With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

Hello All.

I have an additional solution that might help a few, if your situation is like mine.

I recently updated my 2018 MacMini 8.1 to Monterey about a month ago.

I have 2 extender hubs attached to the standard 2 USB ports, monitors attached thru the usb-c ports.

In the extender hubs I have several devices, and usually plug in 2 - 4 usb drives at any given time as needed.

My external USB devices could be seen and appear on the desktop since then and all was fine.

Today I plug in one of my usb drives and its a no show. I try a different port on the hub, no luck. I try a different USB device, same. I restarted, ran utility, etc... all the standards. Nothing.

Frustrated, I disconnected all the devices AND the hubs themselves and plugged everything back in.... BOOM! Everything shows up.

Wanting to verify what happened, I unplugged the hubs and restarted.

The startup was quicker and, on a separate issue I've been having and hearing about, Bluetooth started immediately and was not slow to initialize like it had been, so my mouse and trackpad were immediately available.

I plugged the hubs in with my external usb drives connected and they came up onto the desktop, no problem.

Conclusion: to me, the issue seems to be in the number of devices connected, especially if running Monterey on an older Mac like mine that does not have the M1 chip.

I'm hoping I don't have to unplug/replug all the time, but at least I know where to start with a solution.

Hope this helps.

eddieart@yahoo.com wrote:

Conclusion: to me, the issue seems to be in the number of devices connected, especially if running Monterey on an older Mac like mine that does not have the M1 chip.

I'm hoping I don't have to unplug/replug all the time, but at least I know where to start with a solution.

Hope this helps.

Nope. Not a solution, but glad it worked for you.

Here is APPLE tec in all this. They are keeping silent. And for those who have contacted them, apparently there is no Fix. I’m this is crazy. I must get into my external hard drives to work. Wow. I’m blown away!

This is Crazy! I can’t beleive Apple still have not fixed this Terribly important bug, this is also bad. I’m stuck unable to open any file. (Not alone see the drives) I can’t work,. My computer take 15 mins to start up after logg in. The blue tooth is off every time:

I turn it on, and it takes 30 mins to see any Bluetooth devices. I’m on a Mac Pro 2019. It’s not old. And if I do to Blue tooth preferences I get an error. After 30 mins it turn on/ sees Bluetooth dive Ed and I can open the preferences. What’s up with that.

once in a while, my external HD will show up. After I mess with plugging in, unplugging.

Restarting ( I forget what else, standing on my head) and I never want to shut off my computer so I don’t loose it working. ****. I just restarted it and all the same problems are back. No camera ; no USB hub seen. No Bluetooth seen, Ugh!

I had use Sandisk thumb drive on my iMac with maxOS Big Surge but recently I had updated to macOS Monterey and the same thumb drive is now not workable - This application only runs on a Sandisk Flash drive.

How to fit the problem due to the recent update to Monterey ?

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.

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!!!

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.

Ungraded to Monterey yesterday and lost connection to my G drive. Found this tip of unplugging My Wacom tablet (was plugged directly to my computer ) and the minute I unplugged the tablet - my G drive popped back up again!

such a random fix but it worked!

Just upgraded to 12.1 and this bug hit me too on my 2018 Intel MacMini. When I was on 12.01, everything worked fine. But right after I upgrade yesterday, my external TB3 enclosure disconnects a few minutes post-boot and refuses to reconnect. I have an XPG NVMe SSD in a Fledging Shell enclosure. My regular platter based drives work with no issues. Tried various TB cables including Apple's. No dice.

Firmware version is 1715.60.5.0.0 (iBridge: 19.16.10647.0.0,0).

So I updated to Monterey 12.1 this morning and my G Drive now mounts .... BUT.... whilst it saw the G Utilities and my Windows partition in the drive pretty much straight away, it took a good few minutes to see the G Drive Mobile USB-C. Furthermore, normally I plug the G Drive in and Time Machine starts its back up immediately. Not so now. I waited and waited and 15 minutes went by then I had to start it manually. And the back up itself is taking forever. So, this isn't fixed yet by a long way.

Agree with Jagbird1. My G-DRIVE mobile USB-C now mounts, which is good news. But there is some very unusual behaviour that I'm now seeing.

First, my iMac (20,1) hangs for a couple of minutes before restarting or shutting down. Before, or with the drive unplugged, it's basically instantaneous.

Second, both the backup and the cleaning (!) take an inordinately long time.

Third, if I actually go into the Time Machine starfield, when I exit almost all my Desktop icons have been moved to the tight hand side of my screen, where they're lined up vertically.

So, a bit of a mixed reposne here. the drive is mounted, and it's working. But it's working poorly. (BTW, I ran First Aid in Disk Utility, and it hung on "Checking catalog files." I had to force qwuit the process. Not sure if this was related or not.)

I am having this mounting problem with my iMac. I went to the trouble of converting all 7 external drives I use to APFS & after a week’s work, the problem continues!!

The only method that works for me is to boot the Mac with no external drives and then to add each external drive, one at a time. This does work but is not really a long term solution.

i would prefer a long term solution & I suspect that an update to the OS may be the only effective solution

Hello ALL, Apple did not fix the external hard drive issues in the new update for iMac. I have 2 G-Tech drives that will not copy files or folders larger then about a gig without getting a "cant not read or write" message. I also have to unplug and plug in my wacom tablet to get the hard drives to show up as if there is an issue with all my usb ports. If the wacom tablet is unplugged at the startup the drive will show up correctly, but sill have coping issues every time. I did a test on a laptop with the previous OS and had no issues at all. Worked like it did for years. THE NEW OS UPDATES DO NOT WORK CORRECTLY. THIS IS PROOF.

Same problem for me.

Monterey 12.1 on Imac end 2015. All my USB A external drive are disconected and are not detected. Only my esternal SSD with USBC to USBA adaptator is detected... It's my boot drive