why is my external hard drive read only on mac

This option should be the fix of last resort. You’ll need to click on the Devices heading to see what is displayed there. You might have Finder structured so that it only displays local content. 🖥 Your Mac isn’t correctly formatted to display an external drive. You can go to the Apple menu to select the Restart command to initiate this process. Try to reboot the computer to see if it mounts in Finder. 🔄 Your Mac is stuck in an unreadable cycle.Īlthough Apple computers are quite reliable, they can sometimes freeze different apps or processes that fail to recognize the mounted HDD. If you have multiple failures, including with different cables, this could be your problem. When your USB or HDMI port gets physically damaged, it might not read your external HDD – or anything else! Try to connect another peripheral to your Mac to see if it gets recognized. You can try connecting the external hard drive with a different one to see if it works. If you know for certain that the USB cable is connected securely, the issue could be with the wiring itself. Once you’ve tried that fix and it still isn’t working, these additional issues might be the cause of your problem. Once you secure the connection, it should mount. Your USB cable is likely loose in one of the ports. The primary reason why an external HDD isn’t recognized by Mac is that the drive isn’t correctly plugged into the computer. Why Is the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac? This guide will help you recover data on an external hard drive not discovered by Mac. If the external hard drive doesn’t show up on Mac, that HDD becomes an expensive paperweight.Īlthough it can be frustrating to have the computer not detecting your drive, it is a resolvable issue.

It shows up in Finder under Devices, along with any similar windows you have open on your home screen.

When you connect the external HDD to your Mac, it typically mounts so that you can read what is on the storage device.

Why is my external hard drive read only on mac