After updating this morning, I can't see certain G-drive hard drives on my MacBook pro. Some that I formatted over a year ago are fine. The two new most recent ones won't appear. I have checked that the finder show all hard drives. Disk utility doesn't seem them either. However, when I plug them into another MacBook pro that hasn't been upgraded they appear in the finder. What should I do?
Thanks!
I can also confirm that using the apple branded usb-c to usb-c (the one used to charge the ipad or macbooks) work to access my external drives. But to clarify, to this not all cords are created equal mantra in the comments. This is true, not all cords are created equal, only the apple-branded usb-s charging cables work, not the much faster apple-branded Thunderbolt 3 cables. They do not work. They are the ones used for fast data transfer (probably like the ones that come with your external drives, non-branded) they are noticeably thicker than the charging cords. Looks like we are going to suffer slower data transfer rates until apple resolves this major issue.
liliafromfullerton wrote:
I’m as frustrated as all of you and appreciate the posts that show me I’m not alone. I’ve taken the G-drive to different Best Buys for assistance and now they’re telling me the drive is inoperable and I have to send it to their lab for document retrieval which will take up to 6 weeks and unknown cost. WD has been unhelpful as has Apple.
Lilia, I would probably hold off on that. Do you have a friend who has a Mac that's still running Big Sur? Try taking your drive over and plugging it in. If your experience is like mine (G-DRIVE mobile USB-C, worked fine until Monterey), I'll bet you all your data is sitting there… waiting for Apple to issue a fix.
Are both the drives that mount and the drives that do not formatted with APFS?
Here you have a temporary solution till Apple update Monterey and solve the bug!
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253300041?login=true&page=1
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. Some that I formatted over a year ago are fine. The two new most recent ones won't appear. I have checked that the finder show all hard drives. Disk utility doesn't seem them either. However, when I plug them into another MacBook pro that hasn't been upgraded they appear in the finder. What should I do? Thanks!"
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What Comes to Mind:
A. Reformat the drive, making it APFS.
IMPORTANT: Export the data first using a Mac with a macOS of Mojave or before.
B. On each volume click the "First Aid" button.
Screenshot:
The work around is wonderful, all that can be done now is to let Apple know about it and they will make a decision as to whether it's a bug or by design.
(A great example is when they made changes in iOS to stop providing power to certain devices that were drawing too much through the Lightning to Camera adapter. In that case the change was made on purpose and those devices needed to be used with the version of the adapter that provided power.)
As I stated, if you have an open case with Apple Support on this, let them know of the workaround.
If you do not, open one:
Exactly the same story. I have a MacBook Air and a G Drive and I too spent hours on the phone with Apple support. My drive is partitioned and the Mac sees all partitions but none will mount even after trying safe mode, first aid etc etc. So I wrote to Western Digital (makers of G Drive) and they wrote back saying they were aware of the issue and advised me to check back periodically on their forum site for news of a solution. Totally unacceptable. In my view, anyone who contacts them using the Incident form should be automatically replied to when a fix is issued. I then contacted the Apple store where I bought my drive to ask for a refund or exchange as the G drive has a 3 year guarantee and mine is only 18 months old. But the problem is if I got another one off the shelf, it would probably still have the same problem, as Monterey wasn't in existence when these were produced for sale. And Apple have now confessed that G Drive / Western Digital isn't the only manufacturer having this issue - apparently, Seagate, Lacie and Scandisk are too. I was told to sit tight and wait for the next update to Monterey which should include the fix. Whilst at the moment this seems to be the only option, it really is unacceptable. I bought the G Drive from the Apple store in the belief that whilst it isn't an Apple product, it must be at least recommended by them otherwise they wouldn't give it shelf space and that at the very least they would test updates on all products that they sell. Very disappointed in Apple and in the response from Western Digital. And I'm also told that this happened to certain hard drives when Big Sur was issued. Really, were no lessons learnt?
liliafromfullerton wrote:
Unfortunately, because I had all of my work documents on an external drive (and not on the cloud as I should have, I know!) I had to seek a recovery service, on my dime, and am still waiting for it! Frustrated indeed!!
FYI, you could have performed a clean install of macOS Big Sur by first erasing the drive before re-installing macOS and restoring from a backup made before the upgrade to Monterey. Your external drive would now work and your files would be accessible. No extra cost except the time involved.
If you wouldn't want to revert the internal drive, another option would be to purchase another external drive and install macOS Big Sur to the new external drive. While it is awkward having to boot from an external drive, it is the least disruptive option until Apple fixes the issue. At most this option costs the price of one USB3 drive which you can later re-purpose later on.
The "cloud" has its own risks as well. The data stored in the cloud can become inaccessible for a number of reasons plus the data stored in the cloud is always at risk from attackers and the whims of the cloud storage provider changing the rules.
You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and all external media which contains important & unique data.
This is from a support article at Western Digital (who also owns SanDisk and G-Drive). They acknowledge the bug and their solution is to format the drive to exFAT. Obviously not really a solution. I'm sure both companies will continue pointing fingers back and forth. I just hope it gets fixed.
External HDs were not able to connect to my iMac until I unplugged my Wacom Tablet. Now they are mounted. Took me days of researching this issue until I read this solution in this forum.
Can’t understand why this solved my problem, but my issue has been resolved!
Vettmanz06
Here I posted a temporary solution...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253300041?answerId=256243870022#256243870022
Not all cables are created equal. Many of them are cheap and don’t provide enough electrical current transfer. I’ve seen this repeatedly.
That corresponds with the WD statement given a few posts above yours:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253298287?answerId=256481777022#256481777022
Thank you very much Vettman06. Your fix worked perfectly for me. I unplugged my Wacom & restarted the Mac and all external drives were mounted. Now, how do I get to start the Wacom?
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!
I'm beginning to think this may be because some cables can't deliver the power needed for the drives to operate properly.
The reasons for this could be inherent to cables, or it could be a matter of the operating system incorrectly setting allowable power limits when certain cables are in use.
It's good that people have found workarounds, but those of you in contact with Apple Support, be sure to let them know what you've found works so that if Apple Engineering doesn't already know, the information can be passed on to them.
For those of you with USB drives that also allow using a power adapter, you may want to see if that works as well.
With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives
