External hard drive not mounting after Ventura update

I've had the same issue with 2 different Seagate NTFS drives. With my first drive (a 4TB drive), I spent a fair amount of time troubleshooting the issue last night, and while the drive was still functioning in Windows, I accidentally made things worse when trying a terminal command from a support forum, which now means the drive isn't accessible in Windows either. I've had to purchase recovery software for $70+ to recover my files now. I was beginning to think that the issue was with the drive, but today I connected my 1TB Seagate NTFS drive and had the same issue - drive not connecting via Paragon NTFS for Mac, even after updating to Ventura 13.4.1. and updating Paragon NTFS to 15.9.329. The drive is accessible in Windows. I can however access my Seagate Expansion drive.

I am bitterly disappointed with Apple on this one:

• The issue means I can't access my older Seagate drives
• The issue also resulted in me inadvertently corrupting my most important drive, trying to troubleshoot something that is clearly the result of a poor update from Apple.
• I now have the painstaking task of recovering all 1TB of files on my corrupted drive.

My recommendation if you have this issue, is to backup your drive, format it for Mac OS, and then copy the files back onto it... because who knows when the drive won't work on Mac anymore.

because who knows when the drive won't work on Mac anymore.

Everybody should know when an NTFS drive won’t work anymore. It won’t work every time your third-party software breaks which appears to be very often.

If you must use the drive with Windows, either use ExFAT, or install software on Windows to allow it to read/write a Mac format.

Try 2 (TWO )cables: [USBC to USBA] + (USBA to USBC) for Mac book pro!

I could NOT believe it but it worked for me !

Please post your results

YES ! OS Ventura 13.4.1 External WD drive and Sandisk thumb drives will not mount. No problem with other brands.

Instal paragon segate.

It doesn't seem to be a universal problem for all Mac users on Ventura. I've had absolutely no problem and the number of people here with the problem in in the hundreds. What will several million Ventura users out there.

If the NTFS software isn't doing it for you then find some that will.

macOS 13.4 was released a couple of days ago. Have you updated to it? If not you should.

Maybe try WD customer support

It is May 7th and I am having this problem with my Western Digital 8TB external. I tried it on my ancient Mac Pro desktop and it worked fine. No wires or plug issues. I am confident it is the Ventura update which I carried out about a week ago. Buzz kill.

If this is a really old hard drive that was originally formatted as HFS and not HFS+ Journaled, then I don't believe Ventura will mount it. It certainly won't mount any drive formatted with a Linux or otherwise incompatible filesystem.

I contacted Seagate support and they got back to me within a day.

You’re correct. The recent Ventura update affected my external hard drive mounting process too. Look at a person named Pennypoets’ solution in this discussion group. I hope it helps you. 😊

Hi. This helped me half. Just like some here, my HDD are being mounted only in read mode. I have two 4TB WD Mypassport Ultra and both are in NTFS format. I would like to know if I can format one of the HDD to Mac format and copy all the data from my other HDD (NTFS) to the Mac formatted HDD and not lose any data by doing so? After this I'll format the NTFS HDD to Mac format too, since I don't use windows products. I was either stupid or lazy to use both HDDs in NTFS format since I don't use them across different platforms.

dgerman wrote:

Is there a way, perhaps using Windows or Linux, to tell if SSD came with NTFS support?

Almost every consumer drive on the market comes formatted as NTFS. You have to reformat the drive to put it in a useable state.

This is to anyone really... anyone know if Apple plans to fully address this? Suddenly reformatting every external drive I own is definitely not an option, especially when they only have been for mac for the last few years.

@oldToad ..."number of people here with the problem in in the hundreds..."

NumberOfUsersOnVentura *

% migratedFromMonterey *

% usingTimeMachine *

% continuingToUseMontereyTImeMachineExternalSSD *

% knowToLookHere *

% clicking MeToo = smallNumber