Drive issues after macOS 13.2 update

Have the same issue foolishly updated yesterday, and now my Promis Pegasu R32 and one of my Qnap TR-004 do not mount. Drives show up in the disk utility as individual drives and Promise Utility also recognises them but cant get them to mount. One is my TimeMachine Drive one has tons of the Videos Im working on I need now.

i have an external SSD, which i use connected to an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock. it used to mount fine with 2 partitions on it (apfs TM, EXFAT). that doesn't work anymore and i think the last time it did, it was before my update to 13.2.

i've tried accessing from Safe Boot, and the TM partition appears, mounts, etc. however the EXFAT does not (it is Ghosted in diskutility). rebooted back to normal, neither partition will mount. they will not even appear in diskutility.

i tried connecting the external SSD directly to the mbp's thunderbolt ports, as well as via the OWC dock but not working. have also tried using another user account on my mac, and have also tried resetting NVRAM (twice).

the last thing i decided to do is completely wipe the SSD (in safe boot) and make a single APFS partition on it first, then add another partition (tried EXFAT, then tried MSDOS). they do not mount in safe boot.

had to lose my TM backup stored on the SSD to try this, but reformatting the drive it appears did not do anything but reveal that 13.2 has issues.

is Apple aware of this ? i've seen numerous posts doing a google search, as well as in this community - many unresolved/unanswered.

it seems that for you they are accessible in du. mine will not even appear in du.

it appears in safe boot, not with normal non-safe boot.

i've been on the fence about reverting back to macOS 12.5, maybe i'll do that and just stay on it for a while.

nevertheless i am curious to find out what is actually causing this problem ... there must be some dameon or script that is broken in 13.2.

it is not just with this one SSD that i have the issue, i am trying to get a flash drive to mount and that will not either.

it is counter productive and prevents me from using my external drives to copy/move and access files i need.

Exact same problem on Mac Studio M1 max with OWC mini stack. The SSD mounts and works normally. The 8TB hard drive does not mount or show in the disk utility. Mounted ok and accessible after safe boot but resumes problem when followed by a normal restart. worked great in 13.1 Need Apple to fix this!

really sorry to hear ...

unfortunately for me, after trying a dozen or so things, I reverted back to macOS 12. external drives now mount via USB-C or external dock connections.

I have an intel mbp 16. when I was on 13.2, plugging in a drive I noticed something strange - the drive name showed up in one of the USB items listed in System Information (in the USB section). but really lost about getting it to appear anywhere else on macOS.

a shame, for all those needing their external drives to do their work and having this function broken after a software update. this type of thing is nothing new. and I always did not like jumping on the latest the instant it comes out - for this reason.

unfortunately, for me it took a complete wipe of my Mac, then installing macOS 12 from a USB installer (booting into recovery). and even more sadly for me my time machine backups were on the external drive that did not want to connect and one of my troubleshooting choices was to wipe it clean. but I would not have done that if I didn't have 2 duplicates of my backups and personal data elsewhere on my network.

end result is that I am just about doing a fresh/clean install and adding back my docs/apps/settings all manually.

but I intend to stay on Monterey for a while, probably will not bother with any newer macOS for my mbp.

if you have a tm backup on one of your external drives, and you cannot wait for the developer to figure it out and push a mac update ... maybe you might want to do the same as I did and then restore from the tm backup.

I really would have wished for an application or software suite that can take a verbatim picture of my mac's SSD - exactly - and back it up. some open source apps used to be available that could do that like clonezilla. but the state of newer OS's and encryptions built-in are making solutions like that impossible to offer to users.

2017 iMac 27" - Upgraded to Ventura 13.2 on 1/30. Kernel panic crashes started immediately after upgrade. Disconnected external drives and crashes stopped. Western Digital 6 TB My Book drive used for Time Machine is completely bricked. Tried Disk First Aid in normal mode, safe mode, even tried connecting to my 2013 iMac at home running Catalina. No luck. The drive actually crashed my home iMac with a kernel panic. Tried connecting to office PC. Drive not recognized. Thank God this was only a Time Machine drive!

So what to do now? I'm taking my machine back to Monterey. Never thought something in the OS could render an external drive useless. It'll be very hard to EVER trust Ventura.

The 8 TB hard drive in OWC mini stack will now only mount (2 TB SSD on same connection works fine) after a fresh install of Ventura 13.2 and then only the first startup after that no show in safe boot, normal start, or replugging the cable. tried different new user login, cache cleaning and removing all login items; no joy! Etre shows no major problem. frustrated

Did all the steps Phillips recommended. Disk did not mount in Safe mode or with a different user login. Être pro found no major problems. The only way to get the disk mounted is to do a fresh install of Ventura 13.2 and then it only mounts on the first login after that it fails to show; would go back to 13.1 if I could figure it out.

Apple "Engineers" suggested it's an issue with a drive in the Promise (despite all drives showing up and promise utility and system diagnostics test shows they are all good)

So I still have a M1 MacBook Pro on 13.1 installed Promise Driver, and Promise works as expected, so definitely a 13.2 issue not a Promise issue. It's quite incredible that Apple pretty much has no way to downgrade a system, yet they release purely tested system updates that render a big part of my set-up unusable.

I documented this on film; now I will update the MacBook to 13.2 and would think the same issue will occur again.

I managed to get a terminal command to download Ventura 13.1 as it's otherwise not publicly available to users

Here is the Terminal command to create a macOS 13.1 installer in the Applications folder: sudo softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 13.1

Not for the first time Apple f%$# this up nicely so far three days of work and deadlines missed because of this BS

I'm having success mounting my OWC Ministack (though the SSD never fails to mount) by either running a fresh install of Ventura 13.2(only mounts after the first start) or now just unplugging and re-plugging the Thunderbolt cable on the back of the Ministack. Neither Safe Mode or any other" supposed fix" showing up online right now seemed to work for me. Joshua (tech) at OWC is very aware of the problem and we've been conversing for days. Originally I was going to return the Ministack (thinking that was the problem) until following these forum postings, I found that external drives of every ilk were experiencing this problem with Ventura 13.2

I am having the same issue. I have a Toshiba 2TB external drive that I use for Time Machine. It's been working perfectly until i upgrade to MacOS 13.2 on 3rd February. Now I cant see the drive in Finder, and when I access Disk Utility I can see the drive greyed out, but cant mount it - i just get the spinning multi coloured circle. I have tried everything on the internet to get it to mount but nothing works.

Interestingly I have a usb key 124 GB which is plugged in and that is still accessible - its like the developers have done something to prevent the external drives from working (the cynic in me says because its not apple so they have added restrictions to force us to buy their products only).

THIS IS DEFINITELY CAUSED BY 13.2 - THE APPLE DEVELOPERS NEED TO WORK OUT WHAT THEY HAVE BROKEN AND FIX IT. LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING A 13.2.1 UPATE VERY SOON!!!!!!!

nice to know that a fresh install of 13.2 worked.

i personally dont like how macOS 13 is changed vs the previous versions, they made it resemble their iOS platforms to accommodate Apple’s chips in their computers, but mac computers are still not touch screen capable.

either OS version you choose, up to you. i noticed they improved some underpinnings in 13 that were chronic in 12, but it never fails that new bugs appear when that transition takes place.

they say macOS is good, but software clutter-wise is on par with other OS’s and you still find yourself with some old creaks and cracks left in it, even after a major software jump.

in recent years i found my other installations of competing brand OS’s hold up better in this regard.