Connecting external drive causes crash on mac

Hi, I recently updated my MacBook Air (13 inch 2020) to Monterey, and now, when I connect an external hard drive, it does not mount one of the partitions and it causes the computer to crash and reboot. The worst part: it is my backup drive.

Any hints?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Nov 7, 2021 2:42 PM

Similar questions

Mac doesn’t recognize ANY external drives after update I’ve read many posts here and elsewhere about external hard drives not showing up after updates, but the answers don’t help me. Updated to Monterey 12.6.6 and now no external drive (HDs, thumb drives, CDs) will show up in the finder and in Disk Utility the only drive that will show itself is my internal startup drive. There is no opportunity to mount a greyed out one as suggested by the answers here. I have plugged my CD player and thumb drives into a PC laptop and they show that it isn’t the fault of the drives. Plus four drives don’t go bad all at once. Appreciate any help. Mac Pro (late 2013) Intel Xeon
9010 3
Seagate Portable HD won't work with Monterey? Since upgrading my MacBook Pro to iOS Monterey, my Seagate Portable hard drive won't work. It shows up when I go to disk utilities but it won't show up on my desktop or back up using Time Machine. Any suggestions?
2270 7
external drive not mounting I have an OWC minstack stx connected Thunderbolt 4 to a MacStudio M1 max and the 8 TB hard drive is not mounting The SSD mounts and operates normally. I've reinstalled Ventura and on the first boot the hard drive appears and operates normally but after a restart it dissappears again. very frustrating! It operated fine under Ventura 13.1. any hints? I can't figure out how to go back to 13.1 and Apple support says they don't support that
5428 12

18 replies

Owl-53

Level 10

102,553 points

Dec 20, 2021 4:29 AM in response to sebasdav

2 Cents worth here.

The Apple Walled Garden of what works and does not work especially when introducing third party hardware has become higher with each new OS.

What worked in Catalina may not work in Big Sur and what worked in Big Sur may not work in Monterey as evidenced here and other places on the ASC Forums.

Example specific to Monterey >>

There are reports appearing on the ASC Forums regarding failed installation of Monterey on older Qualifying Apple Computers. In most cases this is related to having a NON Apple Original internal drive ?

The same After Market Drive may have worked in Big Sur but does not work in Monterey.

The EFI Boot ROM included in Monterey is verifying for Original Apple Drive and if not found , may Balk or fail to upgrade to Monterey.

Reports indicate the EFI BOOT ROM is Required to Flash the Computer and is a requirement for a Successful Monterey Installation.

Dec 20, 2021 12:55 PM in response to sebasdav

I just had similar problem with 2 WD My Passport 2 TB portable USB SSDs. One drive failed First Aid and all WD diagnostics after receiving a "disk not ejected properly" message even though the disk was never disconnected from the USB port. The second drive also presented the same error but instead of failing outright it freezes the MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with Monterey 12.0.1 and requires a cold reboot to unfreeze. Any ideas about when and how Apple will address this? Thanks.

Dec 20, 2021 1:43 PM in response to zeusiedog

My Passport drive does exactly the same thing but it still does a Time Machine backup so I am not yet sure if it is an actual failure or not yet. It also did this before I upgraded to Monterey. My Mac Air (2020) froze as soon as I went to Monterey but I have since diagnosed this as my Satechi USB hub causing the problem. Removing the hub and connecting my Time Machine directly to the USB3.0 output has produced no further freezes. Do you have a hub connected?

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Connecting external drive causes crash on mac