With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

hamsong wrote:

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...

Do you mean an Apple USB-C to USB-C charging cable? It will work, but it tops out at really slow speeds. I’d hesitate to call it fine — more like “barely functional.”

As for your other drive working flawlessly, that was also my experience. (Two G-DRIVE mobile USB-C externals.) Can you look up the date of manufacture on both? A few posts have noted that the older drives seem to work fine after Monterey, while the more recent drives won’t mount. (My 4TB drive, manufactured in 2020, has failed to mount, but the 2TB from 2019 is fine.)

If you have the original boxes, the manufacture date is on there.

I've spent hours over two days with Apple support to no avail. They say it's a WD issues. I called WD and they claim it's an Apple problem with the new Monterey 12.0.1 update. They both say they're working on it but it's been over 1 week and all of my documents are inaccessible. They're slow attention to a workaround is not helping me one bit. Totally frustrated!!!!!

They’re still taking that position, despite this bug affecting USB-C drives regardless of manufacturer? If WD drives seem to be disproportionately afflicted, it may be because they are disproportionately represented in the Apple Stores.

Again, this is on Apple.

I know. It’s just that this solution has been marked as “solved” in other threads, when it clearly hasn’t solved anything. People get all excited that this is the magic pill, but it’s all smoke and mirrors — he says, making a metaphor salad ;-)

I'm just an Apple user like all of you, I'm not a technician and I don't work for Apple…

I tried to share a solution (although poor for me it is and it's better than “it doesn't work”).

For all other complaints (and I agree with you that such a thing is unacceptable) you have to blame Apple.

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.

Well, I couldn't get it to work with any cable attached to my computer - but I DID manage to connect it using the USB-2 hub on a Thunderbolt display - I would imagine that other older USB hubs might work as well (the modern USB-3 hub on my BenQ monitor does not work).

But you should also be able to read it by connecting it to a mac running Big Sur or before okay, so it shouldn't need to go to a lab for retrieval.

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.

Hey Jono, I know, and that's why my G Drive is still sat on my desk gathering dust! I was going to return it as soon as I was advised of the incompatibility, but then the chap at the Apple store told me it was affecting loads of other manufacturers too. So I asked him if he was going to remove those products from the shelf as selling them, knowing these products will not work, is surely "dodgy" at best. His answer was "hmmm good point!" I do wonder how long it's going to take for Apple to resolve this? And I also wonder if any official Apple bods interact with this forum and can update us???

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.

Hi Jagbird

I'm sure that they'll have to fix it - I can survive, my G-Drive contains an archive of images which I can still get at through my thunderbolt display (or my wife's mac). but as far as I can see almost no recent external drives work (I have three older ones which do).

I'm pretty sure we'll see a fix before too long.

🤞🤞

I upgraded to Monterey and had the same issues. I am working with a seagate backup hub and my computer is Mac Pro. I upgraded my ntfs software and through that I was able to finally mount my drive. I tried different cords, software, etc and nothing worked. I upgraded my NTFS for mac software and was able to mount through that. I hope this helps someone.

https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/ntfs-mac/

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...

Hi there

As you say, I doubt if there will be any announcement of a fix by anyone (not least because it acknowledges fault, which they're not going to do!).

I imagine there will be an update which fixes it, but they'll say nothing.

Best

I can't believe this has not been resolved. I so regret installing OS Monterey. My computer takes 20 mins to start up. the Blue tooth doesn't recognize devices, cant open preferences pain for 20 mins. then it works. and my external HD do not show up. They have once before and oddly sometimes, but it may take 20-30 mins. Its so weird. I am not reformattign my HD its not that. tits Montey. Please Apple Fix this issue!