How to Access Other Volumes on Mac

If you've ever plugged in an external drive, partitioned your internal disk, or noticed unfamiliar icons appearing in Finder, you've encountered volumes on macOS. Knowing how to navigate between them is a fundamental skill — and one that becomes increasingly relevant as your storage setup grows more complex.

What Is a Volume on a Mac?

A volume is a formatted, mountable storage unit that macOS treats as a distinct location for files. It's not the same as a physical drive. A single physical drive can contain multiple volumes, and a single volume can span multiple drives in certain configurations.

Common examples of volumes you might encounter:

• Your main macOS startup volume (usually named "Macintosh HD")
• A Data volume — part of macOS's APFS container system, which splits the startup disk into two linked volumes automatically
• External drives — USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire devices formatted as one or more volumes
• Disk images (.dmg files) that mount as temporary volumes when opened
• Network volumes — shared folders from another Mac, NAS device, or server
• Boot Camp partitions — Windows volumes created alongside macOS on Intel Macs

Understanding which type of volume you're dealing with shapes how you access and interact with it.

How macOS Organizes Volumes With APFS

Since macOS High Sierra, Apple has used APFS (Apple File System) as the default format for SSDs. APFS introduces the concept of containers — a pool of storage shared across multiple volumes on the same physical drive.

This matters practically: when you look at your internal drive in Disk Utility, you'll likely see a container with at least two volumes inside it — Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data. These work together to run your system but appear as a single unified location to you in Finder. You don't need to navigate between them manually under normal use.

Additional APFS volumes can be created within the same container, and each gets its own name and mount point in the filesystem.

Accessing Volumes Through Finder 🖥️

The most straightforward way to browse volumes on a Mac:

1. Sidebar in Finder Open a Finder window and look at the left sidebar under the Locations section. Mounted volumes — including external drives, disk images, and network shares — appear here automatically once connected or mounted.

If you don't see the Locations section:

• Go to Finder → Preferences (or Settings in macOS Ventura and later) → Sidebar
• Check the boxes for "External disks," "CDs, DVDs, and iOS Devices," and "Connected servers"

2. Desktop Icons Finder can also display volume icons directly on your desktop. Enable this under Finder → Preferences/Settings → General, then check the types of drives you want visible.

3. The /Volumes Directory Every mounted volume on macOS lives under the path /Volumes/ in the file system. You can navigate here directly using Finder → Go → Go to Folder (Shift+Command+G), then type /Volumes. This shows every currently mounted volume, including ones that may not appear prominently in the sidebar.

Accessing Volumes via Terminal

For users comfortable with the command line, Terminal gives complete visibility:

ls /Volumes 

This lists every mounted volume by name. You can then navigate into any volume with standard cd commands:

cd /Volumes/MyExternalDrive 

This is particularly useful for scripting, accessing volumes with unusual names, or troubleshooting mount issues where a volume appears in /Volumes but not in Finder.

Mounting and Unmounting Volumes with Disk Utility 🔧

Disk Utility (found in Applications → Utilities) gives you direct control over volumes:

• View all connected drives and their volumes in the left panel
• Mount a volume that's connected but not currently accessible — select it and click Mount
• Unmount a volume safely before disconnecting a drive
• Get Info on any volume to see format, capacity, and mount point

If a volume appears grayed out in Disk Utility, it's present but not mounted. Clicking Mount makes it accessible to Finder and your apps.

Connecting to Network Volumes

Network volumes work differently from local ones but follow the same access model once connected.

To mount a network volume:

• Finder → Go → Connect to Server (Command+K)
• Enter the server address (e.g., smb://192.168.1.10/ShareName for SMB, or afp:// for older AFP shares)
• Authenticate if required

Once connected, the network volume appears in Finder's sidebar under Locations and in /Volumes just like a local drive.

Variables That Affect Your Experience

How smoothly you can access other volumes depends on several factors that vary by setup:

NTFS-formatted drives (common with Windows-formatted externals) deserve a specific mention: macOS can read them natively but cannot write to them without third-party drivers. If you're seeing a volume you can browse but not modify, this is frequently why.

When a Volume Doesn't Appear

If an expected volume isn't showing up:

• Check whether the drive is physically connected and powered
• Open Disk Utility to see if the volume is recognized but unmounted
• Verify Finder sidebar settings haven't hidden the Locations section
• Run First Aid in Disk Utility if a volume appears but won't mount — this can resolve minor filesystem errors

The right approach to navigating and managing volumes depends heavily on what you're working with — whether that's a simple external backup drive, a partitioned internal disk with multiple operating systems, or a shared network drive across devices. Each scenario uses the same underlying tools, but the specific steps, permissions, and format considerations differ enough that your own setup is the piece that determines what applies.