Chosen Solution
My friend has a MacBook Pro 13" which is basically unusable because it is so slow. I wanted to reinstall the OS to try and fix the issue. So, I attached my external to back up all data before wiping the mac, but it wouldn’t show up. I tried both ports, nothing. I attached another of my external hard drives and the external was only clicking, I got a little worried and plugged the hard drive into my mac and it works like a charm. None of my hard drives have shown up. What can I do? I need to do the back up in order to reinstall everything. Thank you! the external (in case this is important) is a ‘WD My Passport Ultra’
Try opening up disk utility to see if that detects the external drives at least. Have Usb ports been tried out with other external devices such as Usb stick, mouse, do they work at all ? If you have another Mac you can also try a network backup with ethernet or wifi if these work. In the worst scenario, you’ll have to remove the drive from the Mac and put it in a usb enclosure.
It sounds like your friends MacBook has a power issue which is also effecting the USB ports which is why the hard drives are not working here. If you have a power brink for your external hard drive that may allow you to get the task done. An alternative approach here is to take the drive out and connect it directly to your Mac using a SATA to USB adapter like this one: Startech 2.5" SATA to USB adapter This power issue on the logic board could explain the systems slowness. You’ll need to make a good inspection of the logic board for corrosion or liquid damage.
