You are viewing the article How to Connect an External Hard Drive to a Macbook Pro at Lassho.edu.vn you can quickly access the necessary information in the table of contents of the article below.
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This article was co-written by Jeremy Mercer. Jeremy Mercer is the director and principal technician of MacPro-LA in Los Angeles, CA. He has over 10 years of experience repairing electronics, as well as working in retail stores specializing in Mac and PC.
This article has been viewed 24,518 times.
Usually to connect an external hard drive to a computer, you just plug it in and that’s it. However, with a Macbook Pro or any other Mac, the hard drive must be formatted according to a file system supported by the Mac. This process will erase any data on the hard drive. If like most hard drives on the market, your hard drive has been pre-formatted with the NTFS format, with Mac OS X, you can only read but cannot write data on this hard drive.
Steps
Connect the hard drive
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Use the included cable to plug the hard drive into your Mac. Most hard drives are connected via USB, and you simply plug the USB cable into an open port on your Mac. Usually each side of a Mac is equipped with at least one USB port.
- Some Mac-specific drives come with a Thunderbpt or FireWire cable. In this case, you’ll need to plug in the correct port, or use an adapter if the right port isn’t available on your Mac.
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Check the hard drive on the screen. If properly formatted and connected, the hard drive should appear on your Mac desktop with a USB or Thunderbpt icon.
- The hard drive icon may not appear on the screen even though it is properly connected. You can check the hard drive on the left pane of any Finder window, under the heading “Devices”.
- You can set up your hard drive to appear on the desktop by clicking the Finder menu, choosing “Preferences,” and then clicking the “External disks” box. [1] X Research Source
- If the hard drive does not appear on the Finder or desktop, refer to the instructions in the next section.
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Open the hard drive to view the content. Double-click the hard drive on the desktop or select from the left pane of the Finder window to view its contents. You can now drag and drop files to your hard drive, or copy files to your Mac’s internal hard drive.
Format the hard drive
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Open Disk Utility. Most external hard drives are preformatted to work with Windows. However, that format limits their functionality on Macs. If your new external hard drive is formatted for Windows, you can read but not write to it. To reformat to a standard file system, you can use Disk Utility.
- On the desktop, click the “Go” menu, select “Utilities” then “Disk Utility”.
- Formatting will erase everything on the hard drive. Not a problem with the new hard drive, but if you’re looking to use the old hard drive with the content on it, you’ll have to save the content elsewhere before you start formatting.
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Select the hard drive from the menu on the left. A list of all connected hard drives will be displayed in this menu. Select your external hard drive from that list.
- If the hard drive cannot be found, skip to the next section.
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Click the “Erase” button at the top of the Disk Utility window. The hard drive format will begin.
- Formatting will erase everything on the hard drive. Therefore, don’t forget to back up any important data on your hard drive. If the hard drive is in Windows format, you can still copy the content to your Mac before proceeding with the format.
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Select “ExFAT” from the “Format” menu. This is a format compatible with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, allowing you to easily switch operating systems when using. Unlike older FAT versions, with this new format, no practical limit on file or partition size is applied (in theory, but that number is huge), meaning you It can be used for all sizes of hard drives.
- If only using the hard drive for Mac, select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. This format allows you to use all the features of your Mac on your hard drive, such as the Time Capsule.
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Click “Erase” to format the hard drive in the selected format. Once pressed, you cannot undo and any existing data on the hard drive will be erased. Depending on the size, each hard drive will have a different format time.
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Try using your newly formatted hard drive. Once it’s properly formatted, the hard drive should appear on your Mac’s screen. Double click to open it, you should now be able to add and move files from there.
Handling when the hard drive is not found
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Make sure the hard drive is properly connected. Double-check that all cables are connected to the hard drive and to the Mac. If the cable is loose, the hard drive will not appear.
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Make sure the hard drive has enough power. Some external hard drives need to be plugged in separately. You may have to resort to dual USB cables. This cable has a single USB plug that plugs into an external hard drive, the other end splits in two, and both plugs into your Mac. [2] X Research Source
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Restart Mac. Many problems with your Mac or hard drive can be solved simply by rebooting. Turn off the computer completely from the Apple menu and turn it back on with the power button. Most likely the connected hard drive will appear after the Mac restarts.
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Try a different cable and port. Maybe the USB cable is faulty or the USB port is malfunctioning. Try using a different USB cable plugged into a different port. [3] X Research Sources
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Run First Aid on the hard drive. Disk Utility has a number of error correction functions that can bring a malfunctioning hard drive back to life.
- Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
- Select the hard drive and click the “First Aid” button.
- Click “Run” to start scanning for errors on the hard drive.
- Allow error correction utility to find. Thanks to that, you will probably be able to use the hard drive. Note that when errors appear, it can be an early warning sign of hard drive failure.
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Consider replacing the hard drive with a new one. Any hard drive will fail. The longer it is used, the higher the chance of damage. The failure rate of the new hard drive is also not small. If your hard drive is 4 or more years old and doesn’t show up no matter what you do, it’s most likely damaged.
- You can try plugging the hard drive into another computer to see if it shows up. If the hard drive is nowhere to be found, it may be time to buy a new hard drive.
X
This article was co-written by Jeremy Mercer. Jeremy Mercer is the director and principal technician of MacPro-LA in Los Angeles, CA. He has over 10 years of experience repairing electronics, as well as working in retail stores specializing in Mac and PC.
This article has been viewed 24,518 times.
Usually to connect an external hard drive to a computer, you just plug it in and that’s it. However, with a Macbook Pro or any other Mac, the hard drive must be formatted according to a file system supported by the Mac. This process will erase any data on the hard drive. If like most hard drives on the market, your hard drive has been pre-formatted with the NTFS format, with Mac OS X, you can only read but cannot write data on this hard drive.
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