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New external harddrive 5TB formatted with APFS. After update Big Sur 11.2.3. this harddrive is not mounting anymore. I can see it in Disk Utility-app, but when I try to erase I get error -69488 and Disk Utility stops. How to get this drive mounting again?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.2
Thank you for the reply JOANV!
You have taken some excellent steps already. Were you able to check with the manufacturer to see if there were any updates? If so, see if this same external hard drive works on another Mac. If you do not personally own another Mac, see if you can borrow a friend or family member's device for testing purposes. This will help us isolate the issue.
If the issue persists on another Mac, please contact the manufacturer for assistance.
Cheers!
Thank you for the reply JOANV!
You have taken some excellent steps already. Were you able to check with the manufacturer to see if there were any updates? If so, see if this same external hard drive works on another Mac. If you do not personally own another Mac, see if you can borrow a friend or family member's device for testing purposes. This will help us isolate the issue.
If the issue persists on another Mac, please contact the manufacturer for assistance.
Cheers!
Hello use this on you’re own responsibility
I had the same error
open terminal type “diskutil list” see you”re drive name it may be dev/disk1 it may be different in your computer
then type • diskutil eraseDisk JHSF+ emptied /dev/you’rediskname • then enter
now you can go to disk utility and format the drive as you like then download Mac OS
I had the same problem.
solved with this instruction in Terminal:
sudo diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ 'My disk name' diskX
Where X is a number.
First run sudo diskutil list to find the relevant disk3, or whatever, to determine X - check the size and make sure it's the right disk!
WARNING: You could erase another disk (such as backup drive) if you get the X number wrong.
Hi, JOANV.
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. We’re glad you decided to reach out about your drives not connecting in macOS Big Sur. If we understand correctly, you’re getting an error when you attempt to mount the external drive.
Make sure that it is connected directly to your MacBook Pro - and that it is the only connection. Remove all other accessories.
It’s also a good idea to check to see if the manufacturer of your drive has firmware updates that may need to be installed for compatibility with macOS Big Sur.
If the issue continues, see if this occurs in safe mode:
Start up your Mac in safe mode
All our best.
Switch it off and connect it directly to the Mac, disconnect everything else, reboot in safe-mode, open Disk Utility > View > Show All Devices and select the device with the manufacturer's name (not any volume under it) and erase as FAT (Master Boot Record). If that succeeds, then erase as Mac OS Extended (GUID) or APFS (HDDs are slow with APFS but sometimes TINA). If that fails, then maybe the drive is broken.
Hello Matti Haveri,
thank you for your advice. I tried it but it fails. It is a pity. Western Digital says that the problem should be in Big Sur, not in the drive. When I checked First Aid this device with disk utility I took WD Elements 2629 Media, the result is that the partition map appears to be OK.
When I took the volume under this, APFS Physical Store disk2s1, it mentioned “Not Mounted”. When I do First Aid, it returns:
Repairing storage system
Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/disk2s1
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
error: (oid 0x6f0c) cib: invalid o_cksum (0xffffffffffffffff)
error: failed to read spaceman cib 11 at address 0x6f0c
Space manager is invalid.
The volume /dev/disk2s1 could not be verified completely.
Storage system check exit code is 0.
Operation successful.
Strange enough, under this disk2s1 is another volume, called AppleAPFSMedia.
It is mentioned: Uninitialized
When I do First Aid:
Running First Aid on “AppleAPFSMedia” (disk3)
Fixing damaged partition map.
Invalid disk.
Operation failed…
After this I did do the erase-procedure as you mentioned, again. That did not work. No reaction at all.
When I do this on disk2s1: no reaction at all
When I do it on disk3, there is an reaction but it resulted in an error:
Erasing “AppleAPFSMedia” (disk3) and creating “UNTITLED”
An internal error has occurred. : (-69488)
Operation failed…
Should I conclude that this 5 days old portable external drive of Western Digital is corrupt/broken? 4 days it worked perfectly and just after an update of Big Sur, during night at home, from 11.2.2 to 11.2.3 it was damaged…
I have this problem, updated to big sur, my time machine drive is not seen anymore. My hp printer was not seen either, but I spent hours yesterday and got that working. Then today I tried to backup with time machine and nothing makes the usb drive show up. It works on my older macbook air that can't be updated to big sur. I tried everything on the web and nothing works. Not seen by anything. Not my hard drive, it is big sur. Help.
Hello xxvv,
Thanks for your reply. This might have helped, but unfortunately, I do not have the drive anymore. I returned it to the shop and they gave me money back. May be a next time, or better not.
Yhanl you very much, Arawi, I used this method for another disk with the same problem and it worked. The disk from the question was send back to the shop and they gave the money back. Now I have got a new drive, that works perfectly.
-69488 error
