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

I have been trying to revert to Ventura, as described in several posts in this thread. I hope it will let my new Thunderbolt SSD work properly. Fortunately, my older (slower) drives are okay so far.

But when I try to restore the most recent version of Ventura from Time Machine in Recovery Mode, 13.5.2 (922G91) from an 09/27/23 backup, I get the message

"You must use Migration Assistant to transfer data from this backup. Reinstall macOS if necessary and then use Migration Assistant to transfer data from your backup."

I tried to download a new copy of Ventura from the App Store to make a bootable installer disk, but there I am told "This installer cannot be used from the version of macOS you are running."

There is no option that I can see to download anyway. There is a link to an Apple Support page about making a bootable installer disk, but for that don't you need the Apple installer?

Am I missing a step somewhere?

After completely formatting the disk and installing a clean Sanom installation, the 2 Thunderbolt connectors stopped working completely and I cannot connect an external monitor or external drive.

Can you create an installation disk using an application such as Install Disk Creator.app or other applications if you have the knowledge to use a terminal?

I run a Sabrent 4 bay external that does indeed act up on occasion, like individual drives dropping off.

Sadly, as the Mini i have only has 2 USB ports i use an Powered extender Hub (that works flawlessly with Monterey on the older Mini) that also had to host my Scarlett 18i20 audio interface (which also ran flawlessly on Monterey).

HAd top move the Interface to its own USB port as it seems the OS cannot handle it when it is on the Hub..

It will show that it still has Sync-Lock yet it will not pass audio - unless its in the Unique USB.

I see so many complaints about the ability of Sonoma to simply do its job..

Many regrets for "updating" - have wasted Hours with the new "features" as so many of us have.

Wish Apple could truly Upgrade rather than sending a new OS out to the real users - who find the problems their highly paid Engineers dont.

I dont like being a Guinea Pig, I want a product i can believe in again.

I agree with you 100%. This is BS worthy of Windows 8. I pay premium dollars for Apple hardware "That just works." And I end up spending days trying to get an external SSD drive working again that was working perfectly fine on Ventura 13.6. I'm lucky it was relatively easy to restore to Ventura. Sonoma is dead to me!

Why on earth should anyone who paid good money for superior Apple hardware have to go through all this, just to get a external drive that was formerly functioning perfectly to work again with a brand new, shiny, state of the art OS like Sonoma?

My 2TB IMAC is a year old, everything worked fine until the upgrade to Sonoma, I can't see any of my saved files to my WD external hard drive, have they been wiped out? I'm in need of a solution to save my files and clear up some space on my HD again, so will Apple resolve this, or will all my saved files be lost forever?

I paint and do photography work on my computer and need to know what the best solution for saving and not losing my work.

I'm not as tech Savy as some, but I can muttle my way around. Thanks!

2 Tips that I have found that have helped me.

Having upgraded my Mac from a 2019 Intel iMac with a 2tb Fusion Drive to a Mac mini pro with 500gb storage I needed an external SSD for my files .The spontaneous ejection when the Mac went to sleep is an issue that Apple has not solved . Perhaps they prefer you to buy large amounts of iCloud storage instead or maybe the Sonoma is, in reality, still in Beta form.

Also I had an old 3Tb WD Red mechanical drive which I had put in a Ugreen caddy for a mirror storage where speed was not an issue .

I purchased a crucial x9 external ssd and attached to the Mac mini with its usb c connector. To stop it spontaneously ejecting when the Mac went to sleep I tried disabling sleep mode in system settings. This did not always work so I installed a free program from the App Store which has solved the problem. Why Apple could not incorporate such functionality I fail to understand. Maybe it will appear secretly in a future update!

The WD red was another issue which was not solved . This would eject and then fail to mount through Disk Utility. First aid showed no issues with the disk and certainly swapping out the USB cable had no effect. However I tried various formatting protocols - APFS, Mac journalised and finally ExFAT. The ExFAT seems to be the only stable one for this particular drive which now seems rock solid once more.

My external HDs drop off after about a minute or two. It says Disk not ejected properly. Currently running a Black Magic 4 external drive unit with 3 drives. They drop off on by one. They also stopped working with Time Machine back up. The data is still on the removable drives. Sonoma just forgets the drives are there and chucks them off. Also, disk utility doesn't recognize these Samsung SSDs either. I thought that it may be the hardware, but on further inspection it seems that this is happening on a regular basis. I don't want to spend the countless hours going back to Ventura and reconfiguring. Please send help!

Although i 'seem' to now have a stable external drive tree....i did connect my Media Player today and watched it get kicked out over and over again...

Will Apple Ever Release a Bug Free OS?

Will consumers ever be free from doing the troubleshooting Apple should have done BEFORE releasing an OS?

I find it disrespectful to those of us who have spent buckets of dough on a product that is Supposed to be awesome...yet it annoys us due to it NOT being ready to truly release

I have a similar issue that's driving me nuts! Two external disks, both in exfat format that often just freeze when trying to eject them! I just cannot get them unmounted even using diskutil force unmount command. They just get stuck ejecting or sometimes even hang the whole machine! Only thing that works is restarting the machine but then it keeps happening again! Never had this issue before Sonoma.

Macbook pro M3 Max, Sonoma 14.3

i really have to say im extremely disappointed in apple as of late... you spend over 3k on a laptop which only has thunderbolt ports and you have to buy an adapter or usb c hub for everything, additionally they release a new os (mac os sonoma) which makes exfat drives stop working. I find it incredible that Apple software engineers make over 200k and come out with non-working products and no patches in sight at least for right now smh... guess ill be forced to downgrade back to mac os ventura and hopefully i can use my external drives again

I really have to say im extremely disappointed in apple as of late... you spend over 3k on a laptop which only has thunderbolt ports and you have to buy an adapter or usb c hub for everything (usual money grab), additionally they release a new os (mac os sonoma) which makes exfat drives stop working. My model mac is the 2019 16inch last intel model loaded with an i9, 32gb of ram and 1tb ssd and i had to bring it in for service 3 times to get it repaired and eventually it got swapped out and this new one has mostly the same issues. Myself also being a software engineer I find it incredible that Apple software engineers make over 250k and come out with non-working products and no patches in sight, i even tried downloading the latest Sonoma version (14.3) and still nothing smh... guess ill be forced to downgrade back to mac os Ventura and hopefully i can use my external drives with exFat partitions again and it is so sad that it has to come to that... now i'll be forced to do a full format and re-install of the OS and then re-transfer all my data. HUGE INCONVENIENCE! Check your work before coming out with software updates with cosmic issues. I have to say after all these issues i most likely will not be buying any Apple desktops or macbooks ever again! I will keep everybody updated here if the downgrade resolves the issue

**** right they caused this with the update I can not get my data off my external either and it’s your whole life well not no more after this the Mac will have limited use and I will go back to writing and mailing to have record of what I do in the future if it has to be done by these machines that now have control of our lives how long are we going to put up with this conditioning I for one am going to stop doing what they tell me and I will be telling them we don’t need you

With the amount of unhappy folks out here that have been battling Sonoma i am surprised Apple hasnt done ANYTHING.

I have gotten to a point where my Mini is not crashing daily and my drives are ok...

BUT,

i cannot mount my Surfans media player, computer cant find it at all..

I will chime in and say i am thoroughly disgusted with Apple and their inability to get this fixed.

one can only imagine the amount of complaints they see about Sonome, just wish they would get off their arses and correct the issues..

One would think a new release would Solve things...not with Apple...

I thinks Apple has made restriction in using over 1TB external drive in macOS Sonoma, because same enclosure supports 500GB and 1TB MVME SSD but for 2TB doesn't detect the drive after 1st recognise, but the drive works well in Ventura in same machine and other OS.

Please anyone need to find patch or apple will do it future updates