Seagate Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac? Fix It!

Seagate external hard drives are known for their unparallel speed and reliable storage features. With the help of Seagate external hard drivers, you can save your favorite music, videos, photos, and other important documents without any hassle. The external hard drives also come in handy while traveling. Under normal circumstances, as you connect the external hard drive to your Mac system, it automatically gets detected. However, there are many cases where Seagate external hard drives do not work in Mac systems. Before jumping into the solutions, it is essential to know the various reasons for connection failure. Some of the general reasons that result in Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac are:

Logical Failure: Some of the logical failures include virus attacks, accidental formatting, corruption, and more.
Physical Damage: There are many cases where your Seagate external hard drive USB port might be damaged. The chances of complete hard drive damage also remain high because of overheating and water damage.

Finding the exact cause of the external hard drive not showing up on Mac can be daunting and tedious. You can follow various methods and steps to rectify the problem and use your Seagate external hard drive without hassle.

Simple Check Your Seagate External Hard Drive

Sometimes the Seagate hard drive does not show up on Mac because of simple reasons. Either the connection might be lost, or your Mac system might not be able to recognize the hard drive. Here are some of the simple checks you must do to ensure that your Seagate external hard drive is not damaged from inside.

Re-Plug: There are many cases where your plug your external Seagate hard drive for the first time, it does not work. It is advised that you must re-plug your external drive and check for the connection status
Change Another USB Port or Cable: Sometimes faulty USB connection cables and Mac ports are the reason which results in Seagate external hard drive connection failure. Users are advised to check the Mac ports and change hard drive cables
Test the External Hard Drive on Another Computer: To check whether the connection failure is associated with hard drive damage or Mac system, you must test your Seagate external hard drive on another computer. If the hard drive works efficiently on another system, you must check your Mac configuration.
Restart Your Mac: If the external hard drive does not work with the points mentioned above, restart your Mac and re-connect the hard drive.

Even after executing all the simple solutions, if your external Seagate hard drive is not showing up on Mac, you must check the advanced steps and methods listed below to get your hard drive working.

Fixing Seagate External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac

There are various advanced steps and methods that users can follow to fix the Seagate hard drive not visible on the Mac issue. The various methods are listed below.

Method 1. Changing Preference Settings in Finder

If your Seagate external drive is not visible on Mac, you must change the preference settings in the Mac finder. To change the preference settings, follow these steps:

Step 1. Navigate to the Finder and then click on the Sidebar option under the Preferences tab.

Step 2. Tick on the 'External Disk' located in the 'Sidebar' to show Seagate external hard drives in Finder.

Step 3. Go back to the 'General Tab' and check on the 'External Disks' under 'Show These Items on the Desktop'.

Step 4. Once you follow the steps, your connected Seagate external hard drive will appear on the Mac desktop.

Finder Preferences

Method 2. Mounting External Hard Drive Using Disk Utility

If your Seagate external hard drive is visible in the disk utility, you can take a relaxing breath as your hard drive has no serious problem. In general, cases, mounting the Seagate hard disk makes it accessible. Mostly, the operating system automatically mounts the hard drive when you plug in the USB. However, if your Seagate hard drive is unmounted, you can follow manual procedures to mount the hard drive. Follow the steps mentioned below:

Step 1. Open the Disk Utility tab.

Step 2. Once the tab is opened, right-click on the external drive in Disk Utility and choose Mount. You can also click the 'Mount' button on top of the window.

Mount disk

Method 3. Running First Aid to Repair Seagate External Hard Drive

If your Seagate external drive is not showing up on Mac even after mounting the hard drive manually using Disk Utility, your hard drive could have disk errors. To the relief, you can repair your Seagate external hard drive using the native disk repair tool known as 'First Aid'. Follow the steps to repair the hard drive using First Aid.

Step 1. Navigate to the Launchpad icon on the Dock and search for the Other Option.

Step 2. Find Disk Utility and open it.

Step 3. Select the unmountable Seagate external hard drive and choose First Aid at the top.

Step 4. Click on Run to repair the hard drive.

Run First Aid

Method 4. Reformatting Seagate External Hard Drive to a Mac-Supported File System

Even if First Aid fails to repair the Seagate external hard drive, it is advised that you must reformat the external hard drive. To reformat the external hard drive to a Mac-supported file system, follow these steps:

Step 1. Connect the Seagate external hard drive and Find the Disk Utility option from the Launchpad icon.

Step 2. Choose your connected Seagate hard drive and click on the Erase option.

Step 3. Edit the hard drive name and select a format that would work with your Mac system.

Erase Hard drive - 1

Step 4. Once you have selected the format system, click on Erase button.

Step 5. Click on Done and finish the process.

However, before reformatting the Seagate external hard drive, users are advised to back up their crucial data to avoid any complications.

How To Recover Data From Seagate External Hard Drive on Mac

Some of the connection failures of a Seagate external hard drive result in data loss. To the rescue, the Deep Data Recovery for Mac allows users to back up all the important data. The data recovery software by Qiling supports different kinds of recoveries such as formatted recovery, OS crash recovery, raw recovery, and more. Mac users can recover more than 250 different types of files with the help of Deep Data Recovery. For recovering data from the Seagate external hard drive, users have to follow three simple steps, and the recovery process will begin.

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Step 1. Correctly connect your external hard drive to your Mac. Launch Deep Data Recovery for Mac, choose file types and click "Next" to start.

Select file types that you want to recover

Step 2. Select the external disk and click "Scan" to let the software search lost files on it.

select the flash drive where data lost and click scan

Step 3. After a quick scan and deep scan, all files will be presented in the left panel in the scan results.

click recover now button to recover lost flash drive data

Step 4. Select files you want to recover and click the "Recover" button. Don't save the recoverable files to the external hard drive in case of data overwriting.

Conclusion

There are multiple reasons which can lead to Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac. However, there are ample ways to fix the connection failure problem. If your Seagate external hard drive is not showing up on Mac, you can follow any of the methods listed in the article. If you lose the data in the connection process, you can use the Deep Data Recovery and get back your important data.