If you open the Disk Utility application on your Mac with the disk connected, you should be able to see it in the list of disks on the left hand column of the Disk Utility window. If you click on the the partition (i.e. The name you see in your file tree when the disk mounts under OS X) what do you see for the Format at the bottom of the window? If it is Mac OS Extended or a something similar then your disk is using the HFS+ file system, which is the default for OS X. This file system type is not natively supported by Windows, which is why the disk will not mount when you plug it into your laptop. You have a couple of options:. Reformat the disk to FAT32, which is the lowest common denominator in file systems between OS X and Windows.
In addition to limitation to file sizes. Depends on the filesystem type and partitioning scheme whether it'll work on both. If the hard drive were formatted for HFS it would not show up on the Windows Computer.
Mar 11, 2012 - If you format it from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, the drive partition can be up to 2TB. Paragon NTFS is about £15 and reads and writes to NTFS drives – you won't ever need to. Seagate tells me that they do not support ExFat.
If the Partition Scheme were Apple Partition Map, it would also not show up. For maximum compatibility, back up everything from the external hard drive onto your Mac. Open Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and go to Partition. Under Volume Scheme, choose 1 Partition, then click Options. Choose Master Boot Record. Then choose MSDOS under the Format menu.
Then click Apply. Your hard drive should work on either computer at that point, as well as others you may try to use it on. If you want something that both machines / OSes can read a write, and that can act as an emergency boot drive for either machine, do this:. Reformat the drive, using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the low-level partition table format.
Avoid Master Boot Record, which Intel Macs can't boot from. Also avoid Apple Partition Map, which Windows machines would have no clue about. Give the drive one HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) partition large enough to install Mac OS X onto (10GB+).
This volume format accommodates Mac OS X and Mac files the best. Give the drive one FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition, which both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write. This is a good place to put files that you want both Mac and Windows to have read/write access to.
The FAT volume format is showing its age, but a huge variety of OSes know how to work with it. If you want the drive to have a volume that's more optimal for Windows than FAT, give it an NTFS partition as well. This would be a good volume to install Windows onto, but beware that Mac OS X only has read-only support for NTFS built-in. If you want your Mac to be able to write to this partition, you'll need third-party software to enable this on Mac OS X.
Here's some tips that might help people still trying to fix this: 1. Run Disk Utility with the USB drive attached. Is it detected? My drive was, but the partition not recognised. If you can detect the partition you can load it directly by clicking on the path (mount point). If you can't detect/access the detected partitions and your drive was formated to NTFS you can uninstall (go to prefereces) and reinstall the paragon drivers: 4.
Retry step 2. If that works proceed to steps 5 and 6. Fresh OSX yosemite installs (in my case) reset my finder preferences to not display my external drives in finder window sidebars.
Click on the 'devices' heading. Also check finder preferences, and make sure external disks options are checked under the 'general' and 'sidebar' tabs (if that's what you want). That's pretty much all I can contribute to this problem.
If this doesn't solve it or you are formatted to OSX journaled, I don't have any more detailed experience in sorting. Does the drive show up after the Mac is up and running? I can unplug the drive without the stand are warning (the drive was ejected. Blah) and plug it back in to the USB port and then it's seen.
My issue is a but different as I'm using it as a Time Machine drive and it's formatted OS X Journaled but I opened a case with Seagate and they are looking at the Macbook / OS X as being the problem. I quote: ' If the drive is not showing up on boot in System Report, this would indicate the Mac is not sending a wake up message to the drive. Try different USB ports to see if it is a specific port causing this issue. If you have access to any other Macs running Yosemite, try it there to see if the issue follows the drive or is specific to your computer.' I was the one who had the original question and I am not the least bit tech.
While I appreciate anyone's help with trying to figure it out, when it comes to going into the 'brains' of my Mac, I don't want to mess anything up. I decided to make an appointment at the Apple Store. I explained the situation and they were able to reformat my driver. It did take a long time as my 20,000 some pictures had to be removed from the external hard drive and then reinstalled back on the hard drive once the drive was reformatted, but it all worked out.
I am very happy with the outcome and the knowledge those people have at the Apple Store. For me it was well worth the trip and the wait. Here's some tips that might help people still trying to fix this: 1. Run Disk Utility with the USB drive attached. Is it detected? My drive was, but the partition not recognised.
If you can detect the partition you can load it directly by clicking on the path (mount point). If you can't detect/access the detected partitions and your drive was formated to NTFS you can uninstall (go to prefereces) and reinstall the paragon drivers: 4. Retry step 2. If that works proceed to steps 5 and 6.
Fresh OSX yosemite installs (in my case) reset my finder preferences to not display my external drives in finder window sidebars. Click on the 'devices' heading. Also check finder preferences, and make sure external disks options are checked under the 'general' and 'sidebar' tabs (if that's what you want). That's pretty much all I can contribute to this problem. If this doesn't solve it or you are formatted to OSX journaled, I don't have any more detailed experience in sorting.
After going through all the usually troubleshooting: reset PRAM, reboot iMac, reboot external GoFlex drive, disk utility - repair, even reformatted the drive and sacrificed two years worth of backup data. All did nothing to make the drive writeable. Drive was readable and was able to copy files off of it prior to reformatting. Reinstalled the Seagate GoFlex Drive Settings package that shipped with the drive. (A 2TB Firewire 800 Model) and rebooted/restarted the iMac. The drive and Time Machine are working fine now. Seems that the desktop adapter required a driver or permission set that is part of the install package.
Again, this needs to be done after the Yosemite Upgrade completes. I'm having the same problem with my encrypted, external USB Seagate drive. I use this drive as my external library for iTunes, iPhoto as well as Time Machine. From what I've read it looks like Yosemite changes the partition table on the external drive. Upon connecting the drive, Finder asks for my password as normal. After I enter it, the system stays in a frozen state with the password box grayed out.
After about 60 seconds (which I assume is a timeout of the software) the password box goes away. Disk Utility can see the external drive and its single partition, but it can't mount the partition. Repair Disk times out after a long time and says it can't fix it, despite all the history that looks like its going well. Other threads here have suggested a kext utility 2.6.1 (this is a utility that is used for getting a Hackintosh to work). That didn't have any impact on my system. I've booted the machine to a Mavericks flash drive to run disk utility there and that was no help. I can change the encryption passphrase just fine in disk utility.
This all happened to me as the result of the most recent Yosemite update that I installed yesterday. Not the actual installation of Yosemite. At this point my drive appears hosed until I can find something that can read this new partition style. I've read that it's a difference from the typical journaled hfs+ system we've been used to for so many years to a new 'core storage' system that isn't nearly as compatible. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.
Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.