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After upgrading to Monterey, I cannot access any of my external drives

After upgrading to Monterey, I cannot access any of my external drives. My iMac is late 2015, 32GB ram & was running perfectly with 7 external drivers until I upgraded. So why can I not access my drives now? They could not all have "died" at the same time.


iMac 27″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 29, 2021 12:26 PM

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Posted on Oct 29, 2021 5:14 PM

Please respect those that have responded. All are real smart and want to help.


That said, I assume none of these drives are showing up in disk utility with the view menu selected to show all devices.

In addition, with a new finder window, I assume external drives are checked.

Also, I would shut down the mac, unplug all drives, replug them in and start up in safe boot (press the power key and then press the shift key) As soon as the progress bar starts filling up you can let go of the buttons See if they show up then.

Finally, create a test user account with admin privileges and see if that makes them show up.


Just some things I would do, some may be unnecessary, but no harm no foul.


Good luck

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 29, 2021 5:14 PM in response to GBFH

Please respect those that have responded. All are real smart and want to help.


That said, I assume none of these drives are showing up in disk utility with the view menu selected to show all devices.

In addition, with a new finder window, I assume external drives are checked.

Also, I would shut down the mac, unplug all drives, replug them in and start up in safe boot (press the power key and then press the shift key) As soon as the progress bar starts filling up you can let go of the buttons See if they show up then.

Finally, create a test user account with admin privileges and see if that makes them show up.


Just some things I would do, some may be unnecessary, but no harm no foul.


Good luck

Oct 29, 2021 2:12 PM in response to GBFH

GBFH wrote:

Why does that matter? All were performing perfectly well until last night when I upgraded to Monterey. Not really good enough to ask me today what or how drives were formatted? Is it not good enough that drives that performed perfectly until the upgrade. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
I need and demand a solution that will no cost me any data.


? it matters a lot in an effort to resolve your issue, could be a simple fix, it sure sound like it to me anyway.


No need to yell.


No one said anything about losing data, non-the less good luck~ I have zero patience for your attitude:


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Oct 29, 2021 12:40 PM in response to GBFH

GBFH wrote:

After upgrading to Monterey, I cannot access any of my external drives. My iMac is late 2015, 32GB ram & was running perfectly with 7 external drivers until I upgraded. So why can I not access my drives now? They could not all have "died" at the same time.


You do not say what brand drives w/ or without proprietary software involved..up date your supporting third party software


You do not say how those external drives are formatted, if NTFS —up date your supporting third party software

Oct 29, 2021 2:06 PM in response to leroydouglas

Why does that matter? All were performing perfectly well until last night when I upgraded to Monterey. Not really good enough to ask me today what or how drives were formatted? Is it not good enough that drives that performed perfectly until the upgrade. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I need and demand a solution that will no cost me any data.

Oct 29, 2021 5:15 PM in response to GBFH

GBFH wrote:

Why does that matter? All were performing perfectly well until last night when I upgraded to Monterey.

it matters because you upgraded. when macOS progresses, things in macOS also change. that's the whole point. and software and settings that work on the OLD macOS do not always automatically work with the new macOS. and that especially applies if you are using any software from the manufacturer of the EHDs. and that is why you were asked about it.

After upgrading to Monterey, I cannot access any of my external drives

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