With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

None of my machines have any issues with external drives, so the next task is to figure out what’s different here.

People have been testing with these releases for months now, so if it was an obvious bug it would have been found and squashed by now.

But the bane of any computer maker’s existence is that this may be the first time your particular combination has been tried, and it may yet be an issue with your device.

The key is to be methodical about sorting it out.

HWTech wrote:

Use the Terminal app to try to manually mount the external drive to see if it may provide an actual error message. You will need to correct drive identifier for the volume on the external drive. You can get this by using Disk Utility. Using your screenshot as an example the drive identifier is "disk2s2", you must verify the drive identifier each time you mount the drive because the identifier will likely change. Here is the sample command where I use a generic drive identifier of "diskX" so make sure to replace "diskX" in my example with the correct drive identifier such as "disk2s2":

diskutil mount readOnly diskX

Oops, the command I suggested for mounting the volume is slightly incomplete as I forgot to include the "s2" part of the identifier which tells the command to mount the APFS volume such as "Nassau 22". The command should look like the following example, but replace the "X" in "diskXs2" with the proper identifier (at the time the screenshot was taken it would be "disk2s2".

diskutil  mount readOnly  diskXs2

If the drive identifier is "disk2s2" as shown in the screenshot, the command becomes:

diskutil  mount readOnly  disk2s2

Note to @TheLittles and @Dogcow-Moof, I suggested the command line method of mounting as it is more likely to produce an error message if the mounting process fails plus the command is mounting the volume as Read-Only which should make it more likely for the command to work in case there is a file system issue. I've found recent versions of Disk Utility may not even give an error message and may just silently fail making the user wonder if the "mount" button even activated.

pdtnyc Said:

"With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives: After updating this morning, I can't see certain G-drive hard drives on my MacBook pro.[...]"

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Tried Recovery Mode?:

Try mounting these in Recovery Mode. [Hold Down: command + R upon boot]. Then, go to Disk Utility, seeing if you can mount the drive(s).

pdtnyc Said:

"Thanks. Disk Utility returns an error message that says it can't mount the disk."

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You are welcome.

A. Verify the Connection:

Enter this code in Terminal:

diskutil list

Are these seen?

B. Single Out this User:

Try creating a new administrator user. See if this then works. If so, then it is an issue pertaining to your current user. If not, then it is an issue pertaining to the macOS.

pdtnyc wrote:

Thanks. I will end up pulling data from the hard drives using another computer. Will try the command line instructions tomorrow. What’s puzzling to me is that older G-Drives have no problem mounting to this computer. I would expect the exact opposite result.

The newer drives are likely using a newer chipset or perhaps even a completely different brand of chipset from the older drives. Some chipsets tend to be more reliable and more supported than others. Plus there is a chance the newer drives are using a different block/allocation size than the older drives which can easily occur with larger drives. Perhaps the newer drives are also utilizing some other new technology which is not completely compatible with some Mac hardware or perhaps only incompatible with Monterey (hopefully just temporary).

Years ago I ordered an external drive enclosure of a brand I had never used before and discovered it would not work properly on a Mac although it seemed to work fine on a standard Windows PC. Macs can sometimes be very picky about third party hardware.

Most likely you will need to contact the G-Drive manufacturer for assistance and possibly alert them to a possible compatibility issue with Monterey. You may want to check the G-Drive website to see if the manufacturer has posted any information about compatibility issues with Monterey.

I have the exact same problem. I spent hours online last night and on the phone this morning with someone from Apple, very nice people but no joy with the hard drives. All four of my drives are no more than 2 years old and none of them show up. They do show up in Safe mode and I have tried the reset SMC multiple times. Very frustrating. Now looking at buying one new large hard drive and then having someone pull all the data over. I have both WD and G-Drive drives. The person who was helping me said he'll call me back on Tuesday and he's hoping he can find something out. I've looked all over the internet to see if WD has anything out but they have made no mention of support for Mac Monterey. All of my computer work is done from the drives, lover 100,000 photos on them. So unexpected!

viathelens wrote:

FYI. In the spirit of not giving up I disconnected a wacom tablet from the computer, mostly because I don't use it and I was trying to simplify my desktop, I had shut the computer down...and magically when I rebooted the mac everything was back in its right place, all my hard drives lined up where they should be....so very happy about that! The wacom was connected via a hub. I had actually plugged a small disk into the hub to see if that would work and it did show up, too, but the reason seemed to be the wacom tablet being plugged into the hub. Just an FYI for something else to try...I'm fixed and happy!

Good detective work! Many times it is just something extremely simple. One of the most basic troubleshooting steps is to disconnect all external devices because it only takes one device to interfere with all the other devices.

You should see if connecting the Wacom directly to the Mac has the same effect on your drives. Maybe the issue only occurs when using the hub with the Wacom. If you share the hub with the drives as well as the Wacom, then try connecting the Wacom to a different port on the laptop instead of sharing the drives on the same hub. A hub with UASP support is best to use when connecting drives (drives should also support UASP) and other slower USB devices. Perhaps you will need to wait until Wacom provides updated drivers for Monterey. You should check with Wacom (tech support or forums) to see if this is a known issue.

UASP:

https://www.startech.com/en-us/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-uasp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI

I am far from an expert on computer technology. But simply to provide additional information. When I put the computer in safe mode all of my drives showed up. When I went back to regular mode none of them showed up. Then, after removing the wacom tablet all of them showed up. Apparently safe mode shows the computer without added devices. Have you checked this yet? Good luck.

Safe mode shuts off third party kernel extensions, so removing the tablet didn’t load the Wacom driver.

Make sure you have Wacom’s latest driver installed:

Driver 6.3.44-2 (macOS 10.13 - 12) - 113 MB 10/12/2021 4:44:00 PM

I have the same issue with my G-Drive. Worked just fine before Monterey, after Monterey it will not connect. Everything disconnected, tried mounting in Disk Utility and just get an error. Still searching the web for solutions and nothing so far.

Also, if I have the G-Drive connected during boot, the boot process just hangs. Same thing happens if I have my USB hub connected and my old Wacom (USB). I have hard power the MacBook Pro down, remove the power cable, let it sit a few minutes and then power it back on. The bootup works fine then. This is definitely an OS issue. I just hope it didn't trash my G-Drive.

I am having the same issue with a brand new G-drive external drive (5 TB) on Monterey. Finder shows none of the partitions of the drive. Disk Utility sees the partitions, but will not activate them. Have tried First Aid, but it does not detect any issues.

I'm having the same issue with my iMac Late 2019 (Intel i9).

External Gdrive worked fine before the Monterey update and now it won't read it. It does read it on my M1 MacBook air which I haven't updated to Monterey yet (still running Big Sur).

What's weird is that it's only the Gdrive that it won't read, it reads my Toshiba and Seagate external hard drives plus USB sticks. So I really don't know what to do.

When I plug it in it does show on the disk utility but it shows that it is not mounted and I try first aid and nothing happens, it finds no errors. I've tried unplugging everything else and restarting it and still nothing.