Summary: In this article, we will provide you 7 useful solutions to the issue of Toshiba external hard drives not showing up on Mac. Besides, we will also tell you how to recover lost data from the Toshiba external hard drive with free Mac data recovery software - iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
- Software Download For Toshiba External Hard Drive Mac Download
- Toshiba External Hard Drive Troubleshooting
- Canvio Toshiba External Drive Install
There are only 4 hard drive makers on earth. Apple never has made a hard drive. Current and recent non-retina macbook Pros use TOSHIBA drives. Mikedozaz wrote: The last time I remember is my disk label was macintosh. Thats its NAME, meaning nothing. Its a Toshiba mfg. Named VS manufactured. External Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Features Store and Protect Your Files Toshiba external hard drives include easy-to-use software. to help back up your pictures, music, videos and documents and keep them protected from unauthorized access.
'Toshiba external hard drive not showing up on Mac' is a frequently discussed question in Apple support community. Here's an example.
I have a Toshiba Canvio 1TB USB 3.0 hard drive. But when I plugged it into my Macbook Pro (mid 2012) it didn't show up. I have tried to swap around the USB connection cords but still not showing up. Reading something that the Toshiba hard drive won't show up on Mac laptops due to lack of power, I tried using an external powered USB hub still nothing. Can anyone tell me why my external hard drive is not showing up on the Mac, and how to fix it?
Why is your Toshiba external hard drive not show up on Mac?
In fact, there are various reasons that Mac doesn't recognize an external hard drive. Toshiba external hard drive not showing up could result from file catalog corruption, operating system errors, virus, physical damages, etc. Besides Toshiba portable hard drive, this error can also occur to WD external hard drives, Seagate external hard drives, etc.
Whatever the reason is, it will prevent you from accessing the files stored on it.
How to fix Toshiba external hard drive not showing up on Mac error?
Compared to Toshiba Canvio for Desktop drive, Toshiba portable hard drives offer more possibility. The Canvio range of Toshiba external hard drive includes Slim, Alu, Advance, Premium, Basics, and Ready. Although with unique features, the Toshiba portable hard drive still won't work sometimes.
You can try these solutions when Toshiba disc drive is not showing up on Mac.
Solution 1: Do some basic checks
If your Toshiba external hard drive doesn't show up when connected to a Mac via USB port, follow the troubleshooting ideas below.
1. Toshiba external hard drive is not correctly powered.
Fix: Try to connect it to an externally powered USB hub, or try to insert the Type-C Multi-Port Adapter into another USB port on your Mac.
2. The USB cable is damaged.
Fix: Try a different USB cable but make sure it is compatible with your Toshiba external hard drive.
3. The USB port is damaged.
Fix: Try a different port on your Mac, a different computer, or even a PC to connect this Toshiba hard drive.
3. Toshiba 3.0 external hard drive is not showing up.
Fix: Please update the USB 3.0 driver of your Toshiba hard drive to the latest version on Mac.
Most of the time, you can see the Toshiba external hard drive showing up on Mac again after these checks. If not, let's move forward.
Solution 2: Show the Toshiba external hard drive on the desktop
Usually, a correctly connected external hard drive will show up on the desktop, in Finder and Disk Utility. If you can't see it, just check the settings of your Mac.
Step 1: Click Finder on menu bar.
Step 2: Go to Preferences > General tab.
Step 3: Make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. If not, tick the box before it.
Software Download For Toshiba External Hard Drive Mac Download
This operation will show the Toshiba external hard drive on the Mac desktop.
Solution 3: Show the Toshiba external hard drive in Finder
Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar tab > Locations.
Step 2: Make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked.
Solution 4: Mount the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility
Sometimes, the connected external hard drive shows up but it won't work on Mac. In this case, you can check if it is recognized and mounted in Disk Utility. If the Toshiba external hard drive is not mounted in Disk Utility, you can mount the drive manually.
Specifically, you can click on the Mount button on the top of the window, or hit the Mount icon beside the drive.
Solution 5: Fix the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility
However, if the Toshiba external hard drive won't mount in Disk Utility, the file system of the drive may be corrupted. You need to fix it with First Aid.
Step 1: Go to Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the unmounted Toshiba external hard drive and click First Aid on the top of the window.
Step 3: Wait till the verification and reparation process ends.
Solution 6: Reformat the Toshiba external hard drive
IfFirst Aid failed on external hard drive, the drive must be severely damaged, logically or physically. In this case, you can firstly try to fix the drive by reformatting, which is able to fix logical errors like file system corruption, partition table corruption, etc.
Note: Reformatting a drive will erase all the files stored on it. To prevent unwanted data loss, it's necessary to recover lost data from the not showing up Toshiba drive in advance.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is trustworthy and professional Mac data recovery software that is able torecover deleted photos, videos, documents, music files fromunreadable USB flash drives,unmountable SD cards, memory cards, external hard drives, and corrupted, damaged, formatted, inaccessible drives on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/Sierra and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7. It supports HFS+, HFS, FAT32, exFAT andAPFS external drive data recovery.
Tutorial to recover data from the Toshiba external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 2: Select the not showing up Toshiba external hard drive and click 'Scan' button. This program will start scanning for lost data.
Step 3: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
After recovering data from the Toshiba external hard drive, you can reset the Toshiba external hard drive by reformatting the hard disk in Disk Utility now.
Step 1: Select the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility sidebar.
Step 2: Click Erase on the top of the window.
Step 3: Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process. Specifically, you need to provide a Name and a Format according to your preference.
After the process finishes, you will hopefully see the Toshiba external hard drive showing up on Mac correctly.
Solution 7: Send the drive to a disk reparation center
If you have tried out all the solutions above with no luck, the Toshiba external hard drive could be damaged physically. In case your Toshiba HDD is not recognized by your PC anymore and the blue LED is OFF and the red LED is ON, the HDD needs to be replaced. You have to send it to specialists or replace it with a new one.
How to make Toshiba external hard drives work on Mac?
Almost all Toshiba Canvio external hard drives are preformatted with NTFS file system, which means you can't use it directly on Mac. You can't write to NTFS in macOS by default. If you try to save files, the new Toshiba external hard drive is not working but read-only on Mac.
To use Toshiba external hard drive on Windows and Mac without formatting, you need to download an NTFS for Mac software. You can also format this external hard drive with HFS+ for Mac usage only. But on Mac, you can't enjoy features provided by Toshiba software like regular automatic backups of data with Toshiba Storage Backup Software and password lock feature with Toshiba Storage Security Software.
Conclusion:
Toshiba external hard drive is widely used in our daily lives to store tons of different files. Once it can't be shown up on your Mac, there're solutions for you to recover lost data with free Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, as well as to fix the error through simple steps.
A bonus tip: To keep the security of your data, you should back them up regularly via Time Machine or on another external drive.
• How to backup Mac with Time Machine?
Toshiba external hard drive is no longer recognized by Macbook.
The day prior to the upgrade from Mountain Lion to El Capitan, my Toshiba hardrive was recognized by my Macbook and I was able to write information to the drive and had full access to it. After the upgrade and the installation, my Macbook prompts me with the 'The Disk you inserted is not readable by this computer' with the three button selections of 'initialize, ignore, eject'. I tried the 'initialize' button which brings up the disk utility and then I proceeded to try the 'first aid' which doesn't do anything.
As you can imagine there is plenty of things on this drive that I would like access to. This drive is only used for my Macbook and if I remember correctly is formatted as a FAT 32, but I am not 100% sure. All I know is it worked perfect with Mountain Lion OS and now after the OS X El Capitan update it can no longer be recognized by the computer.
Thanks.
Matt
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11)
Toshiba External Hard Drive Troubleshooting
Step 2: Make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked.
Solution 4: Mount the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility
Sometimes, the connected external hard drive shows up but it won't work on Mac. In this case, you can check if it is recognized and mounted in Disk Utility. If the Toshiba external hard drive is not mounted in Disk Utility, you can mount the drive manually.
Specifically, you can click on the Mount button on the top of the window, or hit the Mount icon beside the drive.
Solution 5: Fix the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility
However, if the Toshiba external hard drive won't mount in Disk Utility, the file system of the drive may be corrupted. You need to fix it with First Aid.
Step 1: Go to Utilities > Disk Utility.
Step 2: Select the unmounted Toshiba external hard drive and click First Aid on the top of the window.
Step 3: Wait till the verification and reparation process ends.
Solution 6: Reformat the Toshiba external hard drive
IfFirst Aid failed on external hard drive, the drive must be severely damaged, logically or physically. In this case, you can firstly try to fix the drive by reformatting, which is able to fix logical errors like file system corruption, partition table corruption, etc.
Note: Reformatting a drive will erase all the files stored on it. To prevent unwanted data loss, it's necessary to recover lost data from the not showing up Toshiba drive in advance.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is trustworthy and professional Mac data recovery software that is able torecover deleted photos, videos, documents, music files fromunreadable USB flash drives,unmountable SD cards, memory cards, external hard drives, and corrupted, damaged, formatted, inaccessible drives on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/Sierra and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7. It supports HFS+, HFS, FAT32, exFAT andAPFS external drive data recovery.
Tutorial to recover data from the Toshiba external hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 2: Select the not showing up Toshiba external hard drive and click 'Scan' button. This program will start scanning for lost data.
Step 3: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
After recovering data from the Toshiba external hard drive, you can reset the Toshiba external hard drive by reformatting the hard disk in Disk Utility now.
Step 1: Select the Toshiba external hard drive in Disk Utility sidebar.
Step 2: Click Erase on the top of the window.
Step 3: Follow the instructions to finish the reformatting process. Specifically, you need to provide a Name and a Format according to your preference.
After the process finishes, you will hopefully see the Toshiba external hard drive showing up on Mac correctly.
Solution 7: Send the drive to a disk reparation center
If you have tried out all the solutions above with no luck, the Toshiba external hard drive could be damaged physically. In case your Toshiba HDD is not recognized by your PC anymore and the blue LED is OFF and the red LED is ON, the HDD needs to be replaced. You have to send it to specialists or replace it with a new one.
How to make Toshiba external hard drives work on Mac?
Almost all Toshiba Canvio external hard drives are preformatted with NTFS file system, which means you can't use it directly on Mac. You can't write to NTFS in macOS by default. If you try to save files, the new Toshiba external hard drive is not working but read-only on Mac.
To use Toshiba external hard drive on Windows and Mac without formatting, you need to download an NTFS for Mac software. You can also format this external hard drive with HFS+ for Mac usage only. But on Mac, you can't enjoy features provided by Toshiba software like regular automatic backups of data with Toshiba Storage Backup Software and password lock feature with Toshiba Storage Security Software.
Conclusion:
Toshiba external hard drive is widely used in our daily lives to store tons of different files. Once it can't be shown up on your Mac, there're solutions for you to recover lost data with free Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, as well as to fix the error through simple steps.
A bonus tip: To keep the security of your data, you should back them up regularly via Time Machine or on another external drive.
• How to backup Mac with Time Machine?
Toshiba external hard drive is no longer recognized by Macbook.
The day prior to the upgrade from Mountain Lion to El Capitan, my Toshiba hardrive was recognized by my Macbook and I was able to write information to the drive and had full access to it. After the upgrade and the installation, my Macbook prompts me with the 'The Disk you inserted is not readable by this computer' with the three button selections of 'initialize, ignore, eject'. I tried the 'initialize' button which brings up the disk utility and then I proceeded to try the 'first aid' which doesn't do anything.
As you can imagine there is plenty of things on this drive that I would like access to. This drive is only used for my Macbook and if I remember correctly is formatted as a FAT 32, but I am not 100% sure. All I know is it worked perfect with Mountain Lion OS and now after the OS X El Capitan update it can no longer be recognized by the computer.
Thanks.
Matt
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11)
Toshiba External Hard Drive Troubleshooting
Canvio Toshiba External Drive Install
Posted on Oct 12, 2015 1:25 PM