After reformatting my 3GB WD elements HD to MacOS i cannot see it in finder! I can see it on the desktop - i can click and open it and i can drag and drop files there.
Hello Jetpiloten,
Please go to finder preferences on your mac system, Navigate to Sidebar options from the tab and select External Disks option from the menu.
Try this:
- Finder Prefs: Go to Finder > Settings > Sidebar. Make sure “External disks” is checked
under Locations. - Desktop Prefs: In the same Finder Settings window, click “General”. Ensure “External disks” is checked under “Show these items on the desktop”.
- Relaunch Finder: Hold Option, right-click Finder icon in Dock, choose “Relaunch”.
- Mount Manually (If Needed): Open Disk Utility. If the WD drive appears there (look under External), select it and click “Mount”.
You can also find more detailed tutorials in this article about external hard drive not showing up Mac
If Spotlight or Finder cannot search an external hard drive on Mac, there may be some reasons behind the issue, for example, your hard drive isn’t indexed by Spotlight, the external drive is in Microsoft NTFS format, or the external drive has permission issues.
Accordingly, you may try these solutions to fix that:
- Set Spotlight to re-index the external hard drive.
- Execute Terminal commands to force Spotlight to re-index the drive.
- Open Disk Utility to confirm the drive’s file system. If it is formatted with NTFS, run an NTFS for Mac driver to mount it and make it searchable.
- Change the hard drive’s permissions.
[ Also read this related how-to guide - What to Do if You Can’t Search External Hard Drive on Mac? ]
