
This is usually a problem with drivers or hardware.

The other main reason is that the drive simply is not being recognized by Windows or Mac and therefore won’t even show up on your system at all. In this article, I’ll try to go through the different solutions on Mac and Windows for fixing this issue. How the drive is formatted and what file system is being used is the most common reason why drive is not recognized.

Sometimes the fix is easy and sometimes it is a bit more complicated. It can also happen on a single system where it was working just fine for a long time and then suddenly stops being recognized by the operating system.

Mac or Windows computer not recognizing your external hard drive or flash drive? This is a common problem, especially when connecting hard drives between Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
