

- #HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC HOW TO#
- #HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC INSTALL#
- #HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC WINDOWS 8#

Is the cable connecting your hard drive to the Mac wobbly at either end? If yes, do not force it as it may aggravate the problem. If it didn’t, don’t panic! Move on to the next one. In case the dongle is too hot, give it a few minutes to cool, and then try. Secondly, if you are using a USB-C dongle/hub, unplug it from your Mac and plug it into a different type-C port. Give it a few seconds and see if it is visible. But if you did not, unplug the drive from the current Mac’s USB port and plug it into another. This is a pretty common trick to solve such problems. If everything is fine here, move on to the next step. Secondly, some drives have two ports, and both must be plugged into the computer. The power they get from Mac’s USB port is sufficient.īut if you have a big hard drive that requires external power, ensure you satisfy that. Small hard drives, SSD, and pen drives might not require additional power. Make sure the drive is powered adequately If the options are already checked, move on to the next fix. Next, click ‘ Sidebar‘ and make sure ‘ External disks’ is checked.Make sure ‘ External disks‘ is checked.Click Finder at the top menu bar and choose Preferences. The first step is to ensure that external drives are allowed to show up on Mac’s desktop. Change Finder preferences to show the drive Access the drive using macOS Disk Utilityġ.Make sure the drive is powered adequately.Change Finder preferences to show the drive.
#HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC HOW TO#
How to fix an external disk drive that won’t show up on Mac Now that you know the basics, let’s look at the fixes. You will have to buy a new cable or contact a data recovery service like DriveSavers. Note: If it’s either of the last two, the mentioned fixes won’t work.
#HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC WINDOWS 8#
To do this on Windows 8 or Windows 7, press the Windows key once, type cmd, and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Next, open a Command Prompt window as administrator. For example, in the screenshot below, the Mac-formatted drive is Disk 2. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management window. This process erases everything on the disk, including its files and all its partitions. To erase this partition, we’ll have to wipe the entire disk. This partition is marked as protected, so you can’t just right-click and delete it - the delete option will be disabled. The Mac drive may have an “EFI System Partition” on it. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems. If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. Be sure you’ve identified the Mac drive - if you accidentally delete partitions from another drive, you could damage your Windows installation or lose your files. Locate the Mac drive in the list of disks. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer - internal ones or external ones connected via USB. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type diskmgmt.msc into the box, and press Enter to open it. RELATED: Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Managementįirst, open the Windows Disk Management tool. You’ll probably want to uninstall Java when you’re done.Įrase the Mac Partitions, Including the EFI System Partition
#HOW TO OPEN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FORMATTED FOR MAC ON PC INSTALL#
HFSExplorer unfortunately requires you install Java to use it, but it’s the only free option here. If you only have Windows systems available, you can use HFSExplorer to copy files from the drive onto your Windows system drive or another drive. If you have a Mac lying around, you can plug the drive into a Mac and back up the files. Instead, we’ll just be wiping the drive and starting over from scratch. This process won’t actually convert the file system. First, back up the data on the Mac-formatted drive if you have anything important on it.
