > Utilities > Console. Console shows if an external drive or any error is detected under the Errors and Faults tab. Best painting software 2018. If no errors show up, then the problem is not caused by the device.

To sum up, there are lots of potential solutions for a Mac not reading an external hard drive. If we were to pick one, Disk Drill seems to be the most well-rounded, offering plenty of customizations and power in an easy-to-use interface. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available via Setapp, along with 150+ Mac apps that strive to make your life much much easier. At the very least, you'll never have to worry about a crashed or corrupted external drive ever again.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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