Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TBIf you have a Mac Pro, a Power Mac G5, or a Power Mac G4 or G3 with free drive bays, you can install an additional internal hard drive instead of upgrading your main one—it’s easy and takes only a few minutes.But for the iMac, the Mac mini, or older Mac laptops, replacing the internal hard drive with a drive that has more capacity can be a difficult. There are service providers that can do upgrades for you, such as, which provides several PowerBook and iBook hard-drive upgrade services ranging in price from $189 to $299. (The Apple Store won’t do upgrade installations, but it will replace damaged parts with equal replacements.)Regardless of which Mac you have, if you decide to replace your current internal hard drive, you’ll need to copy all your current hard drive’s files onto another storage device before you do the switcheroo.
You can use an external desktop hard drive, use a second Mac in FireWire target disk mode, or burn DVDs. To ensure that nothing slips through the cracks (like your e-mail archive, bookmarks, fonts, and other important files), you might want to consider using drive-cloning software such as Bombich Software’s ( ) or Shirt Pocket’s ( ), which easily and thoroughly duplicates your hard drive’s contents.Internal hard drives buying adviceWestern Digital Scorpio Black 250GB Drive Compatibility Get a hard drive that matches the physical dimensions and connection interface of your Mac. MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and Mac minis use a 2.5-inch SATA drive, while PowerBooks and iBooks use a 2.5-inch ATA/IDE drive-SATA and ATA interfaces are not interchangeable. Likewise, recent Apple desktops (the Intel iMac, Mac Pro, iMac G5, and Power Mac G5) use a 3.5-inch SATA drive (the Mac Pro uses a SATA II drive), while older desktops (the iMac G3 and G4, and the Power Mac G3/G4) use a 3.5-inch ATA/IDE drive. Online retailers such as provide Web guides that list storage options by Mac model.Capacity Internal 3.5-inch hard drives have capacities of up to 2TB, while 2.5-inch drives provide up to 500GB. Later G4s, all G5s, and all Intel Macs can accommodate any drive capacity, but the iMac G3, Power Mac G3 (blue and white), and early Power Mac G4 have a limit of 128GB.Speed If you’re happy with your Mac’s drive performance, stick with the same disk speed, but if you have a notebook and work with audio or video, consider getting a faster, 7200 rpm drive.For your considerationIf you're looking for an internal hard drive, here are a few products to look at.
Seagate Pipeline 500GB (500 gb) 8MB Cache 3.5inch SATA 3.0 Gb/s Internal Desktop Hard Drive for PC, Mac, CCTV DVR, NAS. 3.9 out of 5 stars 174. Electronics $18.85 $ 18. Get it as soon as Mon, Sep 30. FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon.
We haven't tested and rated these products, but they should give you an idea of what's available.Seagate Barracuda XT For people who need mass storage, this 3.5-inch, 7200-rpm drive for desktop Macs delivers a whopping 2TB of storage. $350 ; )Western Digital Scorpio Black For notebook owners, this 2.5-inch, 7,200-rpm drive will provide better performance that a stock hard drive. $90 for 320GB; Now, about that old internal drive.If you upgraded your Mac’s internal drive, what are you going to do with your old drive? Rather than stash it or trash it, you can easily (and inexpensively) convert it into an external hard drive. All you need is an enclosure.An enclosure is basically a shell to house an ATA/IDE or SATA 2.5- or 3.5-inch internal drive, providing power (bus power or a built-in supply) and connection interfaces. It also provides a convenient way to initialize a new internal drive, allowing you to enclose your new internal drive as an external drive, clone your old drive’s contents to it, and then swap the drives around.To build your own external drive, find an enclosure that supports your disk drive’s size and interface, preferred connection(s), and design aesthetic;, and are good places to buy enclosures online.
Look for one with a cooling fan (especially for larger capacity drives) or a heat dissipating design for better drive longevity.Installing a drive into an enclosure varies case by case. If you’re installing an ATA/IDE drive, make sure that the jumper setting is set to Master before installing (this doesn’t apply to SATA drives). Then mount the drive into the case, make any connections, close everything up, and you’re good to go.An alternative to using an enclosure is to use a dock. NewerTech’s ($100) or ($60) lets you insert an internal hard drive into its docking device and use it like an external drive, making swapping drives easy. Writer, music composer, photographer, and pack rat Kris Fong has archived tens of thousands of files. Now if she could only remember what’s stored where.
Most of the time, when you connect an external hard drive to your Mac’s USB port, you soon see it mount on the desktop. Apple likes to ensure these are easy to find, so they also appear in the Finder in the left-hand column under Devices, since Mac’s treat them the same way as another computer.However, sometimes, an external hard drive doesn't show up. It’s annoying, especially when you need to transfer something right then. And besides, there can be a risk that data on the external USB pen, hard, or flash drive is corrupt, which means you can’t transfer what you need between devices at all. Corrupt data can be one reason your Mac won't recognize an external drive, but there are other reasons too. Let’s take a look why this is happening and how you can get an external drive to appear on your Mac and get recover data to access to your documents.How to fix an external disk drive that won't show up on a MacWhy an external disk drive is not showing up? There could be a few reasons why a USB flash drive isn’t making an appearance.Start with the basics:.
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Check whether the drive is properly plugged in. It sounds obvious, but since this relies on a wire - either a USB cable or HDMI cable - if it’s not connected properly then it won’t appear on your desktop. Faulty cable. Assuming it’s plugged in correctly, not wobbly or loose, the cable could be at fault. Try connecting the same device with a different cable. Damaged USB or flash drive port.
It could be a hardware issue with the Mac. If you’ve got another port, try connecting the device to that one. Reboot your Mac. Sometimes, if a USB disk won't boot, the cause is macOS issue. Hopefully, some data damage that can be fixed by restarting.
Choose the Apple menu Restart. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R.
Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh. Incorrectly formatted drive. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. It could be that you are trying to connect something only fit to interact with Windows devices. If you’ve got a PC or laptop, it’s worth connecting and seeing if you can access the files through another device.
The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go toApple (in the top toolbar menu) About This Mac Storage.See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop. It could be that your Mac already recognizes the device, but just isn’t showing its icon on the desktop screen. Even if that is the case, the drive will still appear in the left-hand column of the Finder menu under Devices. You should be able to access your drive that way, and, in the Finder menu under Preferences General, you can check External Drives to ensure that from now on it shows up on your desktop too. Reset NVRAM.
To do this, shut down or restart your Mac, switch it back on and immediately press these four keys together for at least 20 seconds: Option, Command, P, and R. It should look as though your Mac has started again; if it has, release the keys when you hear the second startup chime. Hopefully, the hard drive has shown up now. Check Apple’s Disk Utility to see if an external drive is showing up.
Disk Utility is within System Preferences, or you can find it using Spotlight. If it is visible, then click the option to Mount, which should make it visible on the desktop and in the External Drives option in the Finder menu.Unfortunately, if none of those options has worked and the external drive still isn’t visible, then it could have crashed, or be well and truly broken. But there might still be a way you can.
How to show connected devices in Finder. Go to the Finder menu and select Preferences (Cmd+comma). From General tab tick External disks to ensure that from now on it shows on the desktop.In the Sidebar tab you can choose which folders and devices will be shown in the left-hand column of the Finder window.How to add cloud storages to FinderYou can also mount cloud storage as local drive on your Mac.
By connecting Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon to your computer, you get more space for securely accessing and sharing files. For your ease, add cloud drives to Finder with CloudMounter app, so that you keep them close at hand. You can read detailed instructions on managing cloud storage as local drives. Repair the failed external drives with First AidIf your drive is having problems, you can try to fix them yourself with First Aid and therefore get access to your files.
First Aid tool will check the disk for errors and then attempt a repair as needed. It helps to verify and repair a range of issues related to startup HD and external drive problems. If you are able to fix the hard drive or SSD in your Mac (or an external drive) using Disk Utility you will hopefully be able to recover your files.To run Fist Aid on an external hard drive:.
Open Disk Utility. You can searching for it using Spotlight Search or via Finder Application Utility. Check on your external hard drive, click the First Aid tab and select Run to start running diagnostics.If First Aid successful in fixing errors, the external drive should be available to mount. If the utility unable to repair issues, your drive truly is broken or formatted using a file system that the Mac cannot read - in this way we suggest you follow the next steps to recover data from a damaged disk drive. How to recover data from a crashed driveThankfully, there is an app for that.
Is the world’s premier data recovery software for Mac OS X. Powerful enough to retrieve long-lost, mistakenly deleted files from Macs, external hard drives and USB drives and camera cards. An easy way to recover lost files on an external hard driveProviding you already have Disk Drill Pro version, which you can get automatically by downloading:. Connect your drive to the Mac. Quit all other applications on the Mac, especially those that may be trying to access the external drive (e.g.
IPhoto, Words). Launch Disk Drill. Click on the external drive that you are trying to recover files from. If it has partitions, you will see all of them.
If, however, you still don’t see any volume to the external drive then you may need to try some of the steps above again or read the Disk Drill Scanning FAQs. To avoid the external drive being accessed during the recovery process, click Extras next to the drive or drive partition or file, then select Remount Volume As Read Only. A padlock will appear, protecting the drive during the process. Now click Rebuild (or Recover) next to the file(s) you are trying to recover. Once the scan is finished - it may take some time if the files are large - a list of files will appeal.
Next, click Mount Found Items as Disk button on the bottom-left below the scan results. Disk Drill “strongly suggest saving the files to a different drive than the one you are trying to recover files from. Saving to the same drive substantially lowers your chances of recovery.”. A drive icon will appear, which once you double click will give you the option to open the files as you would do before they were lost. Drag them to another location, such as your desktop or a folder on your Mac. Open the files to ensure they have been recovered properly and safely eject the external drive.Disk Drill does have other ways to recover lost files but assuming there aren’t complications, this method is the most effective. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available from Setapp, along with dozens of Mac apps that will make your life easier.
Never have to worry about a crashed or corrupted external drive again. A few more tips on getting your files back. Macs and third-party apps that look after Macs, such as and come with a S.M.A.R.T. (also known as Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status monitor. If a SMART check reports errors, then it could mean the hard drive is at risk of failing completely. Within Disk Utility and Disk Drill, there are several solutions for this: Repair Disk Permissions and Repair Disk. If neither work, it’s recommended that you backup all of the data from the disk, erase, then run a SMART check again.
The external hard drive should show up as Verified. Partitions can get lost within hard drives, temporarily hiding all of the information contained within.
Disk Drill can help to identify and restore this information. Within Disk Drill, you can restore data when a hard drive is damaged or add formatting, which is also something Disk Utility can help with., another useful app available from Setapp, can help you identify external hard drive errors and repair them. It is an essential tool worth trying when you’re having external hard drive difficulties. Alternative ways to recover data from an external hard driveReset the System Management Controller (SMC) if your Mac shuts down when you plug in an external hard drive. Then use a different port to connect the external hard drive.
If you’ve got a battery that you can’t remove:. Shut down and unplug the power adapter. Press Shift-Control-Option and the power button at the same time.
Do this for 10 seconds. Release all keys.
Plug the power adapter back in and switch your Mac back onFor Macs with removable batteries, you need to switch them off, remove the battery, then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. After that, put the battery back in, plug in the power adapter and switch the power on again.What’s your file format? One reason your Mac isn’t recognizing the hard drive is the file format. Windows uses NTFS file formats, while Macs, up until the introduction of Sierra, have used HFS+. Now, Apple has introduced the Apple File System (APFS) for newer operating systems. It is possible to format a hard drive so it can be read on Mac and Windows computers, providing you format using exFAT. However, if you’re having problems accessing the files and the issue is due to formatting, you will need to connect it to a device it can be read on, and then format the files correctly for the computer you are going to use it on next.
How to make Ext2/Ext3 drives readable on MacThe common issue is Ext2- and Ext3-formatted drives are not readable on macOS. There are two ways to access such external drives on your Mac – via Linux OS or FUSE system. The easiest would be installing Linux to a secondary drive or virtual machine.If you go with Linux installation, dual boot your Mac with Linux on another drive and use FAT32 as a transfer intermediary. If you don’t have a drive to install Linux to, use virtual machine as an interface for it. Transferring can be done the same way – with FAT32, or via network.Another option for reading Ext2/Ext3 disks is mounting disk with Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE). Basically, it works as an extra interface enabling file system access via specially installed modules.