Wd External Hard Drive Not Working Mac

Posted By admin On 05.10.21

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Jul 01, 2012 Question: Q: iMac can't see my external hard drive I plug in a Toshiba 500 Gb External Hard drive and it doesn't show up on the desktop, in the finder window or in Disk Utility. It shows up in all those places on my work iMac and my son's laptop. I just got a new Mac and I can't see my external hard drive on my desktop like I'm used to seeing. How do I get it back? If your external hard drive icon is.

Dec 26, 2016 Under “File Explorer” open the drive: WD My Passport (or name you gave it) WD backup.swstor the name of your computer Volume Users (select your user) finally, you should find the picture folder with all your pictures.
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Nov 14, 2019 Apple (in the top toolbar menu) About This Mac Storage. See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report. Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop. It could be that your Mac already recognizes the device.

Most of the time, when you connect an external hard drive to your Mac’s USB port, you soon see it mount on the desktop. Apple likes to ensure these are easy to find, so they also appear in the Finder in the left-hand column under Devices, since Mac’s treat them the same way as another computer.

However, sometimes, an external hard drive doesn't show up. It’s annoying, especially when you need to transfer something right then. And besides, there can be a risk that data on the external USB pen, hard, or flash drive is corrupt, which means you can’t transfer what you need between devices at all.

How to fix external hard drive not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave issue? Solution 1: Check if the hard drive is properly plugged in. Since the connection between your Mac and external hard drives relies on cables, loose connections could be the cause that your external hard drive is not recognized by your Mac computer. Actually, My Passport for Mac hard drives are just like other external hard drives, which may not show up after connecting to a Mac. This article offers a full guide to help you fix the WD drive not showing up issue in different situations. External hard drives, thumb drives, USB drives, Flash memory cards, and devices like iPod are examples of storage devices that you can connect to your Mac using Thunderbolt, USB, or FireWire cables, or connect wirelessly using Bluetooth. Storage devices (such as external hard drives) can also be available on your network. Fix WD External Hard Drive Not Accessible with Light on Mac. To fix the problem on Mac is a little different from the solutions on Windows, follow the solutions below to solve the problem. Solution 1 Show the WD hard drive in the Finder and Desktop. If the light is blinking on Mac, that means the WD external hard drive is detected by macOS. To get ExFAT to work on Windows and Mac. Open up Disk Utility on Mac. Select your external drive on the left side pane. Select the top-most item bearing the name of the external drive, not any of the partitions listed below the name of the external drive. Click on the 'Erase' tab which is among the tabs on the top.

Corrupt data can be one reason your Mac won't recognize an external drive, but there are other reasons too. Let’s take a look why this is happening and how you can get an external drive to appear on your Mac and get recover data to access to your documents.

How to fix an external disk drive that won't show up on a Mac

Why an external disk drive is not showing up? There could be a few reasons why a USB flash drive isn’t making an appearance.

Open an External Drive Not Showing on Mac

Get a huge set of top utilities for troubleshooting external hard drives not mounting on a Mac

Start with the basics:

Check whether the drive is properly plugged in. It sounds obvious, but since this relies on a wire - either a USB cable or HDMI cable - if it’s not connected properly then it won’t appear on your desktop.
Faulty cable. Assuming it’s plugged in correctly, not wobbly or loose, the cable could be at fault. Try connecting the same device with a different cable.
Damaged USB or flash drive port. It could be a hardware issue with the Mac. If you’ve got another port, try connecting the device to that one.
Reboot your Mac. Sometimes, if a USB disk won't boot, the cause is macOS issue. Hopefully, some data damage that can be fixed by restarting. Choose the Apple menu > Restart. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh.
Incorrectly formatted drive. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. It could be that you are trying to connect something only fit to interact with Windows devices. If you’ve got a PC or laptop, it’s worth connecting and seeing if you can access the files through another device. The best way to look for an incorrectly formatted drive is to go to
Apple (in the top toolbar menu) > About This Mac > Storage.
See if the external drive shows up here. For more information, go to the same menu option, then select System Report.
Mac not formatted to display external drives on the desktop. It could be that your Mac already recognizes the device, but just isn’t showing its icon on the desktop screen. Even if that is the case, the drive will still appear in the left-hand column of the Finder menu under Devices. You should be able to access your drive that way, and, in the Finder menu under Preferences > General, you can check External Drives to ensure that from now on it shows up on your desktop too.
Reset NVRAM. To do this, shut down or restart your Mac, switch it back on and immediately press these four keys together for at least 20 seconds: Option, Command, P, and R. It should look as though your Mac has started again; if it has, release the keys when you hear the second startup chime. Hopefully, the hard drive has shown up now.
Check Apple’s Disk Utility to see if an external drive is showing up. Disk Utility is within System Preferences, or you can find it using Spotlight. If it is visible, then click the option to Mount, which should make it visible on the desktop and in the External Drives option in the Finder menu.

Unfortunately, if none of those options has worked and the external drive still isn’t visible, then it could have crashed, or be well and truly broken. But there might still be a way you can recover the data on the external drive.

Wd external hard drive not showing up mac

How to show connected devices in Finder

Go to the Finder menu and select Preferences (Cmd+comma).
From General tab tick External disks to ensure that from now on it shows on the desktop.

In the Sidebar tab you can choose which folders and devices will be shown in the left-hand column of the Finder window.

How to add cloud storages to Finder

You can also mount cloud storage as local drive on your Mac. By connecting Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon to your computer, you get more space for securely accessing and sharing files. For your ease, add cloud drives to Finder with CloudMounter app, so that you keep them close at hand. You can read detailed instructions on managing cloud storage as local drives here.

Repair the failed external drives with First Aid

If your drive is having problems, you can try to fix them yourself with First Aid and therefore get access to your files. First Aid tool will check the disk for errors and then attempt a repair as needed. It helps to verify and repair a range of issues related to startup HD and external drive problems. If you are able to fix the hard drive or SSD in your Mac (or an external drive) using Disk Utility you will hopefully be able to recover your files.

To run Fist Aid on an external hard drive: Microsoft office slow on mac.

Open Disk Utility. You can searching for it using Spotlight Search or via Finder > Application > Utility
Check on your external hard drive, click the First Aid tab and select Run to start running diagnostics.

If First Aid successful in fixing errors, the external drive should be available to mount. If the utility unable to repair issues, your drive truly is broken or formatted using a file system that the Mac cannot read - in this way we suggest you follow the next steps to recover data from a damaged disk drive.

How to recover data from a crashed drive

Thankfully, there is an app for that. Disk Drill is the world’s premier data recovery software for Mac OS X. Powerful enough to retrieve long-lost, mistakenly deleted files from Macs, external hard drives and USB drives and camera cards.

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With Setapp you get a pack of professional tools for file recovery and Mac maintenance.

An easy way to recover lost files on an external hard drive

Providing you already have Disk Drill Pro version, which you can get automatically by downloading from Setapp:

Connect your drive to the Mac.
Quit all other applications on the Mac, especially those that may be trying to access the external drive (e.g. iPhoto, Words)
Launch Disk Drill.
Click on the external drive that you are trying to recover files from. If it has partitions, you will see all of them. If, however, you still don’t see any volume to the external drive then you may need to try some of the steps above again or read the Disk Drill Scanning FAQs.
To avoid the external drive being accessed during the recovery process, click Extras next to the drive or drive partition or file, then select Remount Volume As Read Only. A padlock will appear, protecting the drive during the process.
Now click Rebuild (or Recover) next to the file(s) you are trying to recover. Once the scan is finished - it may take some time if the files are large - a list of files will appeal.
Next, click Mount Found Items as Disk button on the bottom-left below the scan results.
Disk Drill “strongly suggest saving the files to a different drive than the one you are trying to recover files from. Saving to the same drive substantially lowers your chances of recovery.”
A drive icon will appear, which once you double click will give you the option to open the files as you would do before they were lost. Drag them to another location, such as your desktop or a folder on your Mac.
Open the files to ensure they have been recovered properly and safely eject the external drive.

Disk Drill does have other ways to recover lost files but assuming there aren’t complications, this method is the most effective. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available from Setapp, along with dozens of Mac apps that will make your life easier. Never have to worry about a crashed or corrupted external drive again.

A few more tips on getting your files back

Macs and third-party apps that look after Macs, such as Disk Drill and iStat Menus come with a S.M.A.R.T. (also known as Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status monitor. If a SMART check reports errors, then it could mean the hard drive is at risk of failing completely. Within Disk Utility and Disk Drill, there are several solutions for this: Repair Disk Permissions and Repair Disk. If neither work, it’s recommended that you backup all of the data from the disk, erase, then run a SMART check again. The external hard drive should show up as Verified.
Partitions can get lost within hard drives, temporarily hiding all of the information contained within. Disk Drill can help to identify and restore this information.
Within Disk Drill, you can restore data when a hard drive is damaged or add formatting, which is also something Disk Utility can help with.
CleanMyMac, another useful app available from Setapp, can help you identify external hard drive errors and repair them. It is an essential tool worth trying when you’re having external hard drive difficulties.

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Alternative ways to recover data from an external hard drive

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) if your Mac shuts down when you plug in an external hard drive. Then use a different port to connect the external hard drive. If you’ve got a battery that you can’t remove:

Shut down and unplug the power adapter
Press Shift-Control-Option and the power button at the same time. Do this for 10 seconds
Release all keys
Plug the power adapter back in and switch your Mac back on

For Macs with removable batteries, you need to switch them off, remove the battery, then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. After that, put the battery back in, plug in the power adapter and switch the power on again.

What’s your file format? One reason your Mac isn’t recognizing the hard drive is the file format. Windows uses NTFS file formats, while Macs, up until the introduction of Sierra, have used HFS+. Now, Apple has introduced the Apple File System (APFS) for newer operating systems. It is possible to format a hard drive so it can be read on Mac and Windows computers, providing you format using exFAT. However, if you’re having problems accessing the files and the issue is due to formatting, you will need to connect it to a device it can be read on, and then format the files correctly for the computer you are going to use it on next.

How to make Ext2/Ext3 drives readable on Mac

The common issue is Ext2- and Ext3-formatted drives are not readable on macOS. There are two ways to access such external drives on your Mac – via Linux OS or FUSE system. The easiest would be installing Linux to a secondary drive or virtual machine.

If you go with Linux installation, dual boot your Mac with Linux on another drive and use FAT32 as a transfer intermediary. If you don’t have a drive to install Linux to, use virtual machine as an interface for it. Transferring can be done the same way – with FAT32, or via network.

Another option for reading Ext2/Ext3 disks is mounting disk with Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE). Basically, it works as an extra interface enabling file system access via specially installed modules. Here’s how to mount drives with FUSE:

Install FUSE for macOS or MacFUSE as well as fuse-ext2 module.
Use the following Terminal command to enable Disk Utility’s debug menu and see all partitions: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Attach your Ext2/Ext3 drive and locate the device name via Disk Utility.
In your user account, create a folder to be used as a mount point.
Use the following Terminal command to mount the drive as read-only: fuse-ext2 /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint
For write support, use the command: fuse-ext2 -o force /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/mountpoint

And that’s not the only case where Terminal helps you access external drive.

Employ the handy all-powerful Terminal, which always comes forward with solutions for difficult problems. Especially if System Information does recognize the USB or hard drive, but continues to hide it from you, disconnect the drive and try to find it using the Terminal, which you can find in Applications > Utilities.

Once in the Terminal, type in the command diskutil list
A list with information about volumes and drives should appear
Look for a section labelled /dev/disk_ (external, physical)
Make a note of the whole line after the word disk
Now put the following command into the Terminal diskutil info disk followed by the number or digits assigned to that disk
Now you should see detailed information about the drive, therefore confirming that your Mac can and does recognize it
Eject using the Terminal by entering the command diskutil eject disk followed by the number or digits assigned to that disk
Physically remove the disk from you Mac
Plug it back in and your Mac should recognize it

Console is also reliable when it comes to solving tricky problems, although it isn’t always that easy to use. You can find Console under Applications > Utilities > Console. Console shows if an external drive or any error is detected under the Errors and Faults tab. If no errors show up, then the problem is not caused by the device.

To sum up, there are lots of potential solutions for a Mac not reading an external hard drive. If we were to pick one, Disk Drill seems to be the most well-rounded, offering plenty of customizations and power in an easy-to-use interface. Disk Drill Pro recovery app is available via Setapp, along with 150+ Mac apps that strive to make your life much much easier. At the very least, you’ll never have to worry about a crashed or corrupted external drive ever again.

'My 1TB WD external hard drive is not working on my Windows 10 PC and I can do nothing to the drive since it fails to show up in This PC.
I've changed the USB port but it still not working.
I don't know what reasons have made the drive not responding, and neither I know any solutions. I've saved quite a lot of important files inside the drive. If you have any methods to fix my issue and make the WD external hard drive work again, please help me. Thank you.'

Though it's no longer a new problem that external hard drive fails to work or suddenly fail to show up in PC. But it's still a tough issue for ordinary users when their external hard drive, USB or SD card etc devices suddenly become unrecognized, not working or responding in PC. Here below, you'll find 1 quick fix and 4 methods to fix WD external hard drive not working issue. If your external hard drive or storage devices are having this issue, relax and just follow to get your problem fixed right here now.

Quick fix WD external hard drive not showing up/unrecognized/responding error

1. Click Start > Type: devmgmt.msc in the Search box and hit Enter.
2. Open Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
3. Right-click on the USB Root Hub > Select Properties.
4. Go to Power Management and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

After this, reboot PC and reconnect WD external hard drive to your PC, then you'll be able to use the drive again.
If this quick fix doesn't work, relax and just follow below-offered methods to repair not working WD external hard drive or devices now.

Fix WD external hard drive not recognized error

Here you have two methods to follow and fix WD external hard drive not recognized or undetectable error in Windows 10/8/7:

Method 1. Reboot PC into Safe Mode to make WD external hard drive recognizable

Go to Setting > Update & security.
Tab on Recovery > Advanced Startup > Restart now.
PC will automatically boot into another Startup Settings screen.
Press F4 to initiate PC reboot into Safe Mode.
Then check whether the WD external hard disk can be detected or not.

Method 2. Change drive letter to make unrecognized WD external hard drive detectable

The other way is to change the drive letter with Disk Management tool so to make unrecognized or undetectable WD external hard drive to show up in PC:

Right-click on This PC/My Computer > Select Manage.
Go Disk Management > Find your external hard drive and right click it by choosing Change Drive Letter and Path..
Assign the drive with a new letter that doesn't exist in your PC and mark the Partition as Active.
Click OK.
Restart PC and your External hard drive will show up and work again.

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Fix WD external hard drive not working/responding issue

When WD external hard drive, USB or other brands of storage devices are not working or not responding to any operations in your PC, don't worry. You can follow below-offered methods to get problems fixed right now:

Method 1. Update WD external hard drive driver to make it work

1. Click on Start > Type: devmgmt.msc in Search to open Device Manager by hitting Enter.
2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click every USB device found there and select Uninstall.
3. Then check out whether any devices show up as unrecognized or not:

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If WD external hard drive shows unrecognized, go to drivers tab and delete/uninstall the driver; Then check out whether the external hard drive shows up in My Computer/My PC or not.
If it doesn't show up, reboot or restart PC;
If it shows up but disappears later, repeat above steps and go to Disk Management, change the drive letter of your WD external hard drive and reconnect it to PC to let PC detect it again.

Method 2. Repair corrupted system files/bad sectors on not working WD external hard drive

Corrupted system files or bad sectors on WD external hard drive or other storage devices would block your device from working or responding in Windows PC.

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Professional partition manager software from EaseUS will repair bad sectors and fix corrupted system files to make your WD external hard drive work again. Free download, install it and follow below guide steps to fix bad sectors and corrupted system files on your drive now:

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Step 1: Open EaseUS Partition Master on your computer. Then locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose 'Check File System'.

Step 2: In the Check File System window, keep the 'Try to fix errors if found' option selected and click 'Start'.

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Step 3: The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it has completed, click 'Finish'.

Extra Tip: WD external hard drive recovery

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After fixing not working external hard drive on your Windows PC, you may continue using it for storing fancy data again.
But if you lost files or valuable data on the drive, don't worry. Professional WD external hard drive recovery solution offered by EaseUS hard drive recovery software is what you exactly need. It will simply restore lost files from WD external hard drive within 3 simple steps on Windows 10/8/7 etc PC.
If you lost files after fixing WD external hard drive not working issue or cannot access saved data in your storage devices, just free download EaseUS hard drive recovery software and let it help now.

Summary:This article will show you 8 solutions to troubleshoot the external hard drive not mounting in macOS Big Sur/Catalina/Mojave error and how to recover lost data from unmountable external hard drives with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

By Eileen | Posted to Home > Mac Data Recovery Tips, updated on May 11th, 2021 |

Normally, when you plug in an external hard drive to Macs, you'll see it mounted on the desktop, in Finder and in Disk Utility. Then you can read, edit, copy and delete files on the mounted external hard drive. However, if you areunable to mount external hard drives or it reminds you with the 'com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error' message, you cannot access your important data on this drive at all. The worst thing is that you don't even have any data backup when your external hard drive is unmountable. But now you can ease your mind, in this page, you will see 8 feasible solutions that you can try to make the external hard drive mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/Sierra.

Table of contents: 1. How to recover lost data if Mac won't boot after Mojave update?; 2. Read more about Mounting a disk

Wd External Hard Drive Not Readable Mac

How to fix external hard drive not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave issue?

Solution 1: Check if the hard drive is properly plugged in.

Since the connection between your Mac and external hard drives relies on cables, loose connections could be the cause that your external hard drive is not recognized by your Mac computer.

If the unstable connection is the case, your external hard drive would not be mounted even with a slight disturbance. Sometimes the cable itself will become hot because of a faulty connection. Therefore, you need to make sure that the connection, i.e. the USB cable, is in good condition.

Solution 2: Check if the USB port/USB hub is unmatchable, damaged or lack of power.

If your external hard drive or USB flash drive is not mounted on Mac, try plugging it into another USB port or a USB hub. That's because there're USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports and they have some differences: USB 3.0 has higher transfer rates, provides more power, more bandwidth, etc. than USB 2.0. As you can see, insufficient power supply or damaged USB ports could also lead to external hard drives not mounting in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra.

To check this error, you can unplug the problematic external hard drive and plug a functional external hard drive into this USB port to see if it can be mounted normally.

Solution 3: Check if your Mac is set to show mounted drives on the desktop.

It's also possible that your Mac has alreadyrecognized the external hard drive butnot showing up on Mac desktop or Finder. Under such circumstance, you should go to Finder > Preferences > General and make sure the 'External disks' option is ticked. Then you'll see the external hard drive mounted on the desktop.

You can also set your Mac to show external hard drives in Finder. Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and make sure the 'External disks' option under 'Locations' is ticked.

Solution 4: Check if the external hard drive is NTFS formatted.

NTFS (New Technology File System) is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft. However, for some reasons, macOS comes with read-only support for NTFS; its disabled-by-default write support for NTFS is unstable. Even though the NTFS formatted external hard drive can show up in Disk Utility, external hard drives might not be mounting as normal.

You can go to Disk Utility and check the file system of the external hard drive is NTFS or not, if this is the case, you can back up the files on the NTFS external hard drive and format it to Mac supported file systems (APFS, HFS+ or HFS) or file systems supported by both Windows and Mac, like FAT32 and exFAT.

Nevertheless, the best phenomenon is that you can read and write NTFS both on Macs and on Windows without fuss. So, a good NTFS for Mac application will enable you to write NTFS external hard drives on macOS without reformatting.

Solution 5: Check if the external hard drive is mountable in Disk Utility.

You can check if your external hard drive is mounting in Disk Utility. If your external hard drive appears there but is not mounted, you can click the Mount icon then the external hard drive will be mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave.

However, if the external hard drive appears in Disk Utility but is unmountable or no volumes of that external drive listed, you got both good news and bad news. Good news is that showing the external hard drive in Disk Utility means the drive has no hardware problem, while the bad news is that the file system of this drive probably is corrupted.

But don't worry, macOS has a built-in repair tool, called First Aid, to fix minor disk errors. You can try to fix the external hard drive not mounting issue with this useful program. Just go to Utilities > Disk Utility and click First Aid.

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Solution 6: Fix the unmountable external hard drive with Terminal.

If your external hard drive can't be recognized by your Mac and First Aid failed to repair it, you can try to remount via Terminal by following the steps carefully as below:

1. Go to Applications > Utility > Terminal.

2. Type in diskutil list. Look for the section labeled /dev/disk_ (external, physical), remember the disk number.

3. Type indiskutil info disk_. Replace '_' with your external disk number. This is to check if your system recognizes this drive.

4. Once confirmed, type in diskutil eject disk_ to eject the external drive.

5. Physically remove the external drive and then re-plug it. Hopefully, your external hard drive will be mounted in macOS Catalina/Mojave.

Solution 7: Check if the external hard drive is corrupted.

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If unfortunately, none of the above solutions worked, it's very likely that the files system of the external hard drive is corrupted or damaged too seriously to be recognized by macOS Catalina/Mojave. It could be the result of file system broken, virus attacks, improper ejection, etc. And if you have no important files on this drive, you can directly assign a new file system for this external hard drive by reformatting.

• How to format external hard drives on Mac?

Solution 8: Recover lost data and reformat the unmountable external hard drive.

But what if you have invaluable data that you don't want to lose on this inaccessible external hard drive? In this case, recovering data from this drive with professional data recovery software, such asiBoysoft Mac Data Recovery, would be your access to this unmountable external hard drive.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is able to recover lost data fromnot mounted external hard drives in macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra,recover lost data from corrupted external APFS drives,recover lost data from unreadable external hard drives,recover deleted/lost data from APFS drives, and recover lost data from formatted APFS files, etc.

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on Mac.

Step 2: Launch this program. Select the unmountable hard drive and click 'Next'. The program will start scanning this drive for lost files.

Step 3: After the scanning process finishes, you can double click the found files and preview them.

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Step 4: Choose what you want to get back and click 'Recover'.

Step 5: Go through the recovered files and make sure your desired files are recovered from this external hard drive successfully.

If, unfortunately, your data lost from external hard drive in macOS Catalina/Mojave, whether the disk was formatted accidentally or files were deleted mistakenly, you can recover lost data from unmountable hard drive with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. But compared with data recovery software, the best way to escape from data loss is to back up your files on a regular basis.