Mounting Hard Drive

[Patrick Neame]

Hello all,

I bought a cheap and cheerful hard drive for my wife to use with her 2025 MacBook Air. I formatted it on my 2013 Mac Pro; all OK. I plugged it into her Mac and you can hear it spin but i doesn’t mount. 

I bought a thunderbolt cable to replace the suppled USB cable but still no joy.

I’ve formatted it to the 

Apple File System

Mac OS Extended Journaled and

MS FAT but all without success. 

Any thoughts/suggestions please?

Many thanks,

Patrick Neame

[Benjamin Stanley]

Hey Patrick,

If you plug it into the MacBook Air does it show in Disk Utility?

If so, just format it there. 

Things changed in macOS 10.13, but generally APFS should be fine. 

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[Patrick Neame]

No, I’ve tried that but it’s a no show.

Patrick

On 24 Nov 2025, at 09:17, 'Benjamin Stanley' via MMUG Chat <mmug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mmug-chat/CAHtGQqhyb2gPrnwVq6oYLDudxAqKMwKRMCjUzbrw9dPzT7u48A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Patrick Neame]

P.S. I’m going to try it in one of my daughters’ iMacs from about 2018 to see that can see it.

Patrick

On 24 Nov 2025, at 09:17, 'Benjamin Stanley' via MMUG Chat <mmug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mmug-chat/CAHtGQqhyb2gPrnwVq6oYLDudxAqKMwKRMCjUzbrw9dPzT7u48A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Benjamin Stanley]

If Disk Utility can't see it then It's very unlikely to work. 

It should at least see the USB controller, but might not see the drive it is controlling.

Do you see it in the USB list in System Information?

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mmug-chat/02472E46-A668-4891-9DEE-C34EAD11215A%40me.com.

[Patrick Neame]

Thanks for that, I’ll have a look another day. 

I did hook it up to a 2019 iMac without any problem. I found something from Macworld suggesting that the MacBook might not send enough power to the drive.

Patrick

On 25 Nov 2025, at 18:06, 'Benjamin Stanley' via MMUG Chat <mmug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mmug-chat/CAHtGQqhRgdj3VhjC7b4DBZyQB96CKmnTj%2Bt9Su2fMDWTOB6oaw%40mail.gmail.com.