I recently performed a disk cleanup operation, but later my hard drive is not showing up on the computer. I tried basic troubleshooting steps, like checking the connections and restarting the computer, but I still can’t find the hard drive. Why is my hard drive not showing up anymore? How to fix it?
The issue of “clean disk now hard drive not showing up” could be caused by the following reasons:
Logical Errors: During the disk cleanup process, necessary files may have been accidentally deleted or the hard drive may have been formatted, leading to file system corruption . As a result, your operating system cannot recognize the hard drive.
Driver Issues: Your hard drive drivers may need to be updated, or they may have been changed or deleted during the disk cleanup. Outdated drivers can prevent the hard drive from being recognized.
Partition Issues: The partition table may be damaged, causing the hard drive not to be assigned a drive letter or to show as uninitialized or RAW. In this case, the operating system cannot access your hard drive.
Connection Issues: Although you checked the connections, the power cable sometimes may have intermittent faults. You can replace the USB cable or connect the hard drive to other USB ports to ensure it receives proper power.
Hard Drive Damage: If your hard drive has physical issues (such as mechanical failures), it may be unrecognized. Even after performing basic troubleshooting, there may still be damage to the hard drive.
Have you tried mounting it in Disk Utility ? Open Disk Utility (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility) and check if the hard drive appears in the left-hand list. If the hard drive is gray, try clicking the mount button. If mounting fails, run First Aid in Disk Utility; it will scan and repair file system errors, which may resolve the recognition issue.
You can also check the hard drive format in Disk Utility. If it shows as uninitialized or RAW, the file system may be corrupted, preventing the operating system from accessing it. If the hard drive does not contain important data, you can try erasing the hard drive and reformatting it to APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This operation will delete all data on the hard drive. Therefore, you should back up any important data first. If you need to recover data, you can download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, a reliable data recovery tool with a high success rate.
You can mount the hard drive using Terminal. Open Terminal and type diskutil list to view the disk list, then find the target disk number.
Type the following command to mount your disk (replace “diskX” with your hard drive number): diskutil mountDisk /dev/diskX