External Hard Drive Missing After Big Sur Download

Anthony, have you looked at the threads on this topic? There are various things that have worked for people, but it seems as if there is no coherent solution across platforms - it's discouraging. Seems to be quite random, but perhaps one of them will work for you? Good luck.

I cannot believe that we do not have the option to go back to Catalina. I have told ALL of my associates, freinds, colleague and people I meet about the terrible problems with Big Sur. That was my plan. Now I will have to take my machine to my tech specialist. There must be a work around.

This has been extremely painful.... Excessive forsure but this experience has been more then enough to turn me off from apple.. Which i have been with for 13+ years .... You have destroyed workflow for back to back days now... NO WORDS TO EXPRESS

georgiosh - My thoughts exactly. This is known and being ignored. Surprised tech writers are not on the story.

I too want to submit a written complaint. How does one do so? Everyone who has posted here should do so.

My time machine drive can't be seen since big sur. I have tried everything that has been mentioned. Hours and hours of restarting machine, etc. It is seen fine on my older mac book air. This one was fine until big sur.

Help

I remember the days when a Mac could read any hard drive format and you certainly would not need to jump through your own butt to get it to work. That was one of the things we used to wave in the face of the PC lovers. Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave.

So now if we can get our external drives to be recognized we have to. say goodbye to our backed up data? I'm not sure even Microsoft would say such a thing. I have not tried it but I'm guessing it is impossible to roll back to an earlier Mac OS that actually worked?

Hey Apple any plans to fix this problem? Do I need to start telling friends and family they might as well buy a Windows machine?

Thor62 wrote:

I remember the days when a Mac could read any hard drive format and you certainly would not need to jump through your own butt to get it to work.

Do I need to start telling friends and family they might as well buy a Windows machine?

If your friends and family can't afford the latest Apple devices then yes because apple care won't cover it.

If you live outside the US Apple is obliged to repair any issues caused by an update or upgrade (especially in th EU), but dont be surprised if your told it was your cats fault and you need to replace a battery or something.

GavrielTech wrote:

"If your friends and family can't afford the latest Apple devices then yes because apple care won't cover it.

If you live outside the US Apple is obliged to repair any issues caused by an update or upgrade (especially in th EU), but dont be surprised if your told it was your cats fault and you need to replace a battery or something."

Epiphany response: Ha! They won't even ANSWER US to blame the cat. It is pure negligence disrespect and hubris. So insulting. The EU is correct in forcing such laws. No time to look at Reddit but this MUST be a discussion everywhere.

Helpfull button won't function in this thread? Why not? Thanks for your post. Sounds incredibly beyond my abilities. BTW just found my old Time Machine. It will not mount. Never even asked to enter a product key. Beyond awful.Ne

GavrielTech

tnx much for posting for history's sake :) Yeah for me this is way advanced tech. I am a simple scholar/writer/researcher. My needs are pretty basic. That Apple would fail in such a major way as to affect my pretty paltry needs is unspeakable and as I have said elsewhere morally and business model bankrupt.. and now to ignore the problem. ???? Well i see no further need of this sexy Mac machine. Again tnx for posting a solution, Forums has disabled my ability to respond with a simple "helpful" and I wonder why??/

Epiphany-uc wrote:

GavrielTech

Forums has disabled my ability to respond with a simple "helpful" and I wonder why??/

You need to ask Apple about that, its a serious responsibility when Apple File System (APFS) is a proprietary file system,

My method is just one way I learned from others, there may be more unknown methods.

Guys, Don’t waste your time here, Apple just simply stop support NTSF format in purpose when you upgrade to Big Sur, No way you can find a way to make it work, Unless someone in Apple have conscience, finds that he has done something wrong...,.But I guess it won’t be happen.....

@ T1Nvan--You say "didn't realize" well this is not on US! It's on Apple to let us know what we need to do to make our OS function as it ought to function! You are a generous soul! And thanks for the tips!

Not a solution, this is done by design, AFPS is apple's own file structure system...Recovery developers like Diskwarrior stated that Apple is not sharing codes with them so they can not recover Catalina or Bigsur drives, only Carbon Copy Cloner can since that developer worked foe Apple once, the rest offering help are online services requiring users to upload their hard drive to the World Wide Web and so dont count on this to be 100% private.

The idea that EFI firmware is quietly dropped during Catalina or Big Sur updates is absurd,

During a number of updates I lost access to internal drives and recovered them by using the latest system on devices apple supports, all which happen to be AFPS drives,

-I used an iPad Pro to see if I can get a drive I lost access to via Catalina and it worked, it was all EFI issues with an older MacBook Pro.

You may allege this is forced obsoletion, extortion etc but until there is a logical explanation and evidence your either going to spend ages trying to get a 3+ year older Mac working normally or buy a new one.

The solution is not to update or upgrade if you plan on using an older machine,

The risk of security is a problem when your on older machines, you need 3rd party software for more help but its possible.

I also have apps and software that no longer work the way they did before. And my machine is very slow. I cannot possibly afford to buy a new machine. Question. How did you go back to Catalina without losing data? I do not have a recent backup from before I let apple sell me on “upgrading”. For now I have been putting up with the dread beach all and all the other things that no longer function as before but I’d prefer to go back to Catalina. What are my risks??