external SSD drive for MacBook

waltlange1 Said:

"external SSD drive for MacBook: My Disk Util app could not mount my SSD drive, but it did recognize that a drive was attached and emitted a numeric error message upon attempts to mount, format, or repartition the drive. Info did indicate that the drive was initially in Ex-Fat format. One reason I'm skeptical that the formatting is the real problem is that I also use chips in the SD lot which are in Ex-Fat format and they have no problem."

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See if your Disk is Failing:

Verify your Drive: Repair your Disk in Disk Utility

See if your Hard drive is Failing:

1. Boot: into Recovery Mode (Hold Down: [command + R] upon boot)
2. Select: Disk Utility
3. Select: the Drive
4. Click: First Aid button

waltlange1 wrote:

Inexpensive 14TB external SSD drives are now available on the market. I ordered one from Amazon and it failed right out of the box when I tried to connect to my MacBook with the supplied cable.

My question is whether anyone else may have had success connecting a large-capacity external SSD drive to a MacBook? If so, was it a plug-and-play experience, or was some tweaking needed? Also, does the MacBook support 14TB capacity drives?

No, inexpensive 14 TB drives are not available on the market.

There are no inexpensive 14 TB and 16 TB drives available.

Not working ones.

Lots of scams, though.

Those cheap SSDs that do work probably contain a microSD card (and those would necessarily either be much smaller than this 14 TB “offering”, or set up with custom firmware that lies about the total storage capacity and just trashes the data), and probably with performance not that much past a slow hard disk.

Among various reviews of these “product offerings”:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-bought-a-16tb-external-m-2-ssd-for-20-and-got-what-i-deserved/

waltlange1 Said:

"external SSD drive for MacBook: Inexpensive 14TB external SSD drives are now available on the market. I ordered one from Amazon and it failed right out of the box when I tried to connect to my MacBook with the supplied cable. My question is whether anyone else may have had success connecting a large-capacity external SSD drive to a MacBook? If so, was it a plug-and-play experience, or was some tweaking needed? Also, does the MacBook support 14TB capacity drives?"

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14TB may take months to format.

Format Type:

You'd need to have the same format type. So, if it is APFS, then only an APFSformat would be readable. If it is not APFS, then it would not be readable, and vise versa

waltlange1 Said:

"external SSD drive for MacBook: I no longer have the failed disk in question as I've returned it to Amazon. I did however want to find out if anyone else had success using a 14TB SSD external drive on a MacBook. Reply Helpful"

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Getting a Refund:

Go through Amazon, if you think you've been scammed. These are Apple forums --which play no role in Amazon returns.

waltlange1 wrote:

I no longer have the failed disk in question as I've returned it to Amazon. I did however want to find out if anyone else had success using a 14TB SSD external drive on a MacBook.

I routinely use and support Macs connected to RAID arrays built of 12 TB or 14 TB HDDs for storage and backups. 48 TB and larger configurations. They work fine. They operate at HDD speeds, obviously.

As for current SSD pricing… Samsung has a 30 TB laptop-sized SSD for ~USD$6000, and another vendor has a 15 TB model for ~USD$3000. The Samsung 870 QVO is among the best of the available SSD deals, and that’s ~USD$300. For 2 TB.

For a technical review of one of these “deals”, see the link in my previous reply.