It doesn’t take long to open your Toshiba. It doesn’t matter if your Mac computer is a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini or iMac.
Or if your Toshiba external storage device is a Canvio Advance, Canvio Basics or Ready. These are steps you can take to open your Toshiba on your Mac system.
How Do You Open A Toshiba External Hard Drive On A Mac
1. Connect Toshiba external hard drive to your Mac.
2. Double click on the Toshiba hard drive icon to open your Toshiba drive.
3. Now your external hard drive is open on your Mac’s desktop.
How Do You Open A Toshiba External Hard Drive On A Mac Computer
1. Connect Toshiba External Hard Drive To Your Mac.
With your Toshiba hard drive’s USB cable. Plug in your drive into your Mac’s USB port.
The USB cable end that goes into a Mac on many of the hard drives from Toshiba. Have USB type A on the end that goes into your Mac.
For modern Mac’s with USB C ports. You’ll need a USB A to USB C adaptor. To plug into the USB port of your newer Mac.
On older Mac’s with type A USB ports, you can plug right in. Just be aware that.
Although the Toshiba hard drives come with USB 2.0 legacy USB support. Many Mac users have found the portable hard drive from Toshiba. Pull more power from the ports than a Mac can provide.
Macs strictly follow the USB 2.0 port standards.
And should you have issues with power draw. Then you’ll need an independently powered USB hub for your Toshiba drive.
After you’ve plugged your external hard drive into your Mac. In a few moments you should see your Toshiba’s LED light lit. And your Toshiba’s hard drive icon on your Mac’s desktop.
CLICK HERE: To Read A Review On The Toshiba Canvio Basics External Drive On Mac
2. Double Click On The Toshiba Hard Drive Icon To Open Your Toshiba Drive.
Double Clicking on your Toshiba external hard drive’s icon opens up a Finder window. And is how you open your Toshiba drive on your Mac.
Through this Finder window is where you view each file and folder on your external hard drive.
Then check your Finder Settings (Mac OS Ventura). In earlier Mac releases it’s called Preferences.
The setting to show external drives on your Mac’s desktop by default was changed in Mac OS x 10.13. And since then, you have to specifically set this setting.
Click on a Finder window. And from the top of your desktop choose the menu option Finder Settings. Or Preferences depending on you Mac OS.
Be sure you have picked the General tab.
Then put a check in the box ‘External Disks’. This tells your Mac to show external disks and drives connected to your Mac as an icon on your desktop.
3. Now Your External Hard Drive Is Open On Your Mac’s Desktop.
You’ve achieved your aim. Your Toshiba drive is open on your Mac.
You can now copy any file from this window looking into your Toshiba external hard drive. Onto your Mac laptop or desktop computer.
You can open up another Finder window. Browse on your Mac to where you’d like to put the file or data from your Toshiba drive.
Copy from the Finder window on your Toshiba external hard drive. And paste those files into the Finder window into the right place on your Mac.
But whether you can copy files in the other direction.
From your Mac into the Finder window onto your Toshiba external drive. Well, this depends on if your Toshiba hard disk drive is in a file system format your Mac can write to.
What does that mean? Read on.
What Stops You Using An Open Toshiba External Hard Drive On A MacBook Or Mac Mini?
As shipped by Toshiba many of their external hard drives are in a file system format called NTFS. NTFS is plug and play on a Windows PC.
And that means when you plug into a Windows computer you can use File Explorer. Or Windows Explorer to put files onto the drive.
But your Mac can only read NTFS drives. A Mac can’t write to an NTFS drive.
And writing to a drive covers putting new files onto an NTFS file system. Or updating files on a NTFS file system.
Putting Files Onto An Open NTFS Toshiba External Hard Drive From Mac
To put a file, or create data. Or a few folder onto a Toshiba external hard drive in an NTFS file format. Means you’ll need to either reformat your drive to a format your Mac can write to.
Or use special software on your Mac called driver software. This software translates for your Mac allowing you to write to the drive.
Though using driver software means extra software to buy. Run and maintain on your Mac.
The alternative is to reformat the Toshiba external hard drive into a Mac format.
You would use disk management software that’s part of your Mac’s operating system. Disk Utility. Though Disk Utility your Mac’s disk management software you can format your drive to:
- APFS (Apple File System) or Mac OS Extended Journaled. Both are native Mac file systems. And you can use both for a Mac backup with Time Machine.
- Or you can use ExFAT which is a file system your Mac can understand. And read and write to and a Windows computer can fully use as well. Though an ExFAT file system can’t be used for a Time Machine backup.
One thing. Formatting your Toshiba external disk wipes the files that are already on there. So, if you need those files copy them off somewhere safe first.
If you don’t. Then you’ll be needing the services of a data recovery company. Or data recovery software to recover your files.
Copy your files off.
Then you can copy them back onto your open Toshiba external storage when you’re done reformatting.
You can find out how to format your Toshiba external disk at this post here on the site.
Just click on the link text to go over to the article.
After your drive is read and writeable by your Mac. You’ll want to take a look at this article here. How To Use Toshiba External Hard Drive On Mac.
So you can use your hard drive to the max.
In Closing
Now you know how to open your Toshiba external hard drive on your Mac.
Though to fully use your drive to read and write to. You’ll need to take a few steps to make sure that it’s in a compatible format.
While you’re hear, why not take a look at the other Toshiba articles on the site. And use your extra Toshiba storage capacity effectively on your Mac.
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