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External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on My MacBook, How to Fix?

I've had my external hard drive for my MacBook Pro for about 4 months. Today I went to plug it in via USB, it was working fine, then I accidentally unplugged it without ejecting it. Now it won't show up on the Desktop or the Finder. I used Disk Utility, and at first, it showed up there, I selected to repair it and it said the hard drive can't be repaired. Now it won't even show up in Disk Utility. I have a lot of pictures and video on the hard drive I can't lose. Any ideas of what to do now?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Sherry Song

Sherry Song

Answered on Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Hello, maybe there is something wrong with your external hard drive. You are suggested to recover and back up your files with some reliable tools, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, which scans and recovers over 1000 kinds of files on Mac.

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Then you can try: (here except some methods you have tried)

(1) Boot your Mac in Safe Mode.

(2) Adjust the Finder settings. Finder > Settings > General > Tick the External disks.

(3) Manually mount the external hard drive in Disk Utility. Disk Utility > View > Show All Devices > Find and select the drive > Choose Mount at the top menu.

(4) Reformat your drive. Be careful to do a backup.

(5) Force quit fsck in Activity Monitor.

(6) Reset NVRAM & SMC.

(7) Update your macOS.

(8) Run Mac diagnostics to check hardware issues.

Hope you can fix this problem, best wishes.

Also read: Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing up or Recognized on Mac

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