It could be that your Mac already recognizes the device, but just isn’t showing its icon on the desktop screen. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop.For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report. The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go toĪpple (in the top toolbar menu) > About This Mac > Storage. If you’ve got a PC or laptop, it’s worth connecting and seeing if you can access the files through another device. It could be that you are trying to connect something only fit to interact with Windows devices. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Hopefully, some data damage that can be fixed by restarting. Sometimes, if a USB disk won't boot, the cause is macOS issue. If you’ve got another port, try connecting the device to that one. It could be a hardware issue with the Mac. Try connecting the same device with a different cable. Assuming it’s plugged in correctly, not wobbly or loose, the cable could be at fault. It sounds obvious, but since this relies on a wire - either a USB cable or HDMI cable - if it’s not connected properly then it won’t appear on your desktop. Check whether the drive is properly plugged in.By reformatting your WD Elements for your Mac. Don’t fret you can change the formatting. You can only read your Elements external hard drive. But when you want to put documents on the drive, or update any files on the drive your Mac says no. Your Mac can see and read your NTFS Elements drive. NTFS is a PC format that a Windows PC uses. For more advice about installing macOS or Mac OS X read How to update the Mac operating system and How to install old versions of OS X on a Mac. Pick the drive you wish to use to start up the Mac.

Sometimes it happens to other external HDDs at the same time. It does not only affect new drives that have been preformated for a PC but those already formatted for the Mac that have not previously had the problem and even the few that come preformatted for the Mac. The problem of external drives on the Mac becoming read only goes on and on. If the situation were reversed, and my PC could only read the files and copy them, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I need to be able to store things from my MAC laptop to the hard drive. I found the tutorial for reformating the hard drive for use with both MACs and PCs, but I am ot very tech savvy, and I’m concerned about the risks.

Mac os external hard drive read only