Troubleshooting an External Drive Not Showing on Mac

If you are having trouble connecting an external drive or USB stick to your Mac, then there might be several ways to approach the problem and to try and find a potential solution. Many users panic when they realize that their Mac does not show or detect the connected drive at all but, thankfully, this problem is not permanent. Here are some of the things to try:

Troubleshoot the Connection

The first thing to check is whether the device you are using is not experiencing any hardware problems. If you have the ability to connect the external drive to another computer, then see if it works this way. You can also try switching to a different connection cable to make sure that the cable is not causing the problem. Make sure to try out both the front and rear USB ports since this might also cause some external drives to not show up.

Make Sure that your Mac Shows External Drives on the Desktop

Open Finder and then go to Preferences -> General. Make sure that the checkbox next to 'External Disks' is marked.

Mount the Drive Manually

If your Mac is failing to mount the drive, then you may need to accomplish the task manually. To do it, go to the Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Disk Utility. Check if the disk you are trying to connect shows up on the left. If it does, then mark it and click 'Mount.' It should now appear in Finder.

Use Apple's First Aid

Macs have a built-in tool to analyze disks for errors and issues that may prevent them from loading correctly. To run it, you need to connect the drive and then go to the Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Disk Utility. Mark the external hard drive, and then click on the 'First Aid' icon on top. Press 'Run' and wait for the process to finish.