# external hard drive recognized in windows not mac



## untechsavvy (Jan 4, 2011)

my external hard drive used to be recognized by both mac and windows (format: fats something something). now it wont register on the mac but it does on windows. this happened right after my hard drive refused to safely eject even when it was not in use anymore. all my files are still in the hard drive but it just wont register on the mac. is there any way i can have it get recognized in my mac without having to reformat it? help please! thank you.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Have you restarted the Mac, and power cycled the hard drive? Also, turn the drive on, then plug it into the Mac, also try different USB ports. If you open Disk Utility, does it show up in the side bar?


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