If the connecting USB cable is dirty or damaged in any way, it will stop external storage devices from appearing on Mac's screen.
The primary reason behind an external drive not mounting on Mac can be a faulty connection. Why Can't I Mount External Hard Drive on MacĤ Fixes to Get Rid of "Unable to Mount External Hard Drive on Mac" Error Why Can't I Mount External Hard Drive on Macįirst of all, let's check out the main reasons behind the external hard drives being unable to mount on a Mac: 1. Therefore, this post is drafted to discuss the easy fixes for external drives, not mounting errors. No matter what the error is displayed, it can be really annoying when you can't mount your USB or other external drives on a Mac.
With the sort of experience I'm having with maxing out my Mac mini's Thunderbolt 3 ports, I'd be lying if said I wasn't worried about Apple's upcoming Mac Pro that is rumored to be "modular". Note that these types of customized home folders should only be used if you use a stationary Mac like a Mac mini or an iMac. If you're really in need of freeing up local disk space, you can also set up Symbolic Links in your home folder to have all of your documents, downloads, music, etc, run from the remote disk. Now you'll have a Photo Library running from your remote drive no longer using local disk space. So for example, if you want to open a new Photo Library from the networked location, do the following. Typically, the mount will be in /Volumes/NameOfShareYouSelected.
Now that you have the network drive permanently mounted, you can assign your various programs to use that location for default file storage. Now each time you log in, that remote drive will be mounted.
You can get more information on how to share your files on a network from a Mac. So plan accordingly for your requirements. Your networked files would be accessible at near HDD speeds (not SSD speeds mind you). For example, a new Mac mini has the ability to be attached with a Cat6 wire to your network at 10-gigabit speeds.
If you need networked access to very large files, you'll need faster network speeds. You could run FCP libraries from that type of ethernet connection or even WiFi, but in reality, you're going to have a bad time. If you plan on running your application off of files on a networked drive, you'll be limited to the bandwidth of the networked device.Īccessing Pages files, PDFs, and general text-based documents, a WiFi or 1 gigabit wired ethernet connection might be enough for you.
Networked drivesĪ networked drive can range from a specialized appliance that offers data redundant storage such as a Synology Diskstation to a lone PC that has a shared folder visible on the network. So how can you get more working space without having to buy a brand new Mac with the disk capacities you require? Depending on the type of work you're doing, you can probably connect a network drive and use it like you would locally.