External drive and macOS Monterey

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Level 1

14 points

External drive and macOS Monterey

Not the most savvy with Mac, here goes. Upgraded to Monterey and now my external G-force drive usb-c(that I got from Apple) doesn't show up in Finder, I can't figure any way to access it. It was in Finder before. I made sure the Finder left column showed everything. No help. I can see the drive in System Information and I can see it in Disk Utility but the Mount is greyed out so I can't select Mount. Tried shutting down restarting, disconnecting/reconnecting, patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. All no help. Did I back up before upgrading? Well.....I use time machine(is that not good?). Trouble is I have time machine saving the backups on the external G-force drive which I can't access now. What should I do? Kind of frustrated. Like to down grade but I'm really not sure if everything is saved in the time machine plus reading some instructions on downgrading to Big Sur that are posted I get lost fairly quickly. It would be easier if someone would just say do such-n-such and it shows up. Any body have a magic fix like that?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Nov 22, 2021 9:26 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 25, 2022 10:56 AM in response to Redhawk1612

I was having a similar problem. My external HD was no longer mounting after upgrading to monterey. I found the following stackexchange helpful.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/293390/macos-cant-mount-exfat-external-drive

In particular. You can use terminal to check if fsck is blocking the external drive by typing

ps aux | grep fsck

ps - is a command for listing running processes. | is a pipe and grep looks for any results containing fsck.

In my case it returned 2 results. One the actual command I just typed and the other...

root 406 2.8 0.0 33932708 18704 ?? U 1:42PM 0:10.89 /System/Library/Filesystems/exfat.fs/Contents/Resources/./fsck_exfat -y /dev/rdisk4s2

From this I could then run the kill command. Immediately following my drive mounted.

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Answer 2

Maggot

Level 2

209 points

Nov 26, 2021 8:06 AM in response to Redhawk1612

Exactly. You’ll lose whatever you have on the drive. If that matters to you (and it seems like it does) you may have to wait for a fix, or dump you data onto a third party drive and then reformat the afflicted drive. If your experience mirrors that of hundreds of other Monterey users who’ve had the same problem, you’ll be able to mount your G-DRIVE on another Mac running Big Sur with no difficulties at all.

Here’s hoping a fix is forthcoming.

Maggot

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Answer 3

Redhawk1612 Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 23, 2021 7:15 AM in response to lllaass

Shows you how much I know, had to do a search to learn how to do a screen shot. Looked in Disk Utility and drive wasn't there. Could Sleep Mode be causing problems? Before Monterey never had Sleep pop up in upper right corner before. I shut off Sleep Mode for hard drives in power saver. Restarted and there it is in the Disk Utility.

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Answer 4

lllaass

Level 10

210,459 points

Nov 23, 2021 7:36 AM in response to Redhawk1612

Post screenshot with the two daughters of what you highlighted

It does not seem to be formatted in APSF format since that formate would show a container like you Apple SSD does.

The G-DRIVE also shows Utilities which tends to indicate it has not been remormated.

There was one previous discussion here on problems with G-DRIVES with Monterey but I can't find it now.

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Answer 5

Redhawk1612 Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 23, 2021 8:22 AM in response to lllaass

It doesn't make sense to me that it worked fine and dandy in Big Sur and now in Monterey it doesn't. If it's not formatted now, then it wasn't formatted then. Being that it is external drive, upgrading too Monterey shouldn't have changed anything with the external drive, so it makes me think that some how Apple changed the way it sees/reads external drives in Monterey. Having a hard time raping my head around this.

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Answer 6

lllaass

Level 10

210,459 points

Nov 23, 2021 12:31 PM in response to Redhawk1612

Redhawk1612 wrote:

If it's not formatted now, then it wasn't formatted then.

It is formatted but what format? Typically they come formatted in a typical Windows format. Like in FAT32 since both windows and Mac can read and write those.

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Answer 7

lllaass

Level 10

210,459 points

Nov 23, 2021 12:33 PM in response to Redhawk1612

Redhawk1612 wrote:

Windows would need drivers updated from time to time. Does Mac have something similar?

Drivers are not required for standard drives. Please post the information of the two partition/daughter of the G-DRIVE as previously recommended

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Answer 8

Nov 23, 2021 3:54 PM in response to Redhawk1612

"G-DRIVE mobile USB-C" = Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

"G-UTILITIES" = MS-DOS (FAT32)

The Mount button for each does not appear to be disabled. Highlight each greyed out drive and click Mount button they should both mount.

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Answer 9

Maggot

Level 2

209 points

Nov 25, 2021 2:36 PM in response to Redhawk1612

Redhawk, there are several threads in several different subforms about this. Monterey has hosed compatability with many external drives, mostly (it seems) USB-C externals. Your issue is replicated over and over. Please contact Apple Feedback and tell them that you have the issue. The more people that speak up, the more likely it is that this will be addressed by Apple in a subsequent update.

But yes, you have, sadly, joined the club. (Note: you can use an Apple brande USB-C to USB-C charge cable to connect your drive, and it should mount — but this is NOT a fix. Your transfer rates will be abysmal. Apple needs to issue a real fix, so please don;t mark this "solved.")

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Answer 10

Redhawk1612 Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 25, 2021 3:54 PM in response to Redhawk1612

Got this from a G-Technology forum with a bunch of people with the same problem, this is the response one of them finally got back from Western Digital. Doesn't reformatting erase everything? Also I have an Intel system and other people on the forum have Mac Intel systems that have the same problem. I still believe it's a problem on the Apple side with the OS 12.

External drive compatibility with macOS 12 Monterey on Apple M1/M1X systems and iPads

Answer ID 31963

External drive compatibility with macOS 12 Monterey on Apple M1/M1X systems and iPads

Important: Currently there is an issue with Apple M1/M1X systems running macOS 12 Monterey where the system will run into a loop when attempting to mount some external drives formatted in HFS+/APFS

ISSUE:

Device does not mount on the desktop but does show in the Disk Utility

Device mounts but folder cannot be opened. Clicking on folder results in spinning ball.

Device cannot be formatted using Disk Utility. Format will begin but hangs and never completes

SOLUTION:

Bring device to another compatible Host system, either Intel based Mac, Previous macOS version or Windows and format the drive exFAT.

Note:

Apple has been notified of this issue and we look forward to a resolution soon.

Published 10/28/2021 | Updated 11/05/2021

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Answer 11

Egatz

Level 1

20 points

Dec 6, 2021 9:30 AM in response to Redhawk1612

I've spent days driving Apple Tech Support crazy with this issue. It seems this information hasn't filtered down to even Senior reps when my case number got escalated. How is that even possible?

Can anyone confirm formatting as exFAT on an older MacOS will solve the problem?

Thank you very much.

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Answer 12

Jan 20, 2022 7:27 AM in response to Redhawk1612

I had the same problem.

Previous laptop: 2019 Macbook Pro with Catalina. Time Machine disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This is a brand new Western Digital My Passport.

When I plugged the disk into a new 2021 Macbook Pro M1 chip, the drive wouldn't show up at all. I couldn't see it in disk utility.

After doing some research and wondering what the issue was, I plugged it back into the older Catalina MacBook and it showed up right away.

I ran First Aid, but it didn't find any problems.

I changed the longer USB-C cable from the aftermarket one that I had purchased, back to the one that came with the Western Digital disk in the box and the Time Machine disk showed up right away.

It was the cable!!!

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Answer 13

Jan 20, 2022 8:06 AM in response to davidkillingsworth

Not all USB-C cables are the same. It is very confusing and this article goes a long way to explain it. On top of this you may have a USB-C cable that doesn't actually meet the specification it claims to meet. This is especially true with off brand discount cables. This also occurs with HDMI cables which have similar confusion and many poor quality cables on the market.

https://tidbits.com/2021/12/03/usbefuddled-untangling-the-rats-nest-of-usb-c-standards-and-cables/