My external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up in Finder on my Mac, but it contains important files I need to recover. Disk Utility isn’t mounting the drive. What can I do to safely access the drive and recover my data without erasing it?
Do not erase, initialize, or keep forcing it to mount. First swap the cable, port, and power supply, then check whether the physical drive appears in Disk Utility or System Information. If macOS detects the device but not its volume, use Disk Drill for Mac to create a byte-for-byte backup and scan that copy, saving recovered files to a different drive. If the drive clicks, disconnects repeatedly, or is missing from System Information entirely, stop powering it on and consider a professional recovery service since software cannot fix a hardware failure.
6 Likes
Don’t run First Aid repeatedly, since repairs can make a damaged file system harder to recover. If the drive appears in Disk Utility, create an image of it first and scan the image rather than the original; save anything recovered to a separate disk.
Recovery software won’t help unless macOS can detect the physical drive. Check System Information under USB or Thunderbolt, then try another cable, port, and powered enclosure if possible. If it appears there but won’t mount, @greengurux8695lab’s image-first approach makes sense, and Disk Drill can scan that image. If the drive clicks, disconnects repeatedly, or never appears at the hardware level, stop powering it on and consider a recovery lab.
Before jumping to imaging or recovery labs, check Finder preferences and the sidebar settings, since external disks are often just hidden from view while the drive is actually mounted fine. Run ‘diskutil list’ in Terminal too. If it shows up there but not in Finder, this is a display quirk, not a recovery job.