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External SSD drive not recognized

Hi, I got a new iPad Pro which is working great and I am able to use a variety of external storage devices with it (flash drives, old fashioned spinny hard drives), but I got a 1T SanDisk Extreme SSD, which no matter how I format it, will not be recognized by the iPad.


The SSD works just fine with my iMac, but no matter what I try the iPad will not recognize that is even connected.


What am I missing here?

iPad Pro, iPadOS 14

Posted on Jun 19, 2021 7:50 PM

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Posted on Jun 20, 2021 5:24 AM

Aha! I just tried a flash drive that worked fine yesterday and nothing. It finally occurred to me to try what I would have already done with my iMacs, and re-started. Now it recognizes the SSD. I even changed the format again from ExFat to OS Extended, and it actually works! The official Apple specs don't include OS Extended, but it does work!


3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 20, 2021 5:24 AM in response to David Yellen

Aha! I just tried a flash drive that worked fine yesterday and nothing. It finally occurred to me to try what I would have already done with my iMacs, and re-started. Now it recognizes the SSD. I even changed the format again from ExFat to OS Extended, and it actually works! The official Apple specs don't include OS Extended, but it does work!


Jun 20, 2021 5:09 AM in response to MichelPM

Yes, I have tried APFS, Ex Fat and even OS Extended and it will not recognize the SSD drive at all. The weird part is it will recognize Fat 32, ExFat AND OS Extended formatted flash drives, and even an older Seagate mechanical drive formatted OS Extended (powers it up and everything, to my amazement!)! It seems to just be this particular SSD it doesn't like and I can't figure out why. SSD has been working fine with my iMac for weeks.

External SSD drive not recognized

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