Unable to access External Drives and Disk Utility after updating to macOS Sonoma.

I am having EXACLTY the same issue!

When I shut down the computer or reboot it takes ages to mount, this only happens when the mac reboots or shut down, I know this is normal behavior when you unplug a hard drive without ejecting correctly, but now is happening every time I boot or restart the Mac.

If eject the drive on macOS and plug in again it shows up instant, but if shut down the computer takes ages. It seems its going like a process to check up if everything is okay with the drive and then it mounts, At the moment I find that the best solution is to eject the disk manually in macOS before restarting or shut down. if I do this it appears instant on reboot or start up

You might want to do what I had to do. My exFAT drive failed to mount with Sonoma. A LaCie d2, 10 TB. Yikes. Even though the drive couldn't mount, I was able to get to the files using EaseUS data recovery software, $100 for a month. That let me copy over the files to a new drive, which I had formatted in APFS. Took 10 hours for that software to scan the 10 TB, but it worked. I found I couldn't just copy over folders but had to dig deep into the file structure and copy individuals files which I was happy to do since they were my only copies of video files. My new plan is to make 3 copies, each on different drive, of essential current client projects.

Recent Sonoma update said something about fixing problem with encrypted drives not mounting. But I don't think my drives were encrypted.

Everything is working fine now that I have drives formatted in APFS. So Miguel, I think as long as your drives are still mounting that you get another drive and format it in APFS then copy all your files over there. I believe that should solve your problem. If you keep having to eject drives improperly you will end up corrupting files and be unable to mount the drive at all.

emmyluty22 wrote:

You might want to do what I had to do. My exFAT drive failed to mount with Sonoma. A LaCie d2, 10 TB. Yikes. Even though the drive couldn't mount, I was able to get to the files using EaseUS data recovery software, $100 for a month.

Why didn't you just use the Windows computer for which you chose to format the drive ExFAT?

My issue is that I have all my home directories formatted HFS+ on a Raid partition. It is HFS+ because there is software that can move and resize HFS+ partitions but not currently aware of software for APFS partitions. This was done years ago. Now with Sonoma it’s all broken. Worked fine in Ventura.

I had to go back to Ventura. External Hard drives keep getting this issue, and now i found that Mac crashes when i put a YouTube video in Picture in Picture in Safari and browse the web at the same time! I repeated this issue twice and i was like “no way I’m not having this” 

Since i use Macs i think I never had this bad experience with a new OS! Disappointed !!

My hard disk is a one touch hub that can be used directly on a Mac, since I bought it, it always reads before I update to Sonoma, I thought it was already in apfs format out of the box, now how do I want to format it, it doesn't even recognize.

I agree it is not ok but I couldn’t wait for another update hoping it would fix the issue. Updated the external raid volumes to APFS and at least now apps are working again. So it’s definitely an HFS+ on external disk problem. Bummer. Apple rushed this out the door.

I read the notes on the update. It refers to fixing issue about encrypted drives not mounting. None of my drives that failed to mount were encrypted. So I'd say Apple still hasn't dealt with the exFAT problem.

I am still having the problem on 14.1.1 that when I shut down or reboot the Mac, the drives on boot up only show up after a few minutes meaning that they were not ejected correctly! When it is a shut down or a reboot.

this again, not happening on Ventura with the SAME drives. On Ventura they appear instant after boot up

No, it's not okay. APFS is not for HDD. So still waiting for fix.

Depends on the purpose of the drive. If you are editing large files often, then they'll get fragmented and file access will slow. Otherwise, there's not an issue.

People, it doesn't matter what format it is in. I have been around the houses with support regarding this very same issue. I first came up against it in Ventura on an 8 TB backup disk formatted to APFS for Time Machine. At that stage I always kept a backup off site which could be called upon should the need arise. My computer since downloading Sonoma with no longer drives in the usb 3.1 bus. If I look under computer information the drive is listed but it will not show anywhere else or mount, forensic software I purchased from Seagate show me everything else but this drive just seems to have moved to the cloud in the sky. I wouldn't mind but everything with 'apple' is extra and certainly on this side of the pond they are not cheap.

Thanks for your information. A big problem here. For me it was exFAT drive not mounting in Sonoma. I had to use EaseUS software ($100 for one month's use) then could get into the drive and copy over files. Apple needs to take care of these problems or at least acknowledge and warn people.

Best of luck.

Yes a good tip I have read about if you're in exFAT the Sonoma won't mount the drive: find a Windows PC, use their repair option as people say that fixes things, but also I would then copy the files off to a new external drive formatted in APFS, and then you can for sure use that drive on Sonoma. APFS.

Olá pessoal, tudo bem?

Recentemente comprei meu M2 Pro e logo atualizei para o sistema Sonoma.

sou fotógrafo e utilizo vários discos externos. Logo que comecei a trabalhar já tive os problemas de não reconhecer os discos externos, fiz por várias e várias vezes os reparos no Windows mas logo que voltava usar no Sonoma dava o mesmo problema.

Essa tópico da comunidade me salvou, já estava ficando louco achando que eram meus discos ou os cabos com defeito.

A solução foi fazer o Downgrade para o Ventura já que preciso usar os discos no Mac e no Windows.

Muito Obrigado.

Yeah, it goes same with my Mac mini M2 Pro, whenever I connect my 4 tb hard drive it takes lot of time to connect with Mac mini, now I'm regret why I updated the Mac OS Sonoma,

[Edited by Moderator]