External HDD working under Windows and Linux but won't even show in Disk Utility on OS X

ZambaWamba · Oct 23, 2015

Just got a Samsung M3 2TB external hard drive to rescue some data from a broken internal drive.
Unpacked it, plugged it into my Mac, light goes on, but nothing shows up. Okay, no big deal, probably just needs to be formatted, so I open up Disk Utility. Nothing there either. So I try 'diskutil list' and 'df' in Terminal, still nothing. Very weird.
I start to worry that I got a bad drive, so I try connecting it to a netbook running a Linux distro: there we go, works like a charm. I format it under Linux from NTFS to FAT (not sure which exactly, I think exFAT), try it on my Mac again, still nothing.
I boot up Windows, works perfectly again. I format it another time, back to NTFS, back to OS X, back to nothing working.
Does anybody have any ideas what could cause this? The drive is obviously fine and it's not a file system issue, cause then it would at least still show up in Disk Utility (I also have Paragon NTFS installed). I'm using OS X 10.11.1 by the way.

glamdringfh · Oct 23, 2015

Hi Zamba,

Try formatting it to FAT32 if you can.

Please check back in after that and let us know if it works for you!

ZambaWamba · Oct 23, 2015

Still won't show up under OS X and now I can't use it under Windows either. There is shows up at least though.

Update: After a reboot it works under Windows again, but that doesn't help me much. Still nothing under OS X.

glamdringfh · Oct 23, 2015

Are you sure your USB port on the Mac is functioning properly?

Mac is absolutely able to read FAT32, so there has to be a connectivity failure somewhere in the pipeline.

ZambaWamba · Oct 23, 2015

The USB port is fine, it's the same one I use under Windows. I also tried different ones, no luck. OS X can also read exFAT and read (but not write to) NTFS, so I was already pretty sure it's not a file system issue, as stated in my original post. Any other ideas?

mjslakeridge · Oct 23, 2015

I know nothing about Mac OS, so maybe my idea won't work, but just a thought.

Can you hook up both computers to your router and create a home network? I don't know if Windows or Linux OS will be able to see and share files on a Mac machine, but if so you could copy the files you are trying to recover over the network.

If that is not possible, maybe you could borrow someone's Mac computer and hook it up to your home network and transfer Mac to Mac.

rgd1101 · Oct 23, 2015

it this a hackintosh? does it read anything(thumb drive) on the port in OS X?

ZambaWamba · Oct 23, 2015

rgd1101 :

It is, yes. The port is reading everything else like USB sticks fine though, just not this new one. I removed the internal OS X hard drive now and put it back in my MacBook, where the new external HDD works. So that's where the problem is coming from, but why? And how do I fix it, everything else works fine, just this new hard drive is giving me trouble.

rgd1101 · Oct 23, 2015

My guess it the 2TB drive. older motherboard need driver to support them. And with a hackintosh, apple probably wouldn't create one for non supported system.

ZambaWamba · Oct 23, 2015

rgd1101 :

The motherboard is a Gigabyte Z87X-D3H. Not very old, but I guess it could be the cause of it.
Well for now at least I know the hard drive is working and I can rescue my data through Windows. I still hope I can find a solution to get the hard drive to work in my main system, I'll update this if I find a solution.

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