Imac doesn't find external hard drive

[thewall]

I have an external hard drive loaded with photos from a windows pc,my mac found the drive and loaded the photos but was very slow,now it doesn't even show on the desktop,when i used it the last time i stopped it halfway through loading a folder.

Everything loads fine on a pc.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Does the external HDD show up in Disk Utility?
Have you tried an SMC reset yet?
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

 

[thewall]

No it doesn't show in the disk utility,looked at the support page for smc and this seems a bit extreme for my problem is this the next step,everything else is working fine.
Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

No it doesn't show in the disk utility,looked at the support page for smc and this seems a bit extreme for my problem is this the next step,everything else is working fine.
Thanks

An SMC Reset is not really extreme and it helped me recognise fruity external HDDs. If that is too much to do for you, then I am out of ideas, except maybe you could tell us what exact external HDD model you have and what file system it uses and via what interface you connect the iMac and the HDD.

 

[thewall]

Sorry to be vague i think it's a Hitachi hdd made by an independent computer shop and i use a usb to plug it in,there is power going to the hdd,can i check the usb port somehow to see whats happening.

thanks again

 

[thewall]

sorted now it didn't like the usb extension lead i was using,didn't think nothing of it when i posted i leave it in for ease of use.

thanks for your reply