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Seagate External Harddrive For Mac

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  1. Seagate External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows
  2. Seagate 1tb External Hard Drive For Mac

Summary: Feel very upset when finding your Seagate external hard drive not recognized/detected on Mac? Have no data backup? Now download free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac - iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery to recover data from the not recognized Seagate external hard drive.

Plug a Seagate USB hard drive into your Mac but the drive is not recognized by the computer?

It's never been so easy to choose the perfect storage companion for your Mac® computer. From the popular Slim drives to the ridiculous capacity and mobility of the Portable drives, you can always rely on the Backup Plus family. All Backup Plus drives are compatible with Time Machine® and come with.

Don't worry, you are not the only one who uses famous hard drive brand like Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsung, etc. but encounters this problem.

Here is an example from Apple Communities.

  1. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is the most reliable hard drive you can carry around with you at all times. It is formatted for both Mac and Windows right out of the box, and its easy-to-use software can automatically do backups for you as often or as little as you want. Seagate also throws in a one-year complimentary subscription to Mylio Create.
  2. Your Seagate external hard drive connects to your Mac by its USB cable. The Seagate portable drives receive their power from your Mac by the USB cable. And that means you’ll have to have enough battery power in your MacBook.

'I have a MacBook Pro with macOS El Capitan. My WD hard drives are recognized, but my new Seagate 1T drive is invisible. The light on the drive works, which tells me that it is drawing power from the computer. But the computer does not recognize the drive. Anyone knows how to fix Seagate external hard drive not recognized, showing up, or detected on Mac or at least recover files from the drive?'

Actually, it is a dime a dozen that external hard drive is not recognized or detected by Mac computers. Some users even say that they can see the Seagate external hard drives' light blinking but the computer just won't give any response. When an external hard drive is not working, not recognized, not detected, or not showing up on your Mac, you will feel very terrible because you can't access files nor the drive at all. Fortunately, in this article, you can find out how to fix the unrecognized Seagate external hard drive and how to recover data from unrecognizable hard drives easily.

Table of contents
1. Why does the Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac?
2. Baisc check - Check if the Seagate external hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility/Finder?

Part I: Why does the Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac?

Seagate hard drives, such as portable hard drives, external hard drives, hard drives for Mac, etc. are often used as backup media to store important files, or to transfer data among computers. However, they are prone to be damaged or corrupted as well. And it's quite common for a Seagate external hard drive to become unrecognized by your Mac all of a sudden and leave you all at sea.

You may be wondering 'Why my Seagate external hard drive is not recognized by the Mac?' Well, the reasons behind this problem could be varied and there are some common ones.

  1. Bad USB port
  2. macOS update issue
  3. System failure
  4. File system corruption
  5. Motherboard issue
  6. Virus infection
  7. External drive damage or corruption, etc.

Baisc check - Check if the Seagate external hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility/Finder?

To fix the unrecognized Seagate external hard drive on Mac, the very first thing is to check whether it's the USB port's issue. Plug in the drive to another USB port or a different computer, and check if the drive is recognized, detected or shows up on Mac. If yes, congratulations. Both the external hard drive and the data on it are secure. But to access files on this drive, you need to move forward to do some basic checks and try out the solutions according to your situations.

Important thing: Check if the Seagate external hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility/Finder?

Usually, if your external hard drive is recognized/detected by your Mac, you will see this drive on the desktop and Finder. But for many Mac users, when they can't find their disk drives in Finder or on the desktop, they would say the drive is not recognized by the computer. But actually, most of the time, even if a Seagate external hard drive doesn't show up in Finder, it still can be found in Disk Utility. So please check whether the drive is showing up in Disk Utility/Finder.

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There are three possible outcoms. Just check them one by one and go head to fix this issue.

Scenario 1: The Seagate external hard drive isn't showing up in Finder/on the desktop

When a hard drive is plugged into a Mac, the first impression for most users is that the icon of this drive will show up on the desktop and in Finder. But why your Seagate external hard drive is not showing up in Finder or on the desktop? Indeed, it is because you haven't set up your Mac to do so.

1. Show Seagate external hard drive in Finder

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar tab.

Step 2: Select 'External disks' under 'Locations', and then your Seagate external hard drive will show up in Finder.

2. Show Seagate external hard drive on the desktop

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.

Step 2: Tick 'External disks' to show the Seagate external hard drive on the desktop.

Scenario 2: The Seagate external hard drive is recognized but not mounted in Disk Utility

If the Seagate external hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but is just not mounted, it at least means the drive is recognized by your Mac. Mounting a hard disk makes it accessible by the computer, enabling the operating system to read and write to files on the disk. Most of the time, the operating system will automatically mount your disk when you connect your USB drive to this Mac, but you if you find the Seagate external hard drive unmounted in Disk Utility, you have two solutions.

Solution 1: Manually mount the Seagate external hard drive

You can simply right-click this external hard drive in Disk Utility, and choose Mount or click the Mount button on the top of the window. You will be able to access your files if it can be mounted successfully.

Solution 2: Repair the Seagate external hard drive with First Aid

However, if the Seagate drive is unmountable or the Mount icon is greyed out, it could be some disk errors that prevent your Mac to recognize/detect the drive correctly. Fortunately, there is a native disk repair tool called Disk Utility on your Mac and you can repair this external hard drive with the following steps.

  1. Click on the Launchpad on the Dock and find Other.
  2. Locate Disk Utility and open it.
  3. Select the unmountable external hard drive in the left sidebar and choose First Aid at the top.
  4. Click Run to repair this Seagate hard drive.

Solution 3: Fix the unmountable Seagate external hard drive by reformatting.

If First Aid failed to repair this drive, the file system or the partition table of this external hard disk could be corrupted. In this case, reformatting is a feasible method to fix the corrupted file system or partition table. However, it will also erase all data stored on it. So, to avoid unnecessary data loss, you should firstly make sure you have a copy of data backup or recover files from this drive with reliable data recovery software.

Format thumb drive for mac and pc. Jul 17, 2019  How to Format a Flash Drive. This wikiHow teaches you how to change your flash drive's default file format. Formatting your flash drive will typically remove any files or folders on the drive, so make sure you back up your files before. Jul 22, 2019  How to Format a Flash Drive to Work On OS X and Windows. Click Start File Explorer This PC. Right-click your flash drive. If you only use a Mac computer, you can format your thumb drive. How to format a drive for Mac and PC compatibility Posted by Ant on March 11th, 2012 43 Comments If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. Jul 05, 2017  How to Format a Drive on a Mac. If you want to use a different file system on your USB drive, you’ll need to “format” it. Again, formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep. To format a drive. Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility. Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is useful data recovery software, which can recover data from not recognized Seagate Backup Plus drives and not readable Seagate external hard drives. Moreover, this program supports file recovery from hard drives of Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsnug, etc. Generally, it can recover data from formatted, unmountable, inaccessible, unreadable or corrupted hard drives. This powerful data recovery software can also recover data from Macintosh HD drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. on Mac.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery now is fully compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.7 (Lion). And the macOS 10.15 (Catalina) is approaching.

Step 1: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

Step 2: Select the Seagate external hard drive and click 'Next' button to scan for all the lost data.

Step 3: Double-click to preview your images, videos, word files, etc. in the searching results.

Step 4: Choose files you need and click 'Recover' to get them back and save the recovered files to another usable disk drive.

After recovering target files from this Seagate external hard drive, you can now reformat the drive in Disk Utility without worrying about data loss.

Step 5: Click Go in the upper left of your desktop, choose Utilities in the context list.

Step 6: Open Disk Utility and select the Seagate external hard drive from the sidebar

Step 7: Click Erase on the top of Disk Utility window.

Step 8: Complete the required information for erasure, including Name, Format, and Scheme.

Step 9: Then click Erase to go and wait until the erasure process ends and click Done.

Scenario 3: The Seagate external hard drive is not detected in Disk Utility

However, if your Seagate external hard drive is not even listed in Disk Utility, it is possible that the drive has some hardware problems like bad sectors.

Usually, the symptoms would be:

  • The external hard drive makes clicking/beeping noise.
  • Files get missing/disappeared/invisible/inaccessible.
  • Documents or Folders become empty.
  • Disk information like storage capability or files system is not showing normally in Disk Utility.
  • Some other abnormal symptoms.

Confronted with such kind of hard drive failure, you'd better seek help from a local disk recovery and repair service for good.

Conclusion:

Sometimes, the Seagate external hard drive not recognized on Mac problem is just that Seagate external hard drive not showing up in Finder, not showing up on the desktop, or not mounted in Disk Utility, which can be easily solved. However, your any attempts to fix the unrecognized Seagate external hard drive may write new data to the drive and overwrite the original one. Thus, if you're facing such kind of problems, you should firstly recover data from the Seagate external hard drive with hard drive data recovery software like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery before you set about fixing this problem.

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Seagate External Hard Drive For Mac And Windows

Mac computers are easy to use, for the most part. But sometimes, things happen that can really turn that ease of use into “What do I do with this?” One of those things is when you unplug a USB storage device without ejecting it properly. Usually, you just get a quick warning message and things return to normal.

But sometimes, something worse will happen. Instead, you’ll now have a read-only external hard drive that won’t allow you to do backups. If you’re having trouble copying a file to your external hard drive, right click on it in your Finder and select Get Info. If you see this at the very bottom under Sharing & Permissions, then you have a problem.

In some cases, you don’t even need to eject it improperly for this to happen – it just happens from one usage to the next. It can also happen if you are switching between using the drive on a Mac and a Windows PC. No matter the reason why, this can be a very frustrating thing to deal with, especially if you have just backed up a large amount of files onto your new drive.

Troubleshooting a Read-Only Seagate External Hard Drive

Since Seagate is one of the most popular brands you will find when searching for a backup external hard drive for a Mac on sites like Amazon, we’ll troubleshoot this problem based on one of their hard drives.

The first thing you will run across when you search for a read-only external hard drive on a Mac is the suggestion to reformat it. That’s the suggestion the Seagate forum support admin offers. Of course, if you have files on it already, that really isn’t an option, as you would lose all of those files.

Another suggestion you’ll find is to create a second backup of your read-only external hard drive and then reformat the read-only had drive. Again, this is an irritating prospect as you have paid for one hard drive, and you don’t want to pay for a second just because the first one is having problems. And it’s another suggestion by the Seagate forum admins.

After reading a lot of forum entries, you’ll find the solution to this issues is actually quite simple – you just need to download and install a NTFS driver for Mac OS from Seagate.

Once installed (and you’ve restarted your Mac), your external drive should be back to normal. You can check by either trying to copy a file to it or right clicking on it in your Finder, selecting Get Info, and making sure the permissions have changed to read and write.

If this isn’t the case, you may need to keep searching for solutions. But most of the time, this will solve the problem and allow you to use your external hard drive freely between your Mac and PC.

Preventing the Read Only Hard Drive Issue

One way to prevent this issue from happening with your Seagate (or other) external hard drive is to set up your external hard drive as specified in the directions that come with the product. While almost every piece of hardware is now plug-n-play, some do need those extra configurations and software to get the best performance.

Troubleshooting a Read-Only External Hard Drive Other Than Seagate

Seagate 1tb External Hard Drive For Mac

Experiencing the read-only problem with another company’s external hard drive on a Mac, or not able to fix it with the driver suggested above? You can try searching on Google for others who have solved this problem, although many will simply suggest that you reformat the drive or get a second backup and then reformat your hard drive. Some companies will, like Seagate, have specific drivers that you can install to help your Mac identify your external hard drive as read and write again.