How to fix my Apple external hard drive

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:27:00 +0000

After a couple of hard restarts, my external USB hard drive finally showed up as “unprepared” on my Mac mini. That was when I started to sweat.

I knew the hard drive was old and certainly flaky. However, it was not making any strange sounds, so I assumed the problem was not hardware-related. It was more likely an issue with bad sectors being written. This meant several things:

first, all the data was not lost yet
second, a lot of it could be retrieved with the right tools
third, I must not “prepare” the disk, as that would wipe all its contents.

I think the hardest part about losing data is not what you actually lose, especially because anything important should already be backed up. It is what you do not know you have lost: the infamous unknown unknown.

Fix on Philippe-Anselme logs

How to fix my Apple external hard drive