External Hard Drives Not Showing Up After Latest Mac Update

How are the drives formatted?

If they are NTFS formatted (you mentioned reading them on a PC, which NTFS enables), or you are using a third party software utility to manage the drives (including custom firmware), if that third party software and firmware hasn't been updated to a version compatible with the latest version of Big Sur, in some cases the external drive will not be visible. Not sure this is what's going on. What type of drives, how are they formatted, any third party disk management or firmware utilities involved?

The relocated items stuff is almost certainly unrelated to the drives not showing.

You need to clarify where exactly are the drives failing to show.

I suppose they don’t show on the Desktop. That could be a matter of checking a box in Finder preferences.

More importantly: Do the drives not appear in the Finder Sidebar?

If they do, all is probably well, just check the boxes to show hard drives and external drives on the Desktop.

If not:

Open Disk Utility. Do the drives appear there? Post screenshots.

Hey Nrousch!

Here is more information on the Relocated Items folder:

If you see a Relocated Items folder on your Mac after upgrading macOS:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/a-relocated-items-folder-mac-upgrading-macos-mchl8ae423a3/mac

It’s likely this has nothing to do with your external drives not appearing.

My first question was, as well, the formatting of your external drives, as Steve626 said.

It sounds like you’ve already went to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar/General and enabled External HD’s, right? (Check both panes).

Likewise, what you you see in Disk Utility, after clicking View > Show All Devices, from the menu?

nrousch wrote:

I apologize if I am not fully understanding your question but bear with me.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. Are you saying that I need to purchase a new USB-C cord? So it may not even be my hard drives that are not compatible with Big Sur? The USB-C cord I have been using since I purchased my MacBook pro in 2019 is a Lention USB-C to 3 Port SUB 3.0 and Micro SD/SD slots adapter. The hard drive I have been using this year is from Seagate.

Again, I apologize if I'm not fully understanding your question. I am still learning and educating myself on technology. I appreciate your help.

There is always a chance that the USB cord has stopped working. But you had tested it on another computer and it seemed fine.

As multiple responses have already indicated (but I see how this can be confusing), there are two most likely possibilities that caused your external drives to stop working, both of which are straightforward to address:

(1) Finder > Preferences > Sidebar/General make sure that the box is checked to show external drives on the desktop. Sometimes an operating system upgrade defaults to NOT showing the drives on the desktop. They are still working fine but are simply not visible so to the user they appear not accessible. (Some people like to not have their screen cluttered with external drives' icons ...)

(2) If the external drives had the manufacturer's firmware or software tools installed under an older operating system, perhaps some time ago (these tools allow the user to format, check, password protect etc. the drives), it is quite possible that that software or firmware needs updating in order to continue to access the drives. Ideally this would have been done before upgrading, as part of the normal check that all one's software and hardware is compatible with Big Sur. But it can be done after the fact. This is particularly important if the drives are NTFS formatted, which enables them to be used on PCs and Macs. Some of these drives, unless specifically labeled as "For Mac," come formatted that way, or in some cases formatted as EXFAT. If you don't remember how this was done back when you first obtained the drives, look in your Applications and Utilities folders for programs with manufacturers' names like Seagate, WD, Western Digital, etc. The update would be done by going to the manufacturers' web sites and downloading the latest version(s). For firmware on the drive, the drive itself may need to be connected when the update is done, or a firmware update applied to the drive through the manufacturers' tools.

In the future, it is best to simply format new external drives in Mac format (APFS or HFS+) and not depend on manufacturers' tools, software, or firmware. Those tools can be handy but they can also stop working when the MacOS is updated or upgraded. When that happened, the user may encounter difficulty in even accessing the drive.

Check you other posting for possible solution

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253130706

I have also huge problems with all my external hard drives since updating to Big Sur. One of the drives are not possible to mount at all on my MacBookPro, but on my PC.

This is very time consuming.

Apple, come on and fix it now

For those who answered nrousch's question, may I ask if you also updated your laptops to Big Sur also then experienced little problems accessing your external hard drives? I just want to..make sure. Because I also have the same problem as nroushch and many others. I feel that the responses are not that helpful for nrousch. Or maybe, we are on the unlucky side for upgrading.

In my case, I only have concern with WD Passport external hard drive. My older external hard drives and a couple of memory cards are doing well. I am able to transfer past projects that consume a lot of space in my computer.

I have been using external drives with my 2019 16” MBP in Big Sur since November, without issues. I have used 2.5” USB bus powere hard drives, 3.5” hard drives with a separate power supply, thumb drives and even a USB hard drive dock where I can fit two hard drives or SSD.

NOTE: I always connect directly to a port on my MBP, using just an adapter from USB-C to USB-A. I also have a multiport USB-C dock with several USB ports as well as HDMI, Ethernet, and more but I don’t use that connect drives, except SD cards. It should work too, but I haven’t tested.

Same - so frustrating ... I just want to secure my graphic files without clogging up my HD! My back up EHD is now suddenly read only (only 1.1 GB used on a 4TB EHD). My Mac isn't recognizing EHD#2 that I attempted to connect & upload that 1.1GB to (so I could reformat the 4TB **). Both are Seagates - apparently this is an issue ... Seagate CS wasn't able to resolve it either after 4 hours today. :(

Hey again!

By the way, according to your screen shot, you also have an extra partition, possibly created when upgrading or reinstalling the OS, or even moving data from one Mac to another on the wrong partition (the “Data” partition). This may not be related, but if you’re logged into your admin account(s) and all your data is there as normal, and you didn’t intentionally create a new partition, I’d remove it from Disk Utility, as in the picture:

Select both Macintosh HD -Data’s, by Volumes, you’ll see a “+” and a “-“ which ever one you select and the “-“ is available to click, click it and select “delete” (This would be while you’re logged into your account, not from recovery mode, in recovery mode, both would be available to delete, but not the one you are currently logged in to).

In any case, hope your external HD issue is good, but I can see how a duplicate partition with the same name might be an issue, though usually not.

hi.

I have tried everything I can!! but my MacBook pro won't even mount my Toshiba 2GB external HD's. they're loading and working fine. (correct light is displayed etc) yet I can't even get them to mount!! when Is apple going to help!!

I've had the same issue and I'm still on Catalina latest updates - I was discouraged from updating to Big Sur - but all of a sudden it doesn't recognize the external drive. The Utility disk program sees them but they are grayed out - on one external hard drive - I partitioned it and it shows the Time Machine side grayed out and the other side which I use to drag and drop files for easier access - it shows that.

However, the Time Machine is what I need access to because it has complete backups from Sept 2020 through May 2021. Is there a fix for this? I don't want to have to reformat as that's the whole point in backing these files up - I've moved other files off the computer.

I have not been able to access any of my external hard drives since the last few Big Sur updates. Ironically, I have Parallels for Mac installed to use Windows 10 on the same laptop and if I mount the Seagate hard drive through the Windows 10, I can then access the external hard drives. This tells me it's a MAC problem. It makes NO sense., Please tell me how to get this problem resolved. When I try to mount the same hard drives on the MAC side of my lap top it tells me the hard drive isn't mounting correctly and I can see the files but can't access them. This is DEFINITELY a huge problem with Big Sur. Please advise us how to fix this problem

I have the same problem as stated above. I was trying to transfer some pictures onto a thumb drive, but it appears nowhere in Finder or Disk Utility. All the settings are right.