Mi630

I bought a 4 TB external hard drive by I think Seagate from Costco. I connected it but computer won’t recognize it. Can anyone help? As much as possible please respond along the lines of “computers for idiots”.
I called Costco support and they said it was a computer problem.
I am sitting in airport while our flight faces delay after delay.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Is it a formatted hard drive?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You didn't say whether you are on a Mac or a Windows PC.

If your drive is formatted for Windows and you use a Mac, you need to use Apple Disk Utility to format the drive. There are three choices. The choice you pick is determined by how you wish to use the drive, and whether you'll use it with other computers, and the version of your MacOS.

ExFAT is the most cross-platform compatible for use with Mac and Windows.

APFS is the best choice for all Apple Silicon (M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max) Macs.

APFS is also required for MacOS 10.15 and higher, if I recall. APFS is the best choice for startup drives using SSD or NVMe technology.

MacOS Extended (Journaled) is most compatible with all *Macs* old and new. However, a startup drive formatted this way won't start up newer Macs. Use this choice if you have a mechanical (spinning platter) hard drive.

For either platform, be sure you are using the correct cable type for the drive! This matters A LOT if the connector is USB-C. USB-C connectors are used by Thunderbolt 3 and 4, USB-3 and USB4, and for USB Power Delivery/charging only... Using the wrong cable may not work at all, or it may slow down your drive.

Thunderbolt 4 cables are expensive, but they are universal (Mac/PC, Thunderbolt 3 and 4, USB 3 and 4, AND power delivery/charging). They will run at the maximum speed of your slowest connected device. (i.e.; if your drive runs at 10Mbps, the cable will not limit it to 5Mbps, as some cheap USB-C cables would.

Don't waste time trying to run any Thunderbolt 3 or 4 drive with a USB cable. Get a true Thunderbolt 4 cable.

mtbear

Which Operating System are you using? Fixing it will depend on the OS, Linux, OS X pr Windows.

therwol Loc: USA

I assume it's a spinning drive. If so, do you feel a slight vibration after plugging it in? If it doesn't, then there is something wrong. Do you know the difference between a powered USB port and one that only provides enough power for things like mice and keyboards? Try a powered port. I realize that you're in an airport, but when you can, try it in a different machine.

therwol Loc: USA

In my experience, external drives are formatted out of the box, and a 4TB drive, unless it is bought specifically for a Mac, will be formatted NTFS. But even a Mac will recognize the drive. It just won't be able to write to it.

Mi630

This is what I was afraid of. I have absolutely no idea what you wrote. I should not have posted probably because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t understand any advice. I sincerely appreciate the time you took to respond but I am just computer illiterate. I have been thinking of asking for about 2 months and hesitated because I was pretty sure the solution would be foreign to me.
I wil take desktop and drive to the local store that made it and pay them to fix it.
By the way it is a PC.

therwol Loc: USA

If it doesn't work in the store, they'll more likely replace it. Make sure that whatever you get works on something in the store before taking it home. If the problem really is your computer, then it could get complicated.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

All but two of the 6 or 7 PC drives I ever bought were (initially) not usable on Macs. I have no idea why... They would power up, but not mount. Reformatting them solved that problem. NTFS can be used as read/write with a third party enabler, but that isn't optimal on Macs. No matter... Disk Utility is a great tool.

Since 2005, I've reformatted all drives, out of the box, regardless of how they came from the factory. I don't want anything the manufacturer might have put on the drive. And I want to know that the format matches my needs.

I'm mainly using APFS now, on my newest two Macs. It's the most efficient format scheme for high speed solid state storage and a 64-bit OS.

My older Macs use MacOS Extended, Journaled. They have spinning platters in them.

I do have one external 1TB drive and two 128GB flash drives formatted as ExFAT for file sharing with PCs.

avflinsch Loc: Hamilton, New Jersey

Since you are in an airport, I would assume that you are using this on a laptop of some kind and this laptop cannot supply the required current via the USB port for the drive.

If the drive accepts an external power supply use it, otherwise try using a powered USB hub when you get home.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

You might try unplugging it, restart computer, then plug in the drive and switch on. See if it is now recognized. If not, if it is a Windows machine, right click Start, click Disk Management wait a bit for it to load, then scroll to see if the drive is recognized.

Good luck,
Mark

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I understand what you mean.

JBRIII

New drives can be bad, I once tried to install one for my boss. So bad it stopped the entire comouter from even turning on, thought I had forgot to plug it in at first.

Smudgey Loc: Ohio, Calif, Now Arizona

I bought the 8TB from Costco, once I formatted it for the Mac there have not been any problems.

John Hicks Loc: Sible Hedinham North Essex England

Delete the usb port the drive is plugged in to them reload the usb driver