My external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my Mac, Finder, and Disk Utility. It contains important files I need to recover. What can I do to access the drive without erasing or damaging the data?
Whether the drive appears in System Information matters more than Finder at this point. Hold Option, open the Apple menu, choose System Information, and check USB or Thunderbolt. If it is missing there too, macOS is not detecting the hardware, so recovery software will not be able to scan it yet.
Start with the non-destructive checks: shut down the Mac, reconnect the drive directly without a hub, try another known-good cable and port, and confirm that a desktop-size drive has power. Test it on another computer if possible. If the bare drive is inside a removable enclosure, the enclosure or its power adapter may have failed even though the disk itself is fine.
If it appears in Disk Utility after choosing View > Show All Devices, do not click Initialize, Erase, or Partition. Try Mount only if the volume is listed but grayed out. I would avoid jumping straight to First Aid when the files are irreplaceable because filesystem repair changes the disk. A safer approach is to create a byte-for-byte image on a healthy drive first, then scan the image. Disk Drill for Mac can create an image and scan external storage, but it still needs the Mac to detect the physical device. Save recovered files to a different drive, never back onto the problem disk.
Stop troubleshooting if the drive clicks, repeatedly spins up and down, disconnects during use, or becomes extremely slow. Repeated power cycles and long scans can make a mechanical failure worse. For important data, that is the point to use a professional recovery lab rather than First Aid or repeated software scans.
Do not accept an “Initialize,” “Format,” or “Repair” prompt when testing the drive on another computer. A Windows PC may show that message simply because it cannot understand the Mac-formatted volume, and formatting would make recovery harder.
@1r0n_falcon is right about checking System Information, but pay attention to exactly what appears there. Sometimes macOS detects the USB enclosure or adapter while the actual disk reports no capacity or media. That can point to a bad enclosure, power supply, or internal connection rather than a damaged file system. Testing on another Mac is preferable because it removes the Windows filesystem confusion.
If the volume appears even briefly and stays connected, avoid opening lots of folders. Copy the smallest, most important files to a different drive first, or create an image if the connection is stable. If only the enclosure appears, the disk shows zero bytes, or it keeps disconnecting, software such as Disk Drill will not fix the hardware communication problem. At that stage, trying a compatible replacement enclosure may be reasonable for a removable drive, but clicking or unstable mechanical drives should go to a recovery lab instead.
Finder settings are not the problem if the physical disk is absent from Disk Utility. Try diskutil list in Terminal after connecting it directly with a known-good data cable and no hub. If it still does not appear, Disk Drill or any other recovery app cannot scan it yet. If it does appear, recover files to a separate drive and never install software or save recovered data onto the failing disk.
Before you plug it in again, put your hand on the drive and feel whether it even spins up. If it stays dead silent or you feel it stall, stop the retries and treat it as a lab job, because every power cycle on a mechanical drive that won’t spin is a gamble with your data. Software like Disk Drill only earns its keep once the disk actually shows in diskutil list.