"The Disk You Inserted Was Not readable by this computer" error

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"The Disk You Inserted Was Not readable by this computer" error

I need some help.

I got rid of this faulty external hard drive years ago. Now all in a sudden, this error "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" kept popping up.

I tried to use Disk Utility to eject the hard drive. But since the hard drive was not there in the first place, it can not be rejected.

This is my screenshot:

So this very annoying error keeps popping up.

I restarted my Mac Nth times, did everything I could find online. None of these seem to work.

Is there anyway to resolve this?

Oh by the way, stay away from WD hard drives. I bought 2 of them. One I threw out of the window since it did not work. The other I had to return as it refused to mount.

Many thanks to your help in advance.

iMac Pro

Posted on Jun 10, 2020 12:33 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,656 points

Jun 10, 2020 1:15 AM in response to gujingc

When you plug a disk into a mac the OS it gives it an identifier, disk4s1 for example as you have, this is not unique to that disk, so if you were to eject that disk and insert another the mac will probably give it the identifier disk4s1.

So ignore any thoughts that it is identifying a disk you got rid of years ago.

When you inserted the new faulty drive the mac must have give it the identifier disk4s1.

If you open Terminal and type in

diskutil list

press Return

you will see what identifiers have been given to your various disks.

My guess is because you just disconnected the drive without going through the usual

procedures to disconnect a drive, its identity has been left in some cache files.

Have tried starting up in Safe Mode,

How to use safe mode on your Mac – Apple Support

Safe Mode takes along time to boot up, so be patient.

Restart normally.

Try opening Disk Utility and see if disk4s1 still appears.

If that doesn't clear it then try this,

Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac – Apple Support

And then try,

How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,656 points

Jun 10, 2020 12:47 AM in response to gujingc

What do you mean you got rid of it, surely it must be connected to your mac for it to show up at all.

If you highlight disk4s1 in the left column in Disk Utility do you get the option to Mount it.

Have you tried clicking on Initialise. This will reformat the drive and wipe any data on it.

I think that there are millions of WD drives in existence your experience of 2 is hardly representative.

I have one in my mac the drive is about 8 years old.

When you buy drives for your mac do not use the software that comes with them, this usually interferes

with the operating systems management of the disk. When first plugging in a new HD open Disk Utility

and format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on a GUID Partition Map.

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Answer 3

gujingc Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 10, 2020 12:56 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Eau, Thank you for the very quick reply.

This is what I mean by "I got rid of it"

The drive highlighted is long gone. It is not connected to my Mac. It was a faulty drive that I stopped using. Disconnected it and I could not even find it anywhere.

Last week, I bought a new WD drive and tried to mount it. Yes I tried to click on Erase, and format it with a GUID Partition Map. Guess what, the new WD drive suddenly disappeared, as the Mac tells me the operation to initiate the new drive failed.

After dropping it off at UPS for a return, suddenly this error message starts to pop up. The size meta suggests this is for another WD drive that has not been disconnected from this Mac for at least 3 years. And I clicked on Eject, it does not work. Of course I could not mount or initialize since the physical drive is not even with the mac.

Is there a way to tell Mac to stop looking for that disl? I tried to restart, log out then log in, it seems the drive is somehow stuck with the memory of Mac.

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Answer 4

gujingc Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 10, 2020 11:01 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Thank you. Let me try.

The diskspace of this phantom drive is 160G which is the size of the drive I discarded years ago. Let me follow your steps.

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"The Disk You Inserted Was Not readable by this computer" error

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