With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

Do you have a wacom tablet plugged in by chance? That was the problem solver for me, just unplug the tablet. The drives show up and all is fine.

I have the same problem.

I have a WD My Passport Wireless Pro drive that I want to connect via USB 3.0 to USB-C Cable.

I have two MacBooks, an older 2020 intel based MBP 13 on MacOS 11 and a new 14" MBP on MacOS 12.0.1.

On the older MBP the drive works 100% it works fine, however if i plug it into my 14" MBP its not detect at all, not in Disk Utility not even on connected USB devices in System Information Viewer Hardware > USB.

Then I tried connecting it via USB 3.0 cable and the USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter.

This works flawlessly.

This is ridiculous however, if it can work on my older mac, it should work on the new one without the adapter in between.

I also confirm that using a Apple USC-C to USB-C cable resolves the issue with my G-Drive. However, this is not the "fix". There is still an Monterey OS issue that Apple needs to resolve. I have been using the same G-Drive USB-C to USB-C cable for a couple of years now with no issues. Upgrade to Monterey and now an issue. The cable didn't break, the OS broke it. So that still needs to be resolved.

For now....I am working again, thank goodness.

Dogcow-Moof wrote:

If the ports were "faulty," using adapters would not work.

Unfortunately that is not entirely true with regards to USB-C ports. You can have a half bad USB-C port. Rotating the USB-C connector 180 degrees upside down can sometimes make a device work. I have personally experienced this on the USB-C Macs I repair both with chargers and data connections.

Unfortunately the issues with external hard drives/SSDs are very complicated due to the multiple brands, models, file systems, etc. Plus there may be other differences between Intel & M1 Macs. We also need to keep in mind that last year many users also complained about having issues with many external drives. Most of the reports last year were with M1 Macs, but there were also a fair number of reports with issues on Intel Macs after upgrading to Big Sur. Unfortunately the issue last year was never really investigated by any of the tech sites (I'm not sure it was even properly reported) and I never did see any articles that ever mentioned the issue being fixed. I did see some references last year from certain hardware vendors that did mention some USB drives having chipset compatibility issues (JMicron) with M1 Macs, but those references were later removed (either the vendors provided an alternate product that was compatible or perhaps a firmware/software update was issued either by the vendor or Apple).

There may not be any one correct answer or solution to these USB drive issues. It certainly does not help that Apple loves their secrets so much that Apple may never acknowledge any problems and may never even mention a fix in any of the macOS patches/updates notes.

Dogcow-Moof wrote:

Maggot wrote:

Same thing. I looked at the manufacture date on bnoth my G-DRIVEs. The newest one, from 2020, is affected; the older one, manufactured in 2019, is working and mounted. Let's keep bumping this. The charge cable solution — it tops out at USB 2.0 speeds — is not a viable solution.

That's a rather revealing data point; it's likely that due to manufacturing issues, G-DRIVE switched to a different chipset in the newer enclosure, resulting in this issue.

That makes it feel more like the ultimate resolution will not be in macOS but rather in a firmware update for the G-DRIVE.

Excellent troubleshooting.

Thanks! In a way, it would be best if it is a G-DRIVE firmware issue. (They have already raised the issue with Apple, but only regarding M1 and M2 chipset Macs.) This way, they have a vested interest in solving it: I had already made arrangements to return my external under warranty. They won't want hundreds of possibly functional G-DRIVES drifting back to the factory, when they could be made whole...

I checked with SanDisk/G-Drive and the response was along the lines of "We received your inquiry. Please be patient while we investigate." Luckily, all of my old drives work fine in 12.0.1, one of my new drives works perfectly and the other one only works if I swap out the Sandisk cable for the Apple branded USB-C to USB-C. They rarely, if ever, announce fixes for these things, but don't be surprised if 12.1 update has it quietly listed in the list of things addressed by the fix. Apple and the companies will point at each other. We don't know if it's a software bug or a hardware partial incompatibility, but it's possible that the hardware companies are quietly working on it with Apple testers. Hard to believe this one snuck through the testing, but the demands of marketing ("Monterey IS coming out on (insert date here)" and the developers have to race to make it happen, regardless of where the product is in the testing phase. There will always be incompatible hardware, but the problem seems a lot of pervasive with USB-C drives...

John Jensen3 wrote:

For what it's worth I can confirm that the official apple USB c to USB c cable trick worked for my friend and his hard drive. He had a G-Drive 0G10347-1 which is a G-Drive Mobile USB C 4TB space gray drive. He is running Monterey 12.0.1. The minute he replaced the cable that came with the hard drive with his laptop charging cable the drive mounted fine. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

It will mount, but it's not a fix. Your friend's external hard drive will running with sub-par transfer speeds (USB 2.0) at best. While my drive mounted, it did not function with Time Machine, FWIW. There is no solution until there is one — and it's on Apple to make this right in the next iteration.

So after weeks of not being able to access my sample library and music files on my external drive post-Monterey update, I was feeling very discouraged, especially after searching this forum and the web to no avail for a solution to the indexing and spotlight issue with the current OS. Today I am pleased to say I have found a solution that works and I am currently watching the light on my Glyph studio raid flicker as Spotlight scours the files on said HD.

First, go into Finder and press Shift+ Command + . (yes that is a period)

This will allow you to see the hidden files on your external drive

Search for a file named like the one below

.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs

delete the file in Finder, then eject the drive. Then re-mount the drive and run this in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Once that is done your external drive should begin indexing and you should be able to use spotlight to locate files on your ext HD.

The length of this thread and the variety of suggested solutions reveals major issues with Monterey 12.3.

Is the problem caused by Apple’s OS update or by the manufacturers of external drives? If you believe the latter, apparently WD (Western Digital) has been working on a fix at their end - or so I read in this discussion. My LaCie Drive (RAID) was one of my drives that was affected. It mounted, but Adobe files would not open, nor would files for some other applications (Digital Performer). LaCie uses, among others, Western Digital hardware in their drives so maybe that is the issue.

My SOLUTION (sort of) was to downgrade to Big Sur on my laptop. In my case, this was NOT EASY and took a lot of time on calls to Apple Senior Tech advisors to figure a way to do this safely. One wonders why Apple does not provide the option to downgrade to Monterey 12.1 (which was working trouble free). THAT would been the best solution in my case. But Monterey 12.1 disappeared completely from Apple’s servers after the update to 12.3.

Does anyone know if the Monterey 12.3.1 solves these issues? I would like to move back up at some point but won’t until I know the OS is stable.

I had the same problem with an older hard drive (LG). It was recognized by another macbook with older OS. On Monterrey i tried using a usbc-usb adapter (apple) and it didnt work. But it worked like a charm with a generic adapter QacQoc (those multi port adapters).

Just upgraded to 12.1 and this solved the problem of my G-Drive 4Tb. I tested it on my M1. I will test it also in my intel based Mac, not yet upgraded.

What happens if you click "Mount" in the menu at the top of the screen, does it mount?

Every so often a major OS update doesn't "remember" that other drives were mounted before and so won't mount them after the upgrade until you mount them manually for the first time.

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'm assuming it's the update issue you are suffering from, as are we all and that it's not a broken G Drive? If so, it should still work with Big Sur. If so, here's an idea... take the G drive to an Apple store. They have Macs running Big Sur as well as Monterey. Get them to plug your G Drive into one of their Big Sur devices and pull the contents off that onto another drive or onto your laptop. Now I'm hopeful that your local Apple store is accommodating as mine appeared to be. Granted I bought my G Drive from the Apple store but even if not, one of the Genius guys can look up the issue on their internal forum and see there is a known issue and help you out. Furthermore, if you bought it from the Apple store it comes with a guarantee so they have to be accommodating. I have said that if this isn't fixed, I'm bringing mine back for a refund as it's not fit for purpose. But I too have the issue that I have loads of stuff on the drive that will have to taken off prior to returning. I hope this helps.