Level 1

48 points

External Hard Drive Missing After Big Sur Download

I installed Big Sur yesterday. Once installed, my external hard drive no longer showed up. I tried switching ports, restarting my computer, making sure external hard drive was selected in my preferences, etc. When I checked my utility disk, I don’t even see an external option. Only internal. I also tried plugging my external drive into a PC to see if the device was read on another computer. The PC read it. When I was on Catalina earlier in the day, everything worked just fine. Anyone else experiencing this? Any help is appreciated.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 25, 2020 5:47 AM

Top-ranking reply

caustin89

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Dec 24, 2020 10:21 PM

I was able to recover mine - here's how I did it. I'm going to write out my troubleshooting process as I'm not sure what 100% fixed it.

As I read through this discussion, I was dealing with identical scenario's... my Seagate 4TB external HD, on my Macbook Pro (late-2015) running on Big Sur, wasn't mounting / not being displayed in Finder.

After failed attempts of mounting & running first aid

@Bev_Tabet_Photo suggested downloading/updating the WD Driver (https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=294) which I did, although I don't see how this would have played a role in fixing my issue, but it is something I did.

I then reset the SMC (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295)

From here, I opened Activity Monitor and quit the fsck_ext process found under the 'disk' tab

This resulted in the external hard drive being "fixed", however it was only readable, and could not copy any files to it.

I ejected the disk, restarted, reconnected the drive and opened Disk Utility. I ran a new attempt at First Aid, which took a fair amount of time (10-15 minutes)

The First Aid was successful, and I was able to write to the external drive. So far, so good.

Hope this post can manage to help others. Merry Christmas!

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243 replies

ttppee

Level 1

4 points

Mar 18, 2021 4:41 AM in response to ez4moi

APPLE.....Please allow NTFS disk can be mount at Mac OS desktop again!

Apr 5, 2021 2:23 PM in response to Thor62

Thor 62

Exactly.

Apr 5, 2021 11:40 PM in response to hilarypost

Once upon a time we used to know the reasons data gets corrupted, but since catalina even Diskwarrior developers dont have the data to compare.

Apr 28, 2021 4:18 PM in response to metaphorz

Thanks for posting this is very useful info. Will attempt it. Baffling yes, and also angering - more so because this is a known issue for over five months and APPLE has never responded.

Apr 28, 2021 5:30 PM in response to T1Nvan

I will look, inexperienced where exactly is "locations" found?

dayse

Level 1

4 points

May 1, 2021 10:41 AM in response to hilarypost

macOS, Big Sur 11.3

It's showing on the sidebar under Desktop in Locations

Jun 4, 2021 8:51 PM in response to WhyDoIBuyApple

Not a fix, but try to access hard drive via disk utility, “show in folder” your target hard drive, show hidden folders, the hidden volume folder should have all your data

NipunD

Level 1

4 points

Jul 7, 2021 10:50 AM in response to Old Toad

hey, no I don’t have any of these softwares installed.

Jul 10, 2021 11:35 AM in response to Old Toad

Yes. I have more than a rant.

what are you going to do to fix the problem?

DiZoE

Level 4

3,033 points

Jul 10, 2021 5:13 PM in response to Old Toad

👍

Feb 14, 2021 6:46 PM in response to hilarypost

I had the same problem, once I opened finder I was able to use the "Go" drop down at the top off the screen and select "computer" to find the SD card that I had plugged into my laptop. Hope this helps!

Feb 15, 2021 8:36 AM in response to az_dope_vw

Thanks much. I will refer to this if it happens again. My thought however is "why should we have to jump through hoops and spend our time on this?" Period. For me it's unacceptable for such a high end product. Meanwhile perhaps there is a thread on the pros and cons of keeping this "upgrade"?

Dec 19, 2020 12:09 PM in response to Paul Conaway

It's a Christmas miracle! I decided to update the driver for my WD My Passport drives while I was at it having updated to Big Sur. Once I did that I restarted and VOILA! My Seagate drive appeared with ALL my files! Maybe it's because I had formatted it as a Mac drive. Who knows, but I am double backing up all those files and I am a VERY HAPPY CAMPER!!!!!

Mar 18, 2021 2:46 AM in response to ez4moi

It is incredible to me that Apple which is probably monitoring these discussions is in denial and have made no effort to address this issue and communicate with us that had these terrible experiences with downloading Big Sur. I basically lost all my data and had to buy a new external drive. I have spoken to Apple and have even submitted a written complaint. No one has come back to me with an explanation let alone an apology.

Dec 18, 2020 8:56 PM in response to Paul Conaway

Nope, doesn’t show up in Disk Utility or Stellar Photo Recovery. I believe it was formatted as Mac OS extended.

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External Hard Drive Missing After Big Sur Download