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Seagate 1TB external hard drive won't connect

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Xyzz40

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2016
5
0
So I have a 1TB external hard drive from Seagate. It has always worked great with my macbook air, but for the past few months it has been harder to connect it (Had to plug it in a few times before it connected, sometimes I had to restart the computer a few times before it would work). The last few times I used it and it actually worked it would disconnect itself without me even touching it or anything. Now, when I plug it in it won't pop ut at all. The external hard drive makes a buzzing sound as usual but isn't blinking like it does when it's plugged into the computer and connected.
It won't pop up under the units tab to the left in the finder window, it won't pop up under USB in utilities, it won't pop up when I open "About this mac" and the system rapport thing, nor under the Connected USB list.
I have checked that all the boxes are clicked in the "Show content" list.
I can't find it anywhere in the computer and I don't know what to do.
I need access to my hard drive and my Macbook is driving me crazy.
I connect it with USB and can't plug it up to a power source since there's nowhere to plug it up.

Additionally, it works for my other computer that's not a mac. But I need to be able to access it from this computer, so any advice or tips are very welcome.
Thanks in advance
 
It works great on all other computers, but not the mac though.
 
Have you tried it on a different USB port on your MacBook Air? When you say it works on other computers, do you mean Mac or Window machines?
 
case2001 said:
Have you tried it on a different USB port on your MacBook Air? When you say it works on other computers, do you mean Mac or Window machines?
Click to expand...

I have two USB ports on my macbook air and it works in neither of them. You can hear it spinning and "working" but it's not connecting to the computer and there's no sign of it anywhere in the mac.
Tried it on a computer with Windows 7. But it has always worked from my mac before and I have made no changes ever since. I can connect other things like my camera or phone in the USB ports without a problem.
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cincygolfgrrl said:
If it works somewhere, back it up NOW!
Click to expand...

The thing is I have almost 200GB on the hard drive, and my other computer doesn't have enough space to store it on. I don't have any other external hard drives and no cloud online where it will all fit.
 
Time to face reality. You either buy a drive now before it's too late or you buy a drive when it fails. 200GB is nothing. Get a cheap 1TB if you must (or even 500GB).
 
LiveM said:
Time to face reality. You either buy a drive now before it's too late or you buy a drive when it fails. 200GB is nothing. Get a cheap 1TB if you must (or even 500GB).
Click to expand...

No need to be rude. There's nothing wrong with the USB cord for the hard drive, nothing wrong with the hard drive, nothing wrong with the USB ports on the mac. So it must be some setting or such in the mac which is why I asked. My hard drive is a 1TB and I know 200GB is "nothing", but as I said I don't have space anywhere to back it up. Buying a new one won't help since the hard drive is not the problem, and I can't afford buying a new one so help me solve my problem or don't post comments that aren't even helping thanks :)
 
I know you don't want to hear it, but it really sounds like there's a problem with your hard drive. I have dozens of external hard drives going back many years. It is not uncommon for them to fail. I don't think people are being rude to suggest that you get another drive and backup your important data before this one completely fails.

I don't think there are any "settings" on your Mac that will help this, although there could be a hardware problem. Getting another drive would also help you diagnose that - if you see the same kinds of problems with a new drive then it would point to a problem on your Mac.

And really, it isn't unreasonable to own two hard drives, even if it turns out that the first one is OK. They are very inexpensive, perhaps borrow a few dollars from a friend or family member, or sell something to raise the money?
 
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We are trying to help. Whether the problem is your Mac, the drive, or something else, the important thing is your data. We're trying to help you protect that above all else.

How is the drive formatted? "OS X Extended (Journaled)?" "MS-DOS (FAT)?" Something else? If it works on a PC it may not be formatted for the MAC. I base this on you having said camera and phone connect successfully through the USB ports.
 
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The hard drive has worked fine with the mac for 1.5 years. When I got the mac I had it formatted to work with the mac, so it's not at it's full potential when connecting it to my windows computer. I'm not 100% sure what it's formatted as since I was not the one who did it.
The hard drive works on first try in my windows, pops up immediately. On the mac it worked fine, too. But as I said, a few months ago it started getting worse and you had to plug it in a couple times or restart the computer before it would connect. Also, it works perfectly fine on a friend's macbook air with the same updates and everything. So the problem must be in my mac.
Since there's nothing wrong with the hard drive, I'm not worried that something will happen to my data at the moment. I'm just having connection problems between the hard drive and the mac.
As I said, not sure exactly how it's formatted, and not sure how to find out.
When I got the mac it was formatted in some way that only allowed it to work on my PC. When I connected it to the mac I could open it but not change the files in any way (Copy them, move them around, delete them or save anything on the hard drive), a friend helped me format it to the mac. So now it's the same way around but with the PC. It has worked fine on the mac for over a year now and when I connect it to the PC I can't move things around, delete them or save new things on the hard drive, but I can copy them to the PC.
I don't know if this helps, I'm not that good with hard drives and the differences between Mac/Pc and so on
 
Xyzz40 said:
As I said, not sure exactly how it's formatted, and not sure how to find out.
Click to expand...

Very simple: click once on the hard drive icon so it is highlighted then go to the file menu and choose Get Info. You will see in item for Format. If it was formatted for the Mac, it will say "Mac OS Extended". However, this kind of formatting will not work on Windows PC unless some special software was installed on the PC.

But I think your "logic" is flawed. The older a drive gets, the more likely it is to fail, so the fact that it's been fine for a year and a half does not mean it has no problems. It all comes down to how important the data is on that drive. If you don't particularly care about losing the files, then just continue with what you're doing. But if they're important, you are taking a big risk.

Even if the drive is absolutely fine, you should have a second drive as a backup. Sooner or later that drive WILL fail, and then you will probably lose its contents forever unless you have a backup.
 
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Xyzz40 said:
The hard drive has worked fine with the mac for 1.5 years. When I got the mac I had it formatted to work with the mac, so it's not at it's full potential when connecting it to my windows computer. I'm not 100% sure what it's formatted as since I was not the one who did it.
The hard drive works on first try in my windows, pops up immediately. On the mac it worked fine, too. But as I said, a few months ago it started getting worse and you had to plug it in a couple times or restart the computer before it would connect. Also, it works perfectly fine on a friend's macbook air with the same updates and everything. So the problem must be in my mac.
Since there's nothing wrong with the hard drive, I'm not worried that something will happen to my data at the moment. I'm just having connection problems between the hard drive and the mac.
As I said, not sure exactly how it's formatted, and not sure how to find out.
When I got the mac it was formatted in some way that only allowed it to work on my PC. When I connected it to the mac I could open it but not change the files in any way (Copy them, move them around, delete them or save anything on the hard drive), a friend helped me format it to the mac. So now it's the same way around but with the PC. It has worked fine on the mac for over a year now and when I connect it to the PC I can't move things around, delete them or save new things on the hard drive, but I can copy them to the PC.
I don't know if this helps, I'm not that good with hard drives and the differences between Mac/Pc and so on
Click to expand...
Does the S.M.A.R.T status come back ok? It can be found in disk utility
 
As others have said in the posts, please back up your drive now. It is irrelevant if the problem is a hardware issue with the drive or a software problem with it. Either could result in permanent data loss.
 
With that being said, I would run a diagnostic test on the drive on the drive while on the Windows 7 machine.
 
Xyzz40 said:
So I have a 1TB external hard drive from Seagate. It has always worked great with my macbook air, but for the past few months it has been harder to connect it (Had to plug it in a few times before it connected, sometimes I had to restart the computer a few times before it would work). The last few times I used it and it actually worked it would disconnect itself without me even touching it or anything. Now, when I plug it in it won't pop ut at all. The external hard drive makes a buzzing sound as usual but isn't blinking like it does when it's plugged into the computer and connected.
It won't pop up under the units tab to the left in the finder window, it won't pop up under USB in utilities, it won't pop up when I open "About this mac" and the system rapport thing, nor under the Connected USB list.
I have checked that all the boxes are clicked in the "Show content" list.
I can't find it anywhere in the computer and I don't know what to do.
I need access to my hard drive and my Macbook is driving me crazy.
I connect it with USB and can't plug it up to a power source since there's nowhere to plug it up.

Additionally, it works for my other computer that's not a mac. But I need to be able to access it from this computer, so any advice or tips are very welcome.
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
My guess is it is formatted with NTFS for Windows. You may have had an NTFS driver installed on your Mac and for some reason it is not working. Seagate offers a free Paragon NTFS driver for Mac that allows you to read and write to an NTFS formatted Seagate drive. Here is the link.
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/
 
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