How to Fix Disk is Unreadable Error on Mac Computer

That moment when you connect your external hard drive to Mac system to copy some files but end up getting an error message which states - ‘The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer’. Annoying right? Files present in the external drive cannot be accessed. And you are left wondering how to fix the error message and get access to data.

Well, there are various reasons why this error message occurs, some of which include – faulty connections, drive corruption, or even malfunctioning Mac. Whatever the reason could be, the only priority now is to fix the error message. How to fix ‘The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer’ on Mac error message? Easy, we bring you some easy methods you can try out to fix the error message.

  • Reinsert the external drive

The first simple attempt is to try re-connecting the external hard drive to Mac. Just remove it from Mac and then re-plug it. And now check if the error message persists. If this error message still pops up, you can move on to the other methods.

  • Check Mac system

Try and plug-in a different external hard drive to Mac. If it appears on Finder, then it suggests that the problem is with the external USB drive and not Mac.

  • Update Mac drivers

The problem could be with the driver on Mac that is outdated, thereby not supporting the external hard drive. So you need to check the drivers on your Mac. Make sure that all of them are up-to-date. After the drivers have been updated, you can try again. Also, make sure the computer is updated with the latest update such as macOS Catalina.

  • Repair using Disk Utility

Mac comes with an inbuilt Disk repair tool, called Disk Utility. It helps to fix most of the hard drive related issues. So you can try to fix APFS, HFS+ and HFS partitions with the help of Disk utility. Yet, if it fails, you have to turn to other approaches.

If after trying out all these methods, the error still remains, then the next worry you would have is about files present on the external hard drive. To recover data from the drive and format it. For this purpose, you can use Remo Mac Data Recovery tool to safely and easily restore data from the drive. The software even helps to recover APFS, HFS+, exFAT, and HFS data that is lost or erased. In just a few steps, the application will retrieve files on Mac.

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John Harris

Senior Editor, Content Analyst and a fan of exceptional customer service. John develops and publishes instructional and informational content regarding partition management, Windows hot-fixes, data management and computer troubleshooting.

As a tenured data recovery specialist, John shares exceptional insights and blog posts about data loss and data recovery across any storage device. With 8+ years’ experience in writing for Data Recovery for both Mac OS and Windows OS computers, he is an avid learner who always wants to polish and simplify the data recovery process. John passes his free time playing Chess and reading Science Fiction novels.

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