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How to fix the external drive keeps disconnecting?

I am connecting an external hard drive to read stored data files from it. I am connecting via USB to one of the terminals on the rear of the Mac Mini. My problem is that after about 5 minutes of using this 'connection', I get a message saying that it has been disconnected. The hard drive is still physically connected and powered up but I can no longer see the icon for the external drive within Finder and in order to be able to go back and read files on the external drive again I need to turn it off and turn it on again. I did not have any problems with the external drive before when using a PC. Does anyone know the cause?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Eudora Liu

Eudora Liu

Answered on Wednesday, November 22, 2023

It's easy for you to fix your external hard drive that keeps disconnecting on your Mac, you can check the reason why your external hard drive keeps disconnecting and then take the corresponding methods.

There are several reasons that you may encounter this problem.

  • The disk was put to sleep.
  • There is third-party software blocking the connection.
  • The USB or Thunderbolt cable or port is damaged.
  • There are software bugs on your Mac.
  • The external hard drive or USB drive is corrupted.
  • The drive doesn't have a sufficient power supply.
  • The drive has an outdated or incompatible disk driver.

After you ensure the reason why your external hard drive keeps disconnecting, you need to check whether you have lost any data. If you do, you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get back your data first.

  1. Free download and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
  2. Choose the drive and click Search for Lost Data.
  3. Preview the search result and click Recover.

After that, here are some ways you can take to fix your external hard drive that keeps disconnecting.

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