An external disk refuses to mount, com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868.

Force quitting fsck_ext just worked for me. I think like others have said if I would have waited long enough with it plugged in I might have seen it after if finishes the fsck checks and mounts.

APPLE if you ever read these... maybe the work that "fsck_ext" is doing could be bubbled to the users to say "Be patient your hard drive is being checked for errors..." and a progress bar if possible even just the spinny kind on that dialog would help. Let us know what the machine is doing. I realize that it was most likely caused by me pulling the plug instead of hitting eject (I would love to hear a quick explain on why that works on windows but not macs). Sad fact is that I bet a lot of people thought they had a failed drive as it looks to be faulty when you plug it in. I was certainly relieved to see the folders appear again. As soon as it showed up I ran disk first aid to make sure all was good and will work hard on not yanking that cable. Thanks again to all you good folks sharing the answers to the hard questions!

Catalina doesn't recognize the exFAT format anymore.

I had to sacrifice my old backups on my 1TB external HD, and erased it using disk utility. I used the recommended format and it works now. Good think i still have my other external HD that had the same info which I connected to my old laptop.

It's frustrating indeed but that was the only solution that worked for me.

Hello mhicks,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand from the information you provided that you're unable mount an external drive; I'd like to help.

First, make sure your drive is formatted so it can be read by macOS:

File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac

The following support article provides some troubleshooting steps to try for external drive issues:

Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

Hope this helps.

Best Regards.

com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868

I had this problem with an external USB drive. For me this problem occurred whilst attempting to create a boot device (disk) for ubuntu using the Etcher app. The process had completed successfully it rendered the device unusable as it would not mount and was not recognised by the system.

Try this, it worked for me:

1. With the device (disk) inserted, open Utilities → Disk Utility. You will see the disk shown as /dev/diskxax (x=numeric a=alpha) i.e. /dev/disk5s2
2. Click on View (top left of window) and select “Show all devices” from the drop-down. The name of the actual physical device will be shown (i.e. “ScanDisk Cruzer Blade... or whatever your device is).
3. The /dev/diskxax is shown under the name of the physical disk. It will present as faded (grayed out) text. It will not be mounted.
4. Select the physical disk. It will present in the main box with a red bar with the legend underneath the bar in small letters with the size of the drive.
5. Select “Erase” from the options at the top of the Disk Utility window.
6. Enter the desired name for the device and select your desired filesystem.
7. Click on “Erase” and then select “Show details”.
8. Once the erase and format of the disk is completed the disk will present as mounted and the /dev/diskxax will be shown in a normal state (i.e. not grayed out).
9. The device is now ready for use.

I found a solution on Medium that solved the problem! The article is in Mandarin so I'll type the solution below.

I had the same problem, I'm using a Lacie 5TB external drive. I accidently removed it from my macbook (Catalina) without ejecting it, and it stopped mounting. It shows the grey icon in the Disk Utilities, but my macbook just couldn't read it.

1. Open your Terminal application. You can find it in your Application folder.
2. Type in: ps aux | grep fsck (and then press enter)
3. If you see something like this :

root 2398 2.6 0.1 4352836 11660 ?? Us 10:02 0:02.31 /System/Library/Filesystems/exfat.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_exfat -y -x /dev/rdisk3s2

• It means that rdisk3s2 is now occupied by the fsck_exfat command, so the status is busy and cannot be mounted.

4.Type in: sudo kill -9 {pid}

• {pid} means the number on your command results, in this case it will be 2398 (I didn't really understand this part so I just typed in sudo kill -9 {pid}, and it showed that I needed to enter a password that I had no idea of, I then typed in again sudo kill -9 2398, it still showed that I needed password. After around 3 minutes, suddenly my external hard drive works again )

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Hope this helps!

Hey Guys,

Its a simple fix !!!

I faced the similar issue with my Lacie 4tb external hardrive. External disk refuses to mount, com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error.

this mostly happens when the disk is not ejected and shuts abruptly.

I was freaked out when it happened because i was about to lose 4TB data but fortunately my patience worked the best for me.

1. Yes !!! its just Patience !!! If that error shows disconnect the disk from the macbook/imac and connect it after 10 secs.
2. This time just open the disk utility and make sure the drive is visible (but you wont be able to access it because it is not mounted).
3. ***Very Important - Please let the harddrive be, dont attempt to mount it, partition it or anything.
4. The disk and the mac will do its job and mount it once it sorts itself. More the data on the drive more time it takes. Mine was 4TB filled and it took about 30 mins and it just started showed under location and disk utility to access.

So the main key here is to be Patient. Best is to connect it and get back to some other work or better sleep :D . Waiting in front of the screen makes you really anxious and fiddling with fixes might just make it worse.

Hope it helps you guys.

(P.S This works when the disk is visible in the disk utility. Not too sure when it dsnt show up.)

I have had the same problem, I've tried all the suggested methods, NOTHING WORKED! It finally worked by doing the followings:

• Finder, Applications, Disk Utility, Highlight the External Disk even if it's color-faded, click on First Aid, wait to finish, click on mount. AND VOILÁ

If it worked for me it must work for everyone else!

I've been having this same problem lately. Some times it works and some times it doesn't. And I've got the highest spec 16 inch Macbook Pro available (yes everything including hard drive spec'd out to the max)

The external USB hard drives (SSD and non SSD) and USB thumb drives I'm trying to mount are varying between exFAT, MacOS Journaled, FAT, AFS. I don't have NTFS formatted drives. And not a single hard drive or USB stick or SD card will mount. At all.

Below is a summary of things that didn't work for me, and things that I thought worked.

Here are things that didn't work:

• Using Terminal or Activity monitor to find fsck_exfat or hfs or any variant of it and killing the process: This didn't work because these processes were not running, and wouldn't show on any of the tabs in Activity Monitor, nor could I find the PID or process of it using Terminal.
• Free Version of Microsoft Tuxera NTFS - didn't work
• Free Version of Paragon NTFS for Mac - more on the Paid version below
• Relaunching Finder by killing it: nothing happened.
• Using diskutility to run Firstaid or even Format and Erasing a drive - tried this on a couple of drives i was okay to sacrifice the data on... and nothing.

Things I think contributing to the issue:

• Sophos Antivirus. As pointed out by someone this could be the root of it. Sophos also plays havoc with Dropbox/GDrive/OneDrive finder mini status icons, but I digress. Unfortunately I can't turn Sophos off, as it's a company owned machine, and despite me having sudo/admin access I've been told off before for disabling/removing it.

What i think worked:

• Installing a paid version of Paragon NTFS for Mac. I had the license on an older machine, had to use it a couple of times when using other colleague's drives that came NTFS formatted. And i had only used the free version to see if it fixes this issue. I added the license into the free version, restarted and voila! i could access all kinds of drives! exFAT, Mac OS Journeled etc etc.
• Restarting the machine. Maybe Paragon NTFS did nothing? and maybe it was the restart. Though i restarted a few times before this, and nothing happened before. It's hard to say.
• Waiting it out. As it has been suggested a few times on this thread, maybe it was the fact that it so happened that my drive was plugged in for a long time and after installing Paragon NTFS and restarting that it decided to work? it's hard to say.

This has happened 3 to 4 times for the last 4 or 5 months. And i keep googling for answers and come to this thread all the time. Keep trying every single suggestion and meet dead ends. But something i do fixes it and on i go.

I hope someone can actually get to the bottom of it and provide a definite solution, and maybe the cause of it - so we know what to watch out for.

I think i have stumbled upon a solution. It's not ideal, but this is what i found to work consistantly.

1. > Logout
2. Log back in

thats. it!

If that doesn't work, try to shutdown and then start again. But for me just logging out and logging back in seems to have done the trick.

It's super annoying to do every-time i need to connect a device. but for now it seems to have worked.

I'm having the same issue and I've tried everything. I have a WD 14TB drive with original RAW files for our photo studio and we can't access them. Everything worked fine and then two days ago the MAC will not recognize external drives.

• Did reboot
• did reboot with disconnecting power
• Tried to mount through MAC and WD utilities.
• Disk Utility sees the disk and running a Disk Check / First Aid it comes back good
• 
  
• 
  

Suddenly with no reason MyBook Duo 16TB does not mount anymore.

Disk Status from WD Utilities seems fine, but does not auto mount anymore, if I try manually get this error:

Could not mount “disk3s2”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868.

Attached status. There is no disk check in progress, I waited the full night. What it can be?

I have a WS Passport 1TB that macOS won't mount my Time Machine volume; Disk Utility reports

Could not mount “Time Machine”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930872.)

I'm on a MBP running Catalina 10. I 15.7. I rebooted and it still won't mount.

I tried to reformat it but that also fails trying to mount; first aid also fails (disenter error -119930872 again; see screen shot attachment)

This external disk mounts fine on a different Big Sur MBP.

I almost cried when this just happen to me on Sandisk 1TB SSD (only a week old).

Fortunately I have manage to Mount the disk again without losing any data.

Open Activity Monitor > highlight Disk and search for fsck > Double click fsck > click Quit > choose Force Quit, the external drive immediately appeared on the desktop with full access to all files 😮‍💨

I eject the disk correctly each time yet have found I need to complete this action to access the disk each time I connect it.

identical case following the OS update (Mac Big Sur version 11.5.2 , the external USB disk appears to be detected at the hardware layer but indicates incompatibility, disk aren't mount. issu to solve the case or just a downgrad OS ?

disk management caption

information system

If your drive has an activity indicator, you could probably notice that it's busy while connected, but not able to mount.

This means that an fsck command is run on it, checking for errors. This is not a specific Catalina issue. Just be patient or kill fsck, say, from 'top' console command