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 safely access the drive without losing or overwriting the data?
Repeatedly reconnecting or scanning a mechanically failing drive can make recovery harder. Don’t initialize, erase, format, partition, or run First Aid yet, and don’t save anything back to that drive.
Check whether macOS detects the hardware under System Information > USB or Thunderbolt. Try a different cable, port, powered adapter, and enclosure if the drive is removable, then test it on another Mac. If it appears there but won’t mount, create a byte-for-byte image or clone first and recover from that copy. Disk Drill for Mac can scan a detected drive or disk image, but recovered files must go to a separate drive.
If the disk is missing from both Disk Utility and System Information, recovery software probably cannot communicate with it. Clicking, beeping, repeated spin-up, or disconnecting are signs to stop powering it on and use a professional recovery lab, especially if the files are irreplaceable.
If you decide to clone the drive, be careful with the destination because a sector-by-sector clone can overwrite that entire disk. It must be empty, healthy, and at least as large as the problem drive. An image file is safer when you have enough free space, since it does not sacrifice another whole disk.
I agree with holding off on First Aid. A damaged file system is different from an unstable drive, and repair tools write changes that may make later recovery worse. Use a recovery tool such as Disk Drill only after macOS can consistently detect the physical device, preferably against the image rather than the original. A normal Finder copy is fine only if the drive mounts reliably and the most important files can be copied immediately.
If it appears briefly and then vanishes, prioritize imaging instead of browsing folders. If it never appears at the hardware level, software cannot fix that. For an SSD, especially an encrypted one, a controller failure can make DIY recovery unrealistic, so important data may justify going straight to a lab.
Disk Drill is not the first step here because it cannot scan hardware macOS does not detect. Check System Information under USB or Thunderbolt, then test a known-good cable, direct port, adequate power, and another Mac before attempting recovery.
If those files only exist on this one drive and nowhere else, the smartest move is to stop testing and decide upfront whether they’re worth lab money, because every extra power-on gambles with a failing mechanism. The imaging and Disk Drill advice above is solid, but only once macOS sees the drive steadily. A device that flickers in and out isn’t a software problem you can tool your way past.