exFAT drive won't mount on Mac, fine on Windows. fsck_exfat gives "resource busy"

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23 points

exFAT drive won't mount on Mac, fine on Windows. fsck_exfat gives "resource busy"

4TB external USB drive that reads / writes fine on Windows. It won't mount on Mac, and first aid via Disk Utility gives an error:

Filesystem check exit code is 1
Restoring the original state as found unmoutned
File system verify or repair failed (-69845)

Mounting via Disk Utility gives the error:

com.apple.DiskManagement error 0.

Booting into recovery mode, and running fsck_exfat -d diskxsx gives:

Can't open /dev/diskxsx: Resource Busy

Googling reveals similar problems but definitive answer that I can see? Any advice welcome.

Thanks!

Posted on Aug 30, 2020 5:52 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 30, 2020 6:13 PM in response to eludlow9876

Backup the data on the drive using Windows, then erase the drive using Disk Utility on a Mac. Erase the drive as GUID partition and exFAT. Windows may format the drive using larger block sizes that macOS does not understand.

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Answer 2

Sep 1, 2020 5:52 PM in response to eludlow9876

If you are also using Windows, then have Windows run a file system check on the external exFAT drive.

I can tell you that macOS tends to be very particular about drives and file systems. Unfortunately this behavior doesn't surprise me at all.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

251,409 points

Sep 1, 2020 6:41 AM in response to eludlow9876

Open Activity Monitor, is fsck already running?

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Answer 4

eludlow9876 Author

Level 1

23 points

Sep 1, 2020 1:05 AM in response to HWTech

thanks - happy to do that but was hoping there was a fix. The drive was originally formatted via Disk Utility with GUID partition and as ExFat, so just surprised it's borked itself within a few weeks!

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exFAT drive won't mount on Mac, fine on Windows. fsck_exfat gives "resource busy"

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