I recently purchased a 20TB Seagate external hard drive to store my photos, and it worked great for a while. However, I noticed it suddenly stopped showing up in the disk utility on my Mac. The drive seems to be on because I can hear it running, but nothing appears on the system. I've tried restarting my Mac several times and even booted into safe mode, but to no avail. I'm starting to worry that the drive might be dead. I also realized I forgot to format it for Mac usage, and I'm concerned that this might be the reason for the issue.
3 Answers
Sometimes, Linux operating systems can access drives that Windows can't. If you have a way to boot into a Linux live environment, that might be worth a shot to see if it recognizes the drive.
Have you tried plugging the drive into a different computer? Sometimes that can help identify if it's a problem with your Mac or the drive itself.
You should run a diagnostic tool like CrystalDiskInfo to check the SMART data of the drive. It might give you insights into what’s going wrong. You could also check some forums focused on data recovery; there might be specific advice there.
I’ll try to dig out my Chromebook tomorrow and test it there, but I haven't had a chance yet.