Seagate Hard Drive Mac

1. Install Seagate External Hard Drive
2. Seagate Hard Drive Mac To Windows
3. Seagate Hard Drive Mac
4. Seagate Portable Drive For Mac
5. Seagate Hard Drive Mac Driver

Summary: Two methods to change Seagate external hard drives from read-only back to read-write, so that you can edit, delete, and rename files on this Seagate external hard drive. Also, if a Seagate external hard drive is read-only or files are locked on Mac due to NTFS format, you can use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to mount it in read-write mode on Mac.

Seagate® Media Sync for Mac. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Seagate® Media Sync for Windows. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Current Dashboard users can effortlessly back up content as well as share and save media on social networks with legacy backup software.

When you plug a Seagate external hard drive into your Mac, one of the worst things would be that you find your Seagate hard drive is read-only. Your photos, videos, and other files you saved from a Windows PC could be locked. Or your Seagate external drive could be write-protected. Are you facing such disk problem right now? Well, you are not the only one.

'I'm having a problem using my Seagate external hard drive. I only have permission to read files on my external hard drive, but I am not allowed to write or edit files on the drive when using Mac OS. Why this happened and how to fix Seagate external hard drive read-only on Mac?'

You might have trouble backing up or adding files to Seagate external hard drives on Mac. But it's not necessarily because the disk is locked but some other reasons. For example, the Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only on Mac.

In this article, we introduced three possible reasons for disk being read-only on Mac, and you can find solutions to change the external drives from read-only accordingly.

Why is your Seagate external hard drive read only on Mac?

1. Desktop External Hard Drives. From the home office to the dorm room, our ultra high-capacity desktop hard drives are the best way to bring all your files—photos, movies, music, and everything else—to one reliable place.
2. Simply plug in the power, plug in the USB cable, and the drive should appear in (My) Computer/This PC and Windows Explorer/File Explorer. For Mac, you will need to reformat the drive prior to using it because it will be read-only on a Mac, which means you will be unable to copy or move data to the drive. See the Mac section for more details.

You may be wondering why my Seagate external hard drive is read-only. In fact, read-only Seagate external hard drive results from various reasons. It could be the NTFS format that makes this trouble since NTFS is not writable on Mac. Generally, there are three possible reasons:

• The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted
• You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive
• The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

In the following part, we'll go into details about how to fix the Seagate external hard drive read-onli issue in different situations.

Case 1: The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted

Most Seagate external drives are read-only on Mac because they are pre-fomatted with Windows NT file system (NTFS) by the manufacturer. So your Seagate HDD is read only on Mac, which affects Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch, Portable drive, and Slim.

However, macOS disabled the NTFS write support by default. If you connect an NTFS formatted external hard drive to your Mac, you will find that files on this disk will be locked or show as read-only. You can only read but can't add files to this Seagate external hard drive on Mac.

How to check if your Seagate hard drive is NTFS formatted on Mac?

1. Open the Finder and click Go at the upper right of your desktop, then choose Utilities.
2. Find Disk Utility and open it.
3. Select your Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar of Disk Utility.
4. Then you can see Windows NT File System on the right.
5. You can click the Info icon at the upper right to check if this disk is writable.

Solution: Use NTFS for Mac to write to Seagate external hard drives on Mac

In this situation, what you need is not to unlock the Seagate external hard drive but a NTFS for Mac driver. Many people would think about converting NTFS to APFS or formatting the Seagate drive for Mac to make it compatible with macOS. However, the truth is that you can fix the Seagate external hard drive read-only issue without formatting, i.e. you don't have to lose your files on this drive.

Alternatively, you can download NTFS for Mac software to enable NTFS drive write support on Mac with no fuss. There are a great number of NTFS for Mac in the market, and iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is used here as an example.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a handy disk management tool, which can help you mount NTFS formatted external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. on Mac with write support. This NTFS drive mounter is also compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina), macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

How to use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to write to NTFS Seagate external hard drive on Mac?

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your computer.

Step 2: Launch this NTFS driver for Mac and connect the read-only Seagate external hard drive to Mac.

Step 3: Then, you can fully write and copy data to the Seagate external hard drive on Mac after the drive is mounted successfully.

Aside from being an NTFS for Mac driver, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is also a wonderful tool to manage files on NTFS external drives. It lets users open, monut, repair, and erase NTFS drives on Mac natively and seamlessly.

Case 2: You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive

If your Seagate hard drive denies your access or restricts you to read-only activities, there is likely an permission issue. Being a multiuser operating system, macOS sets up access permissions for all files and folders on the system, including external drives.

Solution: Change permissions on Seagate external hard drive

To fix the read-only Seagate external hard drive issue, you need to regain full access. You can ignore the ownership or change the sharing and permissions of this disk in the Finder by following the below steps.

Step 1: Select Seagate external hard drive on your desktop or in the Finder sidebar, and then press Command + I to get information of the drive.

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of this list and click on the triangle that is at the left side of the Sharing & Permissions tab.

Step 3: Click on the lock icon at the right bottom and type in the password to unlock this tab.

Step 4: Check the box to Ignore ownership on this volume, or you can toggle it off and then on if it's already enabled.

Step 5: Click on the gear button and choose Apply to enclosed items… to save your changes.

Then you can go to check if your Seagate external hard drive is read-only still. If not, you will be able to write to this disk.

But if you can't access the Seagate external hard drive as it's locked still. Well, the disk may be really locked by certain programs, especially for Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch. Then you need to unlock the password protection or hardware encryption with Seagate Secure software.

Case 3: The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

If your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only not for the reasons above, you may need to have a check if there is any inner disk error. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive read-only on Mac. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in Disk Utility that states it is only being mounted in read-only mode.

Click to see more errors of the Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Windows.

Solution 1: Fix read-only Seagate external hard drive in Disk Utility

Fortunately, there is a built-in tool called First Aid that can check and repair some minor disk errors. When your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only due to logical disk problems, you can use First Aid to repair it then.

Here is the guidance to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive with Disk Utility:

1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive on the left window.
3. Click First Aid in the top center and choose Run to repair this disk.

Solution 2: Reformat Seagate external hard drive

However, if Disk Utility fails to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive, the last thing you can try to remove write protection from Seagate external hard drives would be reformatting. Reformatting will assign a new file system to this disk, consequently, the Seagate external hard drive issue could be fixed.

But before you go ahead to erase this disk, you should know that reformatting will wipe the files on this hard drive. Thus, you are advised to check if you have a copy of data back in the first place , or you can recover lost data from this external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac data recovery to avoid data loss.

If you're sure that you have data backup in hand, you can proceed to reformat this read-only external hard drive with the following tutorial.

Install Seagate External Hard Drive

1. Open Disk Utility as you did before.
2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Erase button in the top center of Disk Utility.
4. Fill in name, format, and scheme when the pop-up asks.
5. Click Erase to confirm this operation.

A final note

Besides Seagate external hard drives, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, or other brands' external hard drives will come across the read-only problem. It is common to see people complaining WD My Passport external hard drives suddenly became read-only on Mac. You can also use these solutions to fix this problem. What's more, an NTFS formatted WD external hard drive won't work on your PS4 console for gaming as well. But if you are unable to fix it with the solutions suggested above, you can only send it to local disk repair store for help, but that will cost a lot usually.

by Jenefey AaronUpdated on 2020-09-29 / Update for Mac OS

So you plugged in your Seagate hard drive into your Mac and it ain't showing up, right? Well, perhaps, the files and folders or the disk itself is unapproachable and therefore, your Mac was unable to detect the Seagate external hard drive. Consequently, the Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac Sierra! But worry no more, we've got your back! We are going to uncover some proven ways to fix Seagate hard drive not showing up Mac. Stay glued!

Part 1: Why Seagate External Hard Drive Not Showing up Mac?

Seagate Hard Drive Mac To Windows

Usually, when an external hard drive is plugged into Mac via a USB port, it gets mounted over the desktop. You can even find it under the Devices column on the left in the Finder. Just in case, your Seagate hard drive not showing up on Mac, there can be a number of reasons behind it. Here are they.

• 1. Chances are that your hard drive may have been corrupted.
• 2. Perhaps, it may not have been formatted properly.
• 3. Maybe, the drive got broken internally due to physical damage.
• 4. Or, your Seagate hard drive is faulty.

Part 2: Quick Fix The Issue of Seagate Hard Drive Not Showing up Mac

1. Check If Connected Properly

First things first, check if the Seagate external hard drive that is not showing up Mac is properly plugged in to the USB port. It is one of the most notable reasons when Mac fails to mount the drive. If you are using an older Mac ensure that the drive is receiving enough power supply. Older Macs need a special USB power cable, which splits up into two USB connectors and both of which has to be plugged into the Mac.

2. Troubleshoot the Seagate Hard Drive

If the above mentioned solution brought you no good, then you need to troubleshoot the Seagate Hard Drive. Try reconnecting the hard drive into a different USB port and check if it shows up or not. If not, you should then plug it in a different Mac or Windows PC to check if it is the hard drive itself that is faulty.

3. Restart your Mac

Performing a restart has known to be an ideal solution to resolve various software glitches in the first place. If your Seagate external hard drive not showing up Mac Sierra, try restarting it with the help of the steps mentioned right below.

Hit on the 'Apple' icon available on the top left corner of your Mac screen and then opt for the 'Restart' option from the appearing drop down menu.

4. Fix The Seagate Hard Drive with Disk Utility

If the above methods were not able to produce good results for you, the next method to fix Seagate external hard drive not showing up Mac is via Disk Utility. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Launch the 'Spotlight search' by hitting the 'cmd + spacebar' key over your keyboard and punch in 'Disk Utility'. Hit the 'Return' key afterwards to launch the program.

Step 2: On the left panel of the Disk Utility, you'll be able to locate your Seagate hard drive. If your drive is there and not mounted, it should appear as greyed out. Select the drive and then opt for 'Mount' option. Once mounted, the drive will now turn to normal.

Step 3: If Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac yet, try running the First Aid and Erase options to fix or format the drive respectively.

When you plug a Seagate external hard drive into your Mac, one of the worst things would be that you find your Seagate hard drive is read-only. Your photos, videos, and other files you saved from a Windows PC could be locked. Or your Seagate external drive could be write-protected. Are you facing such disk problem right now? Well, you are not the only one.

'I'm having a problem using my Seagate external hard drive. I only have permission to read files on my external hard drive, but I am not allowed to write or edit files on the drive when using Mac OS. Why this happened and how to fix Seagate external hard drive read-only on Mac?'

You might have trouble backing up or adding files to Seagate external hard drives on Mac. But it's not necessarily because the disk is locked but some other reasons. For example, the Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only on Mac.

In this article, we introduced three possible reasons for disk being read-only on Mac, and you can find solutions to change the external drives from read-only accordingly.

Why is your Seagate external hard drive read only on Mac?

1. Desktop External Hard Drives. From the home office to the dorm room, our ultra high-capacity desktop hard drives are the best way to bring all your files—photos, movies, music, and everything else—to one reliable place.
2. Simply plug in the power, plug in the USB cable, and the drive should appear in (My) Computer/This PC and Windows Explorer/File Explorer. For Mac, you will need to reformat the drive prior to using it because it will be read-only on a Mac, which means you will be unable to copy or move data to the drive. See the Mac section for more details.

You may be wondering why my Seagate external hard drive is read-only. In fact, read-only Seagate external hard drive results from various reasons. It could be the NTFS format that makes this trouble since NTFS is not writable on Mac. Generally, there are three possible reasons:

• The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted
• You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive
• The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

In the following part, we'll go into details about how to fix the Seagate external hard drive read-onli issue in different situations.

Case 1: The Seagate external hard drive is NTFS formatted

Most Seagate external drives are read-only on Mac because they are pre-fomatted with Windows NT file system (NTFS) by the manufacturer. So your Seagate HDD is read only on Mac, which affects Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch, Portable drive, and Slim.

However, macOS disabled the NTFS write support by default. If you connect an NTFS formatted external hard drive to your Mac, you will find that files on this disk will be locked or show as read-only. You can only read but can't add files to this Seagate external hard drive on Mac.

How to check if your Seagate hard drive is NTFS formatted on Mac?

1. Open the Finder and click Go at the upper right of your desktop, then choose Utilities.
2. Find Disk Utility and open it.
3. Select your Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar of Disk Utility.
4. Then you can see Windows NT File System on the right.
5. You can click the Info icon at the upper right to check if this disk is writable.

Solution: Use NTFS for Mac to write to Seagate external hard drives on Mac

In this situation, what you need is not to unlock the Seagate external hard drive but a NTFS for Mac driver. Many people would think about converting NTFS to APFS or formatting the Seagate drive for Mac to make it compatible with macOS. However, the truth is that you can fix the Seagate external hard drive read-only issue without formatting, i.e. you don't have to lose your files on this drive.

Alternatively, you can download NTFS for Mac software to enable NTFS drive write support on Mac with no fuss. There are a great number of NTFS for Mac in the market, and iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is used here as an example.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: NTFS for Mac driver and more

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is a handy disk management tool, which can help you mount NTFS formatted external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. on Mac with write support. This NTFS drive mounter is also compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina), macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

How to use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to write to NTFS Seagate external hard drive on Mac?

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on your computer.

Step 2: Launch this NTFS driver for Mac and connect the read-only Seagate external hard drive to Mac.

Step 3: Then, you can fully write and copy data to the Seagate external hard drive on Mac after the drive is mounted successfully.

Aside from being an NTFS for Mac driver, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is also a wonderful tool to manage files on NTFS external drives. It lets users open, monut, repair, and erase NTFS drives on Mac natively and seamlessly.

Case 2: You don't have permissions to access the Seagate external hard drive

If your Seagate hard drive denies your access or restricts you to read-only activities, there is likely an permission issue. Being a multiuser operating system, macOS sets up access permissions for all files and folders on the system, including external drives.

Solution: Change permissions on Seagate external hard drive

To fix the read-only Seagate external hard drive issue, you need to regain full access. You can ignore the ownership or change the sharing and permissions of this disk in the Finder by following the below steps.

Step 1: Select Seagate external hard drive on your desktop or in the Finder sidebar, and then press Command + I to get information of the drive.

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of this list and click on the triangle that is at the left side of the Sharing & Permissions tab.

Step 3: Click on the lock icon at the right bottom and type in the password to unlock this tab.

Step 4: Check the box to Ignore ownership on this volume, or you can toggle it off and then on if it's already enabled.

Step 5: Click on the gear button and choose Apply to enclosed items… to save your changes.

Then you can go to check if your Seagate external hard drive is read-only still. If not, you will be able to write to this disk.

But if you can't access the Seagate external hard drive as it's locked still. Well, the disk may be really locked by certain programs, especially for Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch. Then you need to unlock the password protection or hardware encryption with Seagate Secure software.

Case 3: The Seagate external hard drive has some disk errors

If your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only not for the reasons above, you may need to have a check if there is any inner disk error. Some formatting errors will make an external hard drive read-only on Mac. If this is the cause, usually you will see a warning in Disk Utility that states it is only being mounted in read-only mode.

Click to see more errors of the Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Windows.

Solution 1: Fix read-only Seagate external hard drive in Disk Utility

Fortunately, there is a built-in tool called First Aid that can check and repair some minor disk errors. When your Seagate external hard drive becomes read-only due to logical disk problems, you can use First Aid to repair it then.

Here is the guidance to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive with Disk Utility:

1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive on the left window.
3. Click First Aid in the top center and choose Run to repair this disk.

Solution 2: Reformat Seagate external hard drive

However, if Disk Utility fails to fix read-only Seagate external hard drive, the last thing you can try to remove write protection from Seagate external hard drives would be reformatting. Reformatting will assign a new file system to this disk, consequently, the Seagate external hard drive issue could be fixed.

But before you go ahead to erase this disk, you should know that reformatting will wipe the files on this hard drive. Thus, you are advised to check if you have a copy of data back in the first place , or you can recover lost data from this external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac data recovery to avoid data loss.

If you're sure that you have data backup in hand, you can proceed to reformat this read-only external hard drive with the following tutorial.

Install Seagate External Hard Drive

1. Open Disk Utility as you did before.
2. Select the read-only Seagate external hard drive in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Erase button in the top center of Disk Utility.
4. Fill in name, format, and scheme when the pop-up asks.
5. Click Erase to confirm this operation.

A final note

Besides Seagate external hard drives, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, or other brands' external hard drives will come across the read-only problem. It is common to see people complaining WD My Passport external hard drives suddenly became read-only on Mac. You can also use these solutions to fix this problem. What's more, an NTFS formatted WD external hard drive won't work on your PS4 console for gaming as well. But if you are unable to fix it with the solutions suggested above, you can only send it to local disk repair store for help, but that will cost a lot usually.

by Jenefey AaronUpdated on 2020-09-29 / Update for Mac OS

So you plugged in your Seagate hard drive into your Mac and it ain't showing up, right? Well, perhaps, the files and folders or the disk itself is unapproachable and therefore, your Mac was unable to detect the Seagate external hard drive. Consequently, the Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac Sierra! But worry no more, we've got your back! We are going to uncover some proven ways to fix Seagate hard drive not showing up Mac. Stay glued!

Part 1: Why Seagate External Hard Drive Not Showing up Mac?

Seagate Hard Drive Mac To Windows

Usually, when an external hard drive is plugged into Mac via a USB port, it gets mounted over the desktop. You can even find it under the Devices column on the left in the Finder. Just in case, your Seagate hard drive not showing up on Mac, there can be a number of reasons behind it. Here are they.

• 1. Chances are that your hard drive may have been corrupted.
• 2. Perhaps, it may not have been formatted properly.
• 3. Maybe, the drive got broken internally due to physical damage.
• 4. Or, your Seagate hard drive is faulty.

Part 2: Quick Fix The Issue of Seagate Hard Drive Not Showing up Mac

1. Check If Connected Properly

First things first, check if the Seagate external hard drive that is not showing up Mac is properly plugged in to the USB port. It is one of the most notable reasons when Mac fails to mount the drive. If you are using an older Mac ensure that the drive is receiving enough power supply. Older Macs need a special USB power cable, which splits up into two USB connectors and both of which has to be plugged into the Mac.

2. Troubleshoot the Seagate Hard Drive

If the above mentioned solution brought you no good, then you need to troubleshoot the Seagate Hard Drive. Try reconnecting the hard drive into a different USB port and check if it shows up or not. If not, you should then plug it in a different Mac or Windows PC to check if it is the hard drive itself that is faulty.

3. Restart your Mac

Performing a restart has known to be an ideal solution to resolve various software glitches in the first place. If your Seagate external hard drive not showing up Mac Sierra, try restarting it with the help of the steps mentioned right below.

Hit on the 'Apple' icon available on the top left corner of your Mac screen and then opt for the 'Restart' option from the appearing drop down menu.

4. Fix The Seagate Hard Drive with Disk Utility

If the above methods were not able to produce good results for you, the next method to fix Seagate external hard drive not showing up Mac is via Disk Utility. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Launch the 'Spotlight search' by hitting the 'cmd + spacebar' key over your keyboard and punch in 'Disk Utility'. Hit the 'Return' key afterwards to launch the program.

Step 2: On the left panel of the Disk Utility, you'll be able to locate your Seagate hard drive. If your drive is there and not mounted, it should appear as greyed out. Select the drive and then opt for 'Mount' option. Once mounted, the drive will now turn to normal.

Step 3: If Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac yet, try running the First Aid and Erase options to fix or format the drive respectively.

Part 3: The Ultimate Way to Recover Files from Formatted Seagate External Hard Drive

Since, the Seagate hard drive has now been formatted and is now accessible on your Mac, the data stored over it have been wiped off completely. Now, if you wish to recover the data contained within the formatted Seagate external hard drive. We have brought you the ultimate way to serve the purpose. Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery is your life saver when it comes to recovering data from various data loss scenarios. No matter if the data was stored over your Mac or over the external storage drive, Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Dasta Recovery can retrieve the lost data without any hassle.

Step 1: Install and launch the Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery over your Mac and then opt for the desired location from where the data has been lost. Then hit the 'Scan' button to initiate scanning of lost data.

Note: If you're recovering data over the macOS High Sierra system or higher, you need to grant access to Mac files by disabling SIP first.

Seagate Hard Drive Mac

Step 2: Soon after the scan completes, you will be allowed to preview the data detected for recovery. You can selectively check the categories or the individual files as well that you wish to recover. Once done, hit the 'Recover' button. Lastly, set the destination location and you're done.

Seagate Portable Drive For Mac

Conclusion

Seagate Hard Drive Mac Driver

Well, that was all about how to fix Seagate external hard drive not showing up on Mac Sierra. We are now positive that you've successfully got your issue resolved. And just in case, you need format your hard drive for some reason, you can always look up to the mighty tool Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery to retrieve the lost data back.