External hard drive won't show up on MBA

[tmartin89]

I have a Toshiba 500gb external hard drive that shows up perfectly fine on Windows but will not show up on my MBA. The lights will come on and everything sounds normal but it will not show up anywhere, not even in disk utility. I formatted it to exFAT on my Windows to work on my MBA but it will not show up anywhere, any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[rigormortis]

with the hard disk on the usb port, does it even show up in system report?

click on the apple upper left hand corner
click on about this mac
click on system report
click on usb

you should see either the hard disk or the usb to sata bridge on the list of usb devices

if its been formatted at EXFAT then it should work.

maybe try formatting it to EXFAT again on another mac

it is just one big exfat parition with no other partitions, right?

bugger, it should work

are you running recent os x ???

obscure usb to sata bridge board that os x doesn't have drivers for ?? ( doubt it)

are you using a hub?

is this a hybrid drive of any sort?

 

[tmartin89]

with the hard disk on the usb port, does it even show up in system report?

click on the apple upper left hand corner
click on about this mac
click on system report
click on usb

you should see either the hard disk or the usb to sata bridge on the list of usb devices

if its been formatted at EXFAT then it should work.

maybe try formatting it to EXFAT again on another mac

it is just one big exfat parition with no other partitions, right?

bugger, it should work

are you running recent os x ???

obscure usb to sata bridge board that os x doesn't have drivers for ?? ( doubt it)

are you using a hub?

is this a hybrid drive of any sort?

It does show up on system report. I tried it on my wife's mac and it didn't come up on hers either.

 

[maccompaq]

If it is formatted as NTSF, it will not work on a Mac.

 

[rigormortis]

If it is formatted as NTSF, it will not work on a Mac.

he already said it was formatted as exFAT

if its not formatted as ntfs like the op said, then obscure bridge board that os x does not have drivers for is the only thing i can think of that would cause this

any usb device has to have some kind of drivers for it to work

it should of come up with a window that says this device is unreadable

or it should of said not partitioned in disk utility

 

[tmartin89]

I just plugged my hard drive into my Windows computer and it now says its on NTFS and will not give me the option to format it to anything else?!

 

[tmartin89]

Managed to get it back to exFAT, however it still wont show up on MBA. Any other ideas?

 

[Fishrrman]

Is the drive a 2.5" drive, or is it a 3.5" drive?

Does it have a port for an external power supply of some sort?
Did the drive come with a power supply?

IF the drive is "bus powered" (i.e., no additional power supply):
It's possible that the MBAir isn't supplying enough bus power to get the drive "up and running" on the desktop...

 

[tmartin89]

Is the drive a 2.5" drive, or is it a 3.5" drive?

Does it have a port for an external power supply of some sort?
Did the drive come with a power supply?

IF the drive is "bus powered" (i.e., no additional power supply):
It's possible that the MBAir isn't supplying enough bus power to get the drive "up and running" on the desktop...

The drive is bus powered. When plugged into the MBA the light does come on and it seems like it powers up just fine.

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ The drive is bus powered. When plugged into the MBA the light does come on and it seems like it powers up just fine. ]]

Again, even though the light "lights" and you hear the drive spin, that in itself may not be enough. Again, it might still be a "not enough power" issue.

Does the drive have a "port" to accept an external power source?
Are there any voltage settings specified?

I would try a "universal" power supply (can be found at places like Radio Shack, online, etc.) provided I knew the required input voltage and had the right fitting.
You can probably find one of these for around $10-15.

If you're not willing to try that, I would at least try the drive on a couple of -other- Macs than yours and your wife's. Do you get the same results (fails to mount?).

In that case, I'd start looking around for another drive....

 

[tmartin89]

[[ The drive is bus powered. When plugged into the MBA the light does come on and it seems like it powers up just fine. ]]

Again, even though the light "lights" and you hear the drive spin, that in itself may not be enough. Again, it might still be a "not enough power" issue.

Does the drive have a "port" to accept an external power source?
Are there any voltage settings specified?

I would try a "universal" power supply (can be found at places like Radio Shack, online, etc.) provided I knew the required input voltage and had the right fitting.
You can probably find one of these for around $10-15.

If you're not willing to try that, I would at least try the drive on a couple of -other- Macs than yours and your wife's. Do you get the same results (fails to mount?).

In that case, I'd start looking around for another drive....

It does not have an external power port. I'm pretty close to buying another hard drive. There's obviously something stopping it from mounting on the MacBook.