Sep 25, 2017 Similar issues trying to get the Samsung T5 ssd to APFS. I found this article which helped. Basically Disk Utility is trying to help by having a simple interface, but it's actually being confusing. You need to use the top left drop-down to 'Show All Devices'. From there I was able to select the drive, and proceed with APFS. The Samsung Portable SSD T5 is one of the best external storage devices out there. The drive measures 74 x 57 x 10.5mm and weighs only 51g, making it small and light enough to be shoved.
by Shirly Chen, updated on 2017-12-01 to Mac Data Wipe
A Solid State Drive is primarily used on Mac machine. If you want to recycle a SSD, formatting is the best way to remove all history data from the SSD. Today, we will talk about how to format or reformat SSD on Mac. You can run easy-to-use Mac disk formatting software to easily format internal SSD or external SSD under Mac OS.
Solution 1: format & quick format SSD on Mac
Disk Utility is a useful application inside your Mac system. It can help you format & quick format SSD on Mac. First of all, open it from Launchpad. It will list all hard drives and external hard drives on the Mac. Select the SSD and click on 'Erase' button. Then Disk Utility will quickly format the SSD on your Mac.
Disk Utility can’t format the system SSD. And please note that after the SSD is formatted by Disk Utility, the data still can be recovered by Mac data recovery software. This is very easy solution to format or quick format Mac SSD. If you only want to recycle or reuse the SSD, this is the best solution to remove all old data on the Mac SSD. But if you are going to sell your Mac SSD, this is not the reliable way to remove sensitive data.
Solution 2: reformat or do high-level format on Mac SSD
If you want to sell, donate, lend or abandon a Mac computer/SSD, you should sure all the sensitive data on the Mac SSD has been permanently erased. Reformat or high-level format can help you permanently erase all data information on Mac SSD. Mac disk formatting software – DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac offers secure solution to reformat or high-level format Mac solid state drive. It will reformat the SSD on Mac and permanently erase all data on the SSD without affecting the service life of the Mac SSD.
DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is pretty simple to use. You can reformat your Mac SSD by only 1 click. First of all, just download and install DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac computer. Then run it to quickly reformat your Mac SSD.
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Step 1: Launch DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac on your Mac.
When you run DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac, you will see three data erasure modes. Choose this mode 'Wipe Hard Drive'.
Step 2: Reformat Mac SSD by 1 click.
DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac will show all hard drives on your Mac. Select the SSD and click on 'Wipe Now' button to reformat the SSD on your Mac.
Once the Mac SSD is reformatted by Mac SSD, all data on the SSD will be permanently lost, can’t be recovered by data recovery software. You also can’t reformat the system SSD. But DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac offers another solution to permanently erase data on the system SSD. It can erase the free disk space of the system SSD. Then all deleted or lost data on the system SSD will be permanently erased.
If you are going to dispose your old Mac computer or old SSD, DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is the best tool for you to format the SSD on Mac and permanently remove all private data on the SSD.
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Summary: This a full guide to external SSD not recognized on Mac issue, which includes both reasons and solutions to this issue, as well as how to recover lost data when external SSD is not showing up on Mac.
You can't access a Sandisk, Crucial, or Samsung T3 when the external SSD is not recognized or detected by Mac, whether the external SSD was working for a long time or it's a new SSD you bought recently.
However, hard drives not working or showing up issue is so prone to happen even when you unplug the external SSD from the Mac and later on plug in the SSD again. It's definitely frustrating, especially when you have important files stored on it.
How can you fix the unrecognized external SSD and access your files stored on it? You will find the answer and troubleshoot this problem in this post.
Why is external SSD not recognized on Mac?
Various reasons are leading to external SSD not showing up issue on Mac. Here we conclude four main causes as below:
1. The SATA to USB 3.0 adapter/Dock is malfunctioned.
Usually, you need to buy an additional dock, disk case, or SATA adapter to access an SSD drive. During this process, if the externally connected SSD is not recognized by your Mac, it's likely that the adapter is not compatible with the disk's SATA interface, or the dock/drive caddy is faulty.
2. The external SSD is new and uninitialized.
This happens when users externally connect the SSD to backup or transfer files on the internal hard drive. But many newly bought SSDs are not initialized with a file system, which means there is no entrance for macOS to recognize and communicate with this SSD, and for sure, the external SSD won't show up.
3. The external SSD has a file system that can't be recognized by Mac.
Possibly, the SSD that you try to access is formatted with a file system. However, it's not a file system that your Mac can recognize. For example, it is formatted with a Linux file system. In this case, your macOS can't recognize the external SSD surely.
4. New software or firmware needs to be updated.
This happens frequently for Samsung portable SSD T5/T3, because you need to install Samsung portable SSD Software to unlock disk's password and update certain firmware for this SSD. And if the necessary software and extension are not downloaded, you may receive 'No Samsung portable SSD is connected' from its software.
5. The external SSD is not set to show up on Mac.
Sometimes, your external SSD actually is recognized by the Mac, but some setups stop the SSD from showing up in the Finder, on the desktop, or even in the Disk Utility.
6. The external SSD is corrupted.
Another possible cause is that you have unsafely ejected your SSD, which makes the external drive corrupted after some core data like partition table or file system is damaged. Also, you need to be clear that the life span of an SSD is limited depending on how frequently you use it.
7. Other Hardware problems.
How to fix external SSD not recognized on Mac?
Solution 1: Check whether the external SSD is properly plugged in
Since all SSDs use SATA interface, so when an external SSD is not recognized by Mac, the first and foremost solution is to check whether the external SSD is properly plugged in. So simply do these checks:
- Check if the cable is working by connecting the external SSD with a different cable.
- Check whether your SSD is using SATA Ⅰ, Ⅱ, or Ⅲ so that your adapter/dock/case is compatible with your external SSD.
- Try a different SATA to USB adapter and make sure it works by plugging in a different drive.
- Try to connect the external SSD directly to your Mac if it's a type C drive, rather than accessing it via a USB-C adapter.
If the unrecognized external SSD is a Samsung T5/T3 SSD, and you got the 'System Extension Blocked' and 'No Samsung Portable SSD is connected' messages when executing Samsung Portable SSD Software, simply go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > choose Allow button next to the message: System software from developer 'Samsung Electronics' was blocked from loading.
Solution 2: Reboot your Mac computer
Sometimes, Mac externalSSD not mounting issue is caused by the system issues. But you easily fix them by restarting. The restarting process will refresh your macOS's memory and starts it up fresh, which works efficiently especially when the USB port is busy. Simply choose the Apple menu and click Restart.
If you are interested in, you can learn what happened inside when Mac doesn't recognize an external drive with details.
Solution 3: Find the unrecognized external SSD in Disk Utility
When an external SSD is not showing up on Mac, the most necessary step is to check whether the external SSD can be found in Disk Utility. If the external SSD can be found in Disk Utility, you make sure that the drive doesn't have any hardware problems. But if you can't find it listed in Disk Utility, the external SSD might be physically damaged.
So simply Go > Disk Utility > View > Show All Devices to check the external SSD.
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- If your external SSD is using Windows NTFS format, macOS won't mount the drive in writable mode. To write to an NTFS drive, you need to download a free NTFS for Mac driver.
- If you have used this external SSD on other computers for some time and now it is unrecognized by macOS, the file system of the SSD is either unsupportable or corrupted, you need to recover lost data from this external SSD and reformat the drive.
- If you newly bought this SSD and it is not initialized, you can't see the partitions of the external SSD in Disk Utility but receive an error message 'the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer'. In this case, you need to make sure you don't have any data on this drive and then initialize it in Disk Utility by erasing.
Solution 4: Repair the unrecognized external SSD with First Aid
If your external SSD shows up in Disk Utility but not mounted, you can right-click the drive and select Mount menu and then the SSD will show up on Mac. If the Mount button is grayed out or you fail to mount the external SSD, try running First Aid to verify and repair disk errors.
- 1. Launch Disk Utility.
- 2. Choose the grayed out external SSD from the left sidebar.
- 3. Select the 'First Aid' tab on the top.
Solution 5: Reformat the unrecognized external SSD without data loss
If all solutions above don't work, the external SSD might be corrupted and you need to reformat it. The thing is, reformat will cause data loss. But actually, whether the external SSD is not recognized due to logical disk errors or hardware problems, the most important thing is your files on the drive. So, to prevent data loss, you need to get your files off this external SSD first if you forget to back up. Hopefully, you can recover lost data from the external SSD with the help of professional Mac data recovery software.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is highly recommended here to recover lost data from unrecognized external SSD. It's a free and professional data recovery tool, which can recover lost data from corrupted, formatted, unreadable, and unmountable SSD. This software works on macOS Big Sur 11/10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Moreover, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac supports main storage devices including hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. and multiple file formats such as documents, audios, pictures, videos, emails, etc.
Tutorial to recover lost data from unrecognized SSD on Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
- 1. Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
- 2. Select the unrecognized external SSD and click 'Next' to scan lost files on the drive.
- 3. Preview the scanning results, choose files we need, and click 'Recover' to get lost files back from the unrecognized external SSD.
- 4. Have a check to ensure we have recovered all lost files.
What Format Is Best For Samsung Ssd T5 Macro
After your important data is recovered, you can go ahead to fix this issue by reformatting without data loss.
What Format Is Best For Samsung Ssd T5 Macbook Pro
Tutorial to reformat the unrecognized external SSD
This guide to reformat external SSD will remove all data on the external SSD, please make sure you have recovered all useful files with iBoysoft Data Recovery.
- 1. Launch Disk Utility.
- 2. Select the external SSD on the left part of the window.
- 3. Click 'Erase' on the top of the Disk Utility window.
- 4. Complete related information (name, format, scheme), then click Erase.
Solution 6: Send the external SSD to a local technician for help
If unfortunately, the external SSD can't show up in Disk Utility or the solutions above failed to fix external SSD not recognized issue, the drive might have some hardware problems. You need to contact the manufacturer for technical support or product replacement.
• Fix SSD not showing up in Windows 10/8/7
Some SSD support pages you may need:
- Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/support/warranty/
- Crucial: https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/support?cm_re=top-nav-v2-_-flyout-support-_-support-home
- Intel:https://supporttickets.intel.com/?lang=en-US
- WD: https://www.westerndigital.com/support
- Kingston: https://www.kingston.com/en/company/warranty
- Toshiba: https://www.toshiba-memory.com/warranty/