Sachin_B

Q: External USB Hard Drive not showing up, after Yosemite update

I recently updated my 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro (Late 2013) to OS X Yosemite (10.10).

 

I have a Western Digital My Passport (2TB) external hard drive and when I plug it in, I can hear the hard drive running but its not showing up in finder, or on the desktop, even though I have the option to show them enabled. The hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility.

 

I have a lot of stuff on this hard drive, so I would like to stay as far as possible from wiping it clean.

 

The external hard drive I'm using is formatted to NTFS (that could be the problem but not quite sure).

 

If anyone has any fixes, please let me know by replying to this thread.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 3:13 PM

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Q: External USB Hard Drive not showing up, after Yosemite update

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  • by DrJeff_92677,

    DrJeff_92677 DrJeff_92677 Jan 17, 2015 8:26 AM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Jan 17, 2015 8:26 AM in response to Sachin_B

    Ive used the FREE NTFS driver for Mac OS from here:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ntfsfree/reviews

     

    and the Tuxera Paid for version (very easy to install, and works with all OSX including Yosemite

     

    http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

     

    I have no problems with NTFS drives on OSX.

     

    After you install it, and look at System Preferences

     

     

    Click on the Tuxera Icon and you can change the settings

     

     

    I've run the free version, but not since just buying Tuxera. There are discount coupons for Tuxera just type in "Tuxera Coupon" in google and check them out. Don't click on a site, however, until you've installed some virus checking software. I use Avast and Avira for the Mac (Free Versions) and installed the associated Browser items in FireFox to indicate "safe sites" from those known to spread browser help objects, and other unwanted items.

     

     

    Then when you see a site after using Google Search, the ones with Green Checkmarks are presumably safe, so far so good.

    This is what shows in the browser with these add-in items.

     

    Click on the green arrow and see this

     

     

    Hope this helps.

    Jeff

  • by Terence80,

    Terence80 Terence80 Jan 25, 2015 6:29 PM in response to TACOHELLION
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 25, 2015 6:29 PM in response to TACOHELLION

    i have this issue also

  • by dave_westerham,

    dave_westerham dave_westerham Jan 26, 2015 10:56 AM in response to Terence80
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 10:56 AM in response to Terence80

    So have we established that Apple have butt-f*****d us?

     

    I have a Western Digital 2TB USB hard drive that I use to back up my MacBook Pro, but also use to store a huge library of RAW format photos from the past decade of travelling and another library of digitised family videos. Since upgrading (hah!) to Yosemite, nothing.

     

    Are they lost forever, or do I go out and buy a PC and give up the Apple experiment as a bad job?

  • by cmontumbleweed,

    cmontumbleweed cmontumbleweed Jan 27, 2015 10:00 PM in response to dave_westerham
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 10:00 PM in response to dave_westerham

    tried a bunch of other stuff in this forum that didn't work, so just wanted to let everyone know that this worked for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2NCRcylK0

     

    The video is pretty much unnecessary - just install the 3 free programs listed in the youtube description. Finally worked for me!

  • by Troy32323,

    Troy32323 Troy32323 Jan 28, 2015 4:42 PM in response to cmontumbleweed
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 4:42 PM in response to cmontumbleweed

    I finally gave up on my windows 7 computer.  Cannot even get it to boot up and tired of fixing the viruses.  I bought an IMAC and I am trying to down load all of my pics etc from the old hard drive. it is a sata drive from a Gateway.  I have it connect to the IMAC through the USB port.  Like everyone else it shows in disk utility but not in finder.  The thing I am questioning is if my drive is exfat. The IMAC show it as exfat in disk utility.  I thought the only ones having issues were NTFS formatted drives.  How can I confirm if it exfat and should I still be having the same issue?

  • by wscdancer,

    wscdancer wscdancer Jan 28, 2015 5:43 PM in response to Troy32323
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 5:43 PM in response to Troy32323

    The problem is NOT only with NTFS volumes.  I have the same problem with almost any USB-connected flash drive, including Apple iPod Shuffles (two of them, one of them bought brand new from the online Apple Store in the past month).  Sometimes they mount correctly, sometimes they don't.  When they don't, the only reliable way to get them to mount is to reboot the computer (mid-2011 iMac).  Makes me wonder if Apple hired some ex-Microsoft coders to work on the USB subsystem in OS X.

     

    A few minutes ago I upgraded to the latest 10.10.2 Yosemite.  Time will tell if the issue has been fixed yet.

  • by Troy32323,

    Troy32323 Troy32323 Jan 28, 2015 7:39 PM in response to wscdancer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 7:39 PM in response to wscdancer

    Thanks.  I just did the same update and no luck

  • by kr351,

    kr351 kr351 Jan 29, 2015 11:07 PM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 29, 2015 11:07 PM in response to Sachin_B

    I've had exactly the same problem. Plugged in my Seagate hard drive and isn't showing up. Tried everything (mounted, disk repairs, restart etc) but nothing has worked. I had this trouble with my college's Mac desktop that isn't on Yosemite so it may be my hard drive, however this isn't helpful a day after my college work was due in Hopefully Apple will find a solution to this problem soon!

  • by Andreas Yankopolus,

    Andreas Yankopolus Andreas Yankopolus Jan 30, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 2 (423 points)
    Apple Watch
    Jan 30, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Sachin_B

    This started happening to my brand-new rMBP a few days after getting it set up. I have a USB3 external HD for use as a Time Machine backup, and the computer now refuses to recognize its existence. The worst is when I don't unplug it before the computer goes to sleep—OS X complains about not unmounting the drive properly, and things degrade until I need to power cycle the machine, as it locks up while attempting to reboot. Absolutely pathetic—you'd think that the ability to recognize USB drives would be part of Apple's test procedure.

  • by Troy32323,

    Troy32323 Troy32323 Jan 30, 2015 8:39 PM in response to Andreas Yankopolus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2015 8:39 PM in response to Andreas Yankopolus

    I just spoke to apple service and the gentleman said it was the first time he received a call about any issue with Yosemite and external drives.  He is going to have a senior person call me back tomorrow.  I showed him this thread when he removed into my computer.

  • by the resister,

    the resister the resister Feb 3, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 3, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Sachin_B

    I had this problem with a brand new 5k iMac and brand new WD My Book Studio. Whether these steps will solve the problem for everyone I don't know but it solved it for me. Disk was seen by the system report in About this Mac but wouldn't mount. Steps

    1. Open Disk Utilities - The external Disk is seen by this app

    2. Ejected the disk through the button in utilities.

    3. Unplugged the disk from the USB connection

    4. Replugged it in again.

    5. Pressed the mount button on Utilities  and    it    mounted!

     

    I tried to reproduce this with my malfunctioning Iomega Time Machine drive but it keeps disconnecting and reconnecting. Anyway it worked with the new drive.

     

    Hope that helps some experiencing the same issue.

  • by wscdancer,

    wscdancer wscdancer Feb 3, 2015 2:11 PM in response to the resister
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 3, 2015 2:11 PM in response to the resister

    I just tried this with a shiny new Apple iPod Shuffle.  No luck.

     

    I also tried it with a Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS.  The "internal" flash memory in the GPS would not mount.  The "external" SDHC card in the slot on the side of the GPS mounted just fine (without having to do the Disk Utility eject/mount operation).  The "external" SDHC card in the slot on the side of the GPS does not always mount, but it seems to mount more reliably than the "internal" GPS flash memory..

     

    Note that both of these devices are flash memory, not rotating hard drives.  One of them is an Apple device.

     

    As far as I can tell, all of the supposed solutions posted on the discussion forums are just random luck.  Apple has screwed up the USB support in Yosemite and they need to fix it.

     

    The only reliable way I've found that enables all external USB devices to mount properly is to reboot the machine.  In my case, I never want to reboot my main machine, which is my iMac.  So, I usually reboot my Macbook Pro and connect the GPS to it so I can pull the track files off of it (those files are on the "internal" GPS flash memory).  So far, rebooting the machine restores proper USB functionality 100% of the time -- but only temporarily.

     

    Mid-2011 iMac and Early-2009 Macbook Pro, Yosemite 10.10.2 on both.

  • by Troy32323,

    Troy32323 Troy32323 Feb 3, 2015 7:15 PM in response to wscdancer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 3, 2015 7:15 PM in response to wscdancer

    So....  I found out that the computer I bought from Best buy was old stock updated with Yosemite.  I exchanged it and bought a new one that came with Yosemite.  It now recognizes some of the drives that it did not before.  I still cannot get it to mount my exfat drive.  I also cannot get it to recognize my Samsung Galaxy 3 phone at all.  Will not even show in disk utility

  • by Tilly111,

    Tilly111 Tilly111 Feb 6, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 6, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Sachin_B

    Same problem here. My Seagate Momentus 5400.6 worked perfectly well on my old 17" MacBookPro - Mavericks. The moment I went to new machine (15" MAcBook Pro Retina Display with Yosemite, external drive no longer recognised.

  • by msohni,

    msohni msohni Feb 17, 2015 9:10 AM in response to Sachin_B
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 17, 2015 9:10 AM in response to Sachin_B

    From the sound of this entire discussion, it appears that Yosemite has problems recognising external Windows-based filesystems connected through USB.

     

    I tried connecting a 320GB Western Digital "Passport" drive, formatted as FAT32.  The Finder reported the drive as unreadable, and offered to format it, eject it, or ignore the message.  I ignored, and Disk Utility saw the drive, but the volume was greyed out.  It was reported as "exFAT" which is wrong: it's FAT32, and had just passed chkdsk on a Windows 7 box, which reported it as FAT32.  It being completely mis-diagnosed in the first place, I was not surprised that verifying or repairing from Disk Utility failed.  Reboot did to help.

     

    Having googled around I found this http://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/2ehws5/os_x_1010_yosemite_beta_2_possible_b ug_fat32/ and did the following:

     

    jjp@Torus:/Volumes $ sudo su

    Password:

    sh-3.2# mkdir /Volumes/test          

    sh-3.2# mount_msdos /dev/disk#s# /Volumes/test     # replace "disk#s#" with the correct name as reported by Disk Utility

     

    To my surprise, this worked:  the drive showed up on the desktop and in the Finder sidebar and was usable in read-write mode.  Disk Utility, however, still had it greyed out.  There are other things wrong, too:  "ejecting" did not work (it reported the drive as being used), and after either "force ejecting" or manually unmounting

    with sh-3.2# umount /Volumes/test the icon remained on the desktop, though not in the Finder sidebar.

     

    It seems that even though the basic functionality of mounting a FAT32 seems to be OK, all the bells and whistles are still broken.

     

    This is not a trivial problem.  There are a myriad of cheap devices out there which have FAT32-formatted storage on them, whether it's memory sticks, flash cards or our cats' GPS trackers.  None of these can be naturally expected to work on this new £3400 computer without superuser hacking.  Honestly, come on, Apple!

     

    Yosemite 10.10.2 on Mac Pro (Late 2013).

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