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How To Recover Files From A Drive Not Recognized By A Mac?

I am having problems with an external hard drive. I have an external hard drive with a Mac OS X 4 11. A few days ago I turned off the Mac at the back button, after the screen went dark, I unplugged the HD only to find the Mac came on again. The Mac must have been in sleep mode. Since this time the Mac will not recognize the HD. I tried another USB, making sure the preferences under Finder are checked for all items, and tried data recovery, PRAM reset, Disk Utility, which did see the drive (in gray) and it gave me this message; Error; underlying task reported failure on exit / 1 non HFS volume checked / 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error / unable to read FAT (input/output error). I am hoping I can still use this external HD. Do there have any solutions?

Best Answered by

Vain Rowe

Answered on Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Hi there, it seems that the automatic Mac restart makes your FAT hard drive function abnormally. Incidentally, you'd better use a self-powered drive which has a lower coincidence of drive failure. As for the error you received, it's because Mac supports the FAT files system partially so Disk Utility cannot fix a FAT hard drive. You can borrow a Windows computer to perform the disk repair.

Before the repair, you should fetch all files and folders on the drive first. Since you cannot access the drive, iBoysoft Data Recovery Software comes to help. It can scan an inaccessible, unreadable, corrupted, and broken internal/external hard drive for lost files.

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After you have all the files at hand, you can then use Disk Management to fix the external hard drive. If you aim to use this drive on Mac, you'd better format the drive to a file system compatible with Mac, like HFS, HFS+, and APFS.