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

Beyond frustrated I have spent almost two days trying to trouble shoot this issue, my drive went from working to not working in a matter of two days. Thought it was my ports now I understand it was the update. This is not a good way to keep people in the ecosystem, force is never a good strategy.

I have similar issues, Apple and Lacie pointing to each other. Spent hours with both supports. Had been waiting for an answer for months. All my devices are under warranty, Lacie even replaced a 6000 USD Big6 drive. The issues are still not completely resolved.

I think it is grossly irresponsible of Apple to allow the Sonoma mess to continue...

Apple has done nothing to correct this from what i read daily...

So many users wasting time with an OS that Should Have Been Fully Functional BEFORE it was released to the masses...

But Apple didnt do their due diligence and subsequently released an abysmal mess of an OS..

How many of us are still willing to tolerate this?

I know i am not...

It is Not our place as users to troubleshoot the buggy OS.

And we surely are not being compensated by Apple for all the lost time and in some cases lost Data all due to some coding that they seem to have no clue as to how to fix it.

shameful...

wonder if this will get pulled down as it is not singing praises, rather stating Facts.

There are numerous reports about an annoying bug that wipes file versions in iCloud Drive. The issue occurs when your turn on the storage optimization.

A fix is actually in preparation; it should be available within a couple of days.

Any idea where we can see the 14.4.1 release notes from Apple? I remain unconvinced that it's safe to use my exFAT drives (two Crucial 2TB SSD corrupted plus a 128GB MicroSD) until I see it specifically called out as fixed. Is there a link to a bug tracker? Thanks

Hi! I just recently upgraded from a MacBook Air 2017 to the new MacBook Air M3 and I also have this problem. I have an external drive for a few years now where I storage essentially old pictures and important documents from university. The drive was already formatted once since I had it before migrating to apple, I used it with my windows PC; it worked well with my Mac Air 2017 since then. Now that I've upgraded to the Air M3, I just can't read the external drive, I even tested the USB-C adaptador I bought, it works well with PEN drives, it just doesn't read my external drive :( I also tested my drive on my surface PC and it did not accuse errors. I don't know what to do.

Like you , I use Mac for professional use.

the only way I found is abandon Apple and switch to windows .

if you use compatible sw you are almost ok. Sonoma is a very buggy os and windows 11 is, now superior now.

More stable.

if you like me use Apple sw you have to found a valid alternative .

for example in music I abandoned logic pro and pass to S1.

must requires time but Apple is not more for professional use now. The target of costumers is another.

sell your macs and buy a windows machine for work

I feel 100% stupid. I just purchased a Macbook Air M3 as I like the computer I use for my photos to be fast as I've over 300GB of photos and videos from 2005 onwards. I use an ExFat drive so I can access both files from Windows. I have been doing this since 2005. Because of this issue - I can copy files to ExFat on my mounted drive BUT just not using Photos. It advises it can't find enough space. Then while doing this process the iphotos library used to create these files in the originals/masters folders so I could access them via a file path in windows, no biggie. But now I realise that has changed I think some time ago and I'm spending the day exporting my photos library. I don't use my windows computer as much as I normally just work with photos and the internet. So I feel I've purchased an expensive computer just for internet browsing. At least I now don't have to fork out for Apple Care as I no longer value this computer. I'll just buy an updated Windows machine at the end of this year.

I can copy files to ExFat on my mounted drive BUT just not using Photos. It advises it can't find enough space. Then while doing this process the iphotos library used to create these files in the originals/masters folders so I could access them via a file path in windows, no biggie. But now I realise that has changed I think some time ago and I'm spending the day exporting my photos library.

The Photos Library must be on a Mac formatted drive. It uses features other file systems do not provide.

While the path is different, you can still get to them from Finder.

Oh thank you so much. This was my mistake. I was checking the file folders and the date modified had 2021. While I didn't check the 0 folder where all the files are, I checked the last folder F and was like ARGH all my files are not there. This has saved me much time.

Missy13 wrote:

Oh thank you so much. This was my mistake. I was checking the file folders and the date modified had 2021. While I didn't check the 0 folder where all the files are, I checked the last folder F and was like ARGH all my files are not there. This has saved me much time.

It appears to be ordered by the first character in the unique ID name. Those are necessarily randomized, so knowing which folder they are in might be difficult. There used to be a Show in Finder, but that doesn't seem to exist anymore. Exporting may be the only functional way to get to what you want. Drag and drop works to export, though.

All my disks now are readable however I still cannot update my Photos library which is in ExFat - I receive there was an error attempting to free up disk space for import. I'll wait 2 more months then maybe resell his M3 Macbook air.

Has anyone experienced problems with internal dives? I am a video producer running a mac pro (3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W) with an internal SSD RAID. Since upgrading to Sonoma, the machine does not recognize or boot up this drive. I have a lot of current projects and sensitive data on this drive and I am currently dead in the water. I have tried some of the suggestions in this thread short of going back to Ventura which could be a major pain for me with this system. HELP!

Hello I'm having the same problem. External Hard drives work elsewhere but seem to be not getting enough power on my computer. And this is a sudden change which happened the day I upgraded to sonoma.

Any help?

Right there with you raine212 w/ respect to photography and videos. Photos/movies

saved to several external hard drives, NONE of which will mount. Have to use older MacBook High Sierra which really sucks, b/c I know it will crash and burn soon (i.e. internet links already crashing). My new MacBook Pro Sonoma, 14.4.1, cannot be restored to a version it never had in the first place, so am screwed no matter what.

Apple and Apple Support, FIND AND RESOLVE THIS ISSUE.

[Edited by Moderator]