With Monterey update, can't see certain hard drives

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???

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.

🤞🤞

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!

In a strange twist, 5 of my 6 drives work fine. The last drive worked when I swapped the Sandisk/G-Drive cable for the Apple USB-C cable, but today, it's not recognizing that drive again, and it also causes the computer to refuse to shut down/restart if the drive is plugged in. I know another person mentioned slow restarts because of the drive issue. My 24" M1 iMac restarts in about 10 seconds normally. With the one USB-C drive that isn't recognized plugged in, it refuses to shut down or restart... Just another mystery...

Hi Hamsong, welcome to the "frustrated" club! When I plug my G Drive in, I too have the same problem - if it just does happen to see one of the partitioned drives which is EXTREMELY RARE, it then won't release or allow me to shut down - I have to force it which nobody likes to do at the best of times. For goodness sake Apple, where is the update to sort this out??? I'm fed up of my Mac telling me off that I haven't backed my files up for XX number of days!

Hi Hamsong, Jagbird1

I wouldn't hold your breath - sounds complicated to me, and nobody is admitting any kind of responsibility (I suspect it's both). I'd be surprised if we see a fix this year (unfortunately). It's a royal pain in the neck as I was planning a complete reorganisation of images (which I can't access!)

Chin Up!

Hi Jono, so I guess if what you say is true, Apple are going to see a queue of people requesting a refund for their G Drives that are not fit for purpose! I will be at the head of that queue!! But as you said in an earlier post, what the devil do you get as a replacement?? Has anyone on here got a new / newish external drive that does work???

Hi Jagbird

as you say - what do you get instead? How to know what does work?

My suspicion is that the drive manufacturers started using a new USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 interface which they tested with Big Sur, but which actually contained some kind of shortcut / inconsistency / non compliance which didn't matter . . .and then Apple tightened things up with Monterey in one of the last betas before it was released (which is why it wasn't picked up in earlier betas).

Likewise. I'm a photographer with 8 G-Drives. 6 of them are old 2TB and 4TB drives. The two new ones are 5TB and co-branded by SanDisk, though the drives have a big "G" on them. ONE of the new drives works fine with the existing cable, one does not.

It's a reasonable theory. Problem for me now is I need specific images for a client, and as luck would have it, they are only on the 1 drive of 8 that I can't access. Sometimes it works with Apple USB-C cord, sometimes not. With both the stock AND Apple USB-C cord, it's accessible via drive data recovery software, so I guess that's how I'm getting my photos off of it until it mounts properly...

Buying an apple dongle is not a solution, it's a broken by design fault. USB-C/Thunderbolt3 is supposed to be a standard. This fault has locked me out of my 3D printer, my recording studio audio interface, my Zoom L-12 portable studio and every single external drive or card I I own. I have trusted Apple for 37 years, not anymore. This is worse than Microsoft in the Zune era.

Yeah, Apple broke 3rd party dongles. Build expensive computers with insufficient interfaces, then breaks compatibility with third party solutions. Accident or deliberate, I don't care. It's unprofessional. This Mac is THE most expensive Mac I have owned and the most expensive Mac I have used since 1984 and I don't appreciate being locked out of my creative tools because Apple can't support a dongle this month that they happily supported last year. This may well be my last ever Mac and, if this fault isn't fixed by christmas, I may even offload it and go Debian or Ubuntu. I paid AU$3900 for this maxed out M1 Air last year, I expected better of Apple and I am feeling sorely ripped off today.

I understand what you're saying, but there are so many thousands of people involved in the Beta process (probably hundreds of thousands in the public betas) . it seems really unlikely that nobody had a piece of kit which was a problem. Which is why I suspect it might be a last minute issue.

On the other hand I would agree that it's probably the fault of a hardware interface chip - but I still think that Apple will make it work again (after all it worked with these devices in Big Sur).

But I also suspect that lots of people have problems and haven't noticed - I have two SSDs (San Disk but different models) they both 'work' but they're really really slow, and they are not new.

All the best

Unfortunately I have contacted Apple Support directly. They spent a considerable amount of time with me. They said that it was beyond them so they said they would pass on the notes and were confident a fix would be coming soon. The Apple rep said he could see many people were having the same issue. 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!!