i have a firewire ssd in a caddy that works fine .... when i remove the ssd and insert into usb caddy it wont mount.... it always worked with usb until after i put it in the firewire caddy. i do this kind of thing all the time and never a p. Any ideas?? Running latest Catalina Thanks Gaz
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15
More details are needed such as what make & model of Firewire drive/enclosure? Same with the physical SSD you removed from it? And the make/model of the USB enclosure? Not all USB to SATA Adapters, drive docks, or enclosures are compatible with all SSDs.
Were you using any proprietary software to manage the Firewire SSD? If so and the SSD supports hardware encryption, then the SSD may be encrypted so it won't be visible to the system. You would need to use the proprietary software to disable any hardware encryption.
What is the file system and partition style used on the SSD?
Is it possible the SSD wasn't properly ejected the last time it was connected to the Mac? A lot of forum posts here where people have trouble seeing an improperly ejected drive. I know some of my external drives take forever to fully unmount so I wait at least a minute now since macOS no longer notifies me it is safe to disconnect the drive.
There are no SSD devices that are inherently FireWire. So what you have is likely a SATA SSD in a firewire enclosure.
What you said is you moved this device to your USB enclosure, and it is no longer working.
Does the drive show up in Disk Utility? does it have a reasonable, non-Zero size/capacity? can you perform a disk repair/First Aid?
In the upper left of the Disk Utility pane, there is a tiny Menu. Choose "Devices".
Only then you have access to the Physical device, by immutable device-name. From there, ask Disk Utility to ERASE the DEVICE. Once completed, the device can be moved and used wherever you like, free of the WD driver that is messing you up.
Thanks for getting back - I have the 240g SanDisk Ultra II SSD in a WD Firewire enclosure (one with the original HD removed) - it was previously working fine in a USB enclosure - The brand i don't know... it was just a third party usb 2 caddy - have tried 2 different usb2 caddies and an icybox usbc3 the disk comes up as The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer. initialise ignore eject - I have been pressing ignore - disk again works fine when put back in firewire enclosure...if I go to drive utility the disk can be seen but is coming up 240g unformatted - after performing repair it says disk is ok - it is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - it was reformatted originally in one of the usb2 caddy and used solely with Adobe Premiere 2020 in the usb caddy - I transferred to the firewire enclosure to improve performance - Ah - ive just noticed this - it has a wd rom? within the wd enclosure - see screenshot - its the pink highlighted one - it may be something to do with this?? Thanks again
Thanks for getting back - please see post above - most grateful
FireWire ssd not working in usb c caddy
