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Seagate External Drive Is Not Recognized on MacBook Pro Ventura

My external hard drive has been working fine for the last 3 weeks. Well, yesterday, it stopped connecting to my MacBook Pro with Ventura 13.3.1. I plug it into a Windows computer, it shows up there. Thus, it's definitely not damaged. I didn't reformat this drive before, it is still registered as exFAT for cross-platform use. It just does not show up on my MacBook Pro. I have tried different cables, USB-C hubs, and USB-C to USB-A adapters, but the drive is still not recognized on my Mac. My MBP is fully up to date. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Best Answered by

Connie Yang

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

This exact problem happened to me before. My Mac doesn't recognize and detect my Seagate external hard drive a few months ago too.

I have investigated and found that the external hard drive not showing up issue on a Mac is caused by system or file system errors.

Since you often use the exFAT external hard drive between Windows and macOS, causing macOS to fail to recognize and mount the external disk correctly. Although exFAT is compatible with both systems, they mount the drive in read-write mode in different ways.

Thus, to make your exFAT external hard drive workable again on your MacBook Pro, you can back up your files on a Windows PC and then reformat it on your Mac.