After plugging an external drive (a usb flash drive or a SSD card) to your Mac, you can’t get access to the device, as you get error message saying “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer“. How frustrating! But don’t worry. Your files stored in the drive won’t be lost. Just follow the instructions below to fix the problem.

There are four solutions for you to fix the problem. You don’t have to try them all. Just work your down the list until you find the one that works for you.

'Mac os x can't repair the disk You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to file on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat as soon as you can.' I just saw this. My external hard drive formatted with Mac OS Extended Journaled stopped working yesterday. I ran Disk utility repair disk but it gave me back this message ‘Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files’ I unsure of my disk right now and need some. Everything about WD My Passport is great except one, reparability. The small form factor means that WD My Passport repair is not the easiest one to do. And hard disk errors can happen from both the hardware and software side of things. So before you jump into conclusions, you need to understand the root of the problem. 1.Backup Mac OS X: Before you do anything, makes sure you have proper Mac backup available on an external drive, which can come handy in case of data loss situation. For backup, you can either use in-built Mac software like Time Machine or 3rd party tools like Stellar Drive Clone, Carbon Copy Cloner, etc. 2.Attempt the last ditch repair.

1: Ensure your Mac recognizes the external drive

This method allows you to check if the port and the drive are physically damaged. If the port on your Mac or the device is damaged, your Mac won’t recognize the device, and you may get “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” error. To check if the machine recognizes the drive, follow these steps:

1) Click the Appleicon in the upper left-hand corner of your screen.

2) Select About This Mac.

3) Select the Overview tab then click the System Report button. This will open the System Information window.

4) In the left pane, double-click the Hardware to expand the category. If the category is already expanded, just move on to next step.

5) Click Storage (if you don’t see Storage, click USB), and check if the device you inserted is showing up in the right pane. If the device shows up there, it could mean there are no problems with the port and the drive. Then just move on to Method 2. If it doesn’t show up, it could mean the port or the device is damaged. Then you can do the following to determine the port or the drive is damaged:

In the screenshot shown below, the external disk is disk:

5a) Insert the drive to another computer to check to see if it works. If it doesn’t work on another computer, the device is probably having problems. You may need to replace it with a new one.

5b) Using another device in that port to check to see if another device works. If another device doesn’t work either, the port is probably having problems. Switch to another port if you can. Or take your Mac to the near computer repair store to have a further check.

2: Repair the drive using Disk Utility

The problem can be caused by missing disk partition table. You can use the Disk Utility built in Mac to do a disk repair. Disk Utility allows you to format, manage and repair the disk. It’s helpful for you to fix many drive issues including the “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” error. For more information about this tool, you can visit About Disk Utility.

1) On the error message dialog box, click Initialize. Then Disk Utility will open.

2) Click View in the top menu bar. Then select Show All Devices.

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3) In the left pane, select the external device. Then click the First Aid tab.

4) Click Repair Disk at the bottom of the screen.

5) After repairing finishes, check to see if Mac reads your external drive.

If the problem persists, try the following methods.

3: Change the drive format

The problem could occur if the drive’s format is NTFS. NTFS is not officially supported by Mac. If your drive is NTFS-formatted, you’re able to read the drive but not able to write to the drive. And you may get “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” error when you insert the drive to your Mac. To fix the problem, you can try to change the drive format to exFAT supported by OS X and Windows.

IMPORTANT: Changing the format of the drive will erase all data in the drive. Before you begin to change the format, back up the files and all data of the drive. To do this, you need to have a Windows PC which can read the drive properly to save the data to that PC.

First, check if the drive is NTFS-formatted:

1) Click the search icon in the upper right corner of the desktop screen. Then Spotlight Search will open.

2) Type Disk Utility and press Enter on your keyboard. Then Disk Utility will open.

3) Select the drive in the sidebar, then select the Info tab.

4) Check if the File system is Windows (NTFS). If it shows NTFS, continue to follow the steps below to change the format. If it shows other formats like ExFAT, you don’t need to change the format, then try Method 4.

Follow these steps to change the format:

1) Open Disk Utility again.

2) Select the drive in the sidebar, then select the Erase tab.

3) Select Format to ExFAT, then click Erase. The process may take a few seconds. Please be patient until the process completes.

4) Check to see if Mac reads your external drive.

4: Recover data and format the drive

File corruption can cause “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” error. And file corruption can be caused by virus infection, a force restart, turning the computer off without doing a proper shutdown, etc. To fix file corruption error, you can recover the data, then perform a format.

How to recover and back up the data

You need to use a third-party program to do a data recovery. If you’re not sure what program you can trust, you can do it with Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery Pro. To recover the corrupted files, you just need a few mouse clicks:

1) Downloadand install Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery for Mac. If you’re prompted to enter the password to allow it to install on your Mac, enter the password.

2) Launch Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery and click Next. If you’re prompted to enter the password to allow the program to run on your Mac, enter the password.

3) Select the external drive you’d like to recover, then click Scan. Take external drive “disk” for example here:

4) Select all files and click Recover.

6) Click Browse to select a destination where you’ll save the files. Then click Save.

After doing a data recovery, format the drive using Disk Utility.

1) Click the search icon in the upper right corner of the desktop screen. Then Spotlight Search will open.

2) Type Disk Utility and press Enter on your keyboard. Then Disk Utility will open.

3) Select the drive in the sidebar, then select the Erase tab.

4) Click Erase. The process may take a few seconds. Please be patient until the process completes.

5) Check to see if Mac reads your external drive.

Hopefully this has fixed your “the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” problem. Please feel free to comment below with your experiences, and to share this post with friends and colleagues, if they’re having this issue.

Oct 16, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

How Do I Recover Files from an External Hard Drive on a Mac?

In today’s world, external hard drives have been widely used as supplementary mass storage devices for Mac. It is always an excellent way to keep your valuable photos, videos, and other files in an external storage device so that you can bring them anywhere. Then the problem might come: What if you accidentally delete files in your external hard drive? What if files are lost from your formatted external hard drive? Or what if files become corrupted in your external hard drive?

When facing those annoying Mac external hard drive data loss issues, Mac users may ask: How do I recover files from a corrupted, broken or formatted external hard drive on Mac OS X? If you are lucky enough, you may have a backup copy of lost files, and you can quickly restore them from that copy. If not, you can still ask for help from a Mac external hard drive data recovery program.

Part 1. How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive on Mac OS X

To recover data from external hard drive on Mac OS X, you can take Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac as a try. This fascinating Mac external hard drive recovery software supports almost all brands of external hard drives, including Seagate, LaCie, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, etc. It also supports recovering all types of files no matter whether they are deleted, formatted, or corrupted from an external drive. Moreover, this Mac data rescue software allows you to retrieve files from external hard drives, even if they are corrupted, broken, formatted, dead, crushed, or damaged.

Video Guide to External Hard Drive Recovery

This video tutorial demonstrates to you how to recover data from external hard drive on Windows. The steps are true of Mac OS X file recovery from the outer disk. You can also turn to the below text-based macOS recovery guide.

2. How to Retrieve Data from External Hard Drive on Mac

Download and install Recoverit data recovery on your Mac computer. Launch Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac and follow the next simple steps to perform external hard drive data recovery on Mac OS X.

1. Select external hard drive

In this step, you can choose a specific location where the files get deleted or lost. To recover data from Mac external hard drive, please select the drive letter for your external hard drive and click 'Start' to scan data.

1. Scan hard drive to search data

Recoverit will start an all-around scan. The 'All-Around Recovery' mode will deep dig into your Mac external hard drive and piece the bits of your files together on it. It might take a little long time.

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1. Restore files from Mac external hard drive

Now you can preview and check the found contents in the window after the scan. Then select files you need and click 'Recover' to save them on your Mac.

Data Recovery Tips：

• To avoid recoverable files from being overwritten during the recovery, please do select a folder on your Mac rather than the external disk to save them.
• Scanned out of the photos, documents, video, audio, and other documents, display 'preview failed,' the material has been damaged, can not be restored.
• For the software does not support the preview of the file type, such as compressed files, installers, etc., only the final recovery, to know whether the file can be used frequently.
• Data recovery is not a panacea that can’t guarantee 100% recovery successfully in any situation. Therefore, you should prevent data loss effectively with a good habit to backup your data timely.

Part 3: How to Repair External Hard Drive on Mac

To repair external hard drive on Mac, there are two options, Disk Utility and Terminal. Now, let's move on and take a look at how to fix external hard drive on Mac.

Repair External Hard Drive with Disk Utility

1. Go to Apple Menu > Restart. Restart Mac and hold 'Command + R' keys.
2. Click 'Disk Utility' > 'Continue' > 'View' > 'Show All Devices'.
3. Select the external hard drive you want to repair in the sidebar.
4. Click 'First Aid' > 'Run' if you get 'overlapped extent allocation.'
5. Disk Utility will repair your external hard drive on Mac usually.

Repair External Hard Drive with Terminal

Macos Can't Repair The Disk My Passport

1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
2. Type the command line: 'cd /Volumes' and 'ls.' Press 'Return' to get a list of hard drives.
3. Type 'diskutil verifyVolume xxx (external storage name)' and Return.
4. Type 'diskutil repairvolume /Volumes/xxx (external hard drive name)' and Return.

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After repairing the external hard drive on Mac, turn to Part 1 to recover files from the external hard drive. With Mac hard drive data recovery software, at least 96% of your data stored on the external hard drive can be retrieved without any hassle and much effort. Also, it enables you to scan your external hard drive and preview files on your Mac before recovery.

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