With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

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?

I've now tried with a number of different cables, with a number of different responses

Apple cable - comes up with a message saying the drive is unreadable (but light on drive doesn't flash)

Most other cables - light on drive flashes and it shows in Disk Utility but won't mount

Two different cables - the computer restarted immediately

Clearly 12.0.1 doesn't fix it

WD say that it's Apple's call (probably agree)

I'll just have to wait!

Unfortunately, it's not a holistoc solution. It will get your computer to see the drive (and mount it), but the data transfer rates provided by a USB-C charging cable are abysmal — try toggling from one recent Time Machine backup to one from months ago, for example.

I'm going to try an Applr branded USB-C cable designed for higher transfer rates today. Will report back if this helps.

Thank you so much for this HWTech

I realise I already have one of these cables and it doesn't help for me to load my G drive.

The only way I have found to mount it is using the USB port on an Apple Thunderbolt display - very slow, but at least it works!

All the best

Jono

If we’re looking for commonalities, here’s some info about the affected (and unaffected) gear:

iMac. 20,1 (late 2020, Intel, 32G RAM)

Affected drive: G-DRIVE mobile USB-C 4TB

Unaffected drive: G-DRIVE mobile USB-C 2TB — this one is seen, and is functional

I have swapped out the USB-C cables that were included on both G-DRIVE units; I have swapped ports, to see if that had an effect. I have gone into Recovery mode, and tried to mount the 4TB drive — nothing has worked.

The common features may be:

G-DRIVE external drives w/USB-C connections

Drive capacity of 4TB — not certain, but a lot of complaints from 4TB drive owners.

Maggot

Hi There

Here's my information about affected (and unaffected) gear

Macbook Pro 14" M1 Pro late 2021

Affected G-Drive mobile USB-C 5TB (2021)

Unaffected drive G-Drive mobile USB-C 4TB - this one is seen and is functional (2018)

I've also swapped many different USB-C cables - and swapped between the 3 ports on the MBP

I've also tried the drive attached to a USB hub on a Benq monitor - again, it doesn't work

However attaching either drive to the USB-2 Hub on an Apple Thunderbolt display and they both work

So - I think it's more likely to be the age of the drive than the capacity -

I hope they fix it soon!

Jono Slack wrote:

Hi There

Here's my information about affected (and unaffected) gear

Macbook Pro 14" M1 Pro late 2021

Affected G-Drive mobile USB-C 5TB (2021)

Unaffected drive G-Drive mobile USB-C 4TB - this one is seen and is functional (2018)

I've also swapped many different USB-C cables - and swapped between the 3 ports on the MBP

I've also tried the drive attached to a USB hub on a Benq monitor - again, it doesn't work

However attaching either drive to the USB-2 Hub on an Apple Thunderbolt display and they both work

So - I think it's more likely to be the age of the drive than the capacity -

I hope they fix it soon!

Jono is right. I just ordered, and tried, an Apple USB-C cable (not the charging cable), and my G-DRIVE external disk would not mount. Meanwhile, the other one is working fine.

This is really frustrating. I was going to send the G-DRIVE back under warranty., but the fault lies with its integration with Monterey. I'm thinking of bringing my hard drive to the Apple Store and challenging them to mount the drive — maybe they'll find a cable that actually works (aside from the USB-C charging cable, which is a non-starter.)

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.

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.

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.

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...

Like most of these things it's likely to be half of one and half of the other (G_Drive controller slightly out of spec and Apple firmware also). The difficulty is if they both blame each other and nothing happens!

I'm tempted to send my drive back as well (because it's a pain), but I need to replace it first to get the data off!

All the best

Yes but then what do you buy?? Apple support told me that owners of Lacie, Seagate, and ScanDisk (and those are just the ones he rattled off) are all experiencing the same issues. I was going to take mine back and get another but if it's affecting all the new models you won't know if you are buying another drive with the same issue.

Ach - I was going to bite the bullet and buy a 4TB SanDisk SSD . . . but if they are all having troubles then surely Apple are going to have to fix it (sometimes I say stupid things 😂).

Basically, we're all dooooomed to slower than USB-2 speeds until somebody sorts it out!

After hours of frustration, I found your post and sure enough, my G-Drive AmorATD drive works fine with the Apple USB-C to USB-C cable. Stranger still, I have two of these drives and one of them works fine with the original cable, the other doesn't show up on the desktop and can't be mounted, yet works fine with the Apple cable. Both drives worked fine in all versions of OS 11, so there seems to be a Monterey problem with some USB-C drives...

Jagbird1 wrote:

Yes but then what do you buy?? Apple support told me that owners of Lacie, Seagate, and ScanDisk (and those are just the ones he rattled off) are all experiencing the same issues. I was going to take mine back and get another but if it's affecting all the new models you won't know if you are buying another drive with the same issue.

If it’s that widespread, and they’re admitting it, that bodes well for a fix coming sooner rather than later.