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

I've had problems with two external hard drives for some time.

The MacBook Pro M1 recognizes them and I can work with them, but it does not allow you to expel them or turn off the computer if they are connected (one or both).

It also doesn't allow me to apply "First Help" in Disk Utility.

It's as if a program was working with them and didn't allow them to be expelled, first aid, or turned off the Mac.

I just did a test on another old MacBook, with an operating system prior to Sonoma and the hard drives work perfectly.

It seems that it is Sonoma 14.3.1 that gives the problem.

A solution that worked for me:

Connect the ssd using usb-c to my Android phone, after a few secs just unplug it and connect it to the mac and problem solve, not the best, but at least this allows you to keep working and just loose a few secs every time

Update; 4 march 2024. I had been using Disk Utility every time when restarting this Mac Mini (Sonoma 14.3) if I wanted to access my 4TB Western Digital drive or my other drive that I use for back ups (4TB Seagate). However, the most recent time I wanted to back up, I had to step away from the desk just after plugging up the Seagate and came back after a few minutes to find that it had loaded up okay, without running Disk Utility. I then plugged up the Western Digital which didn't immediately load up but again, after a few minutes, it appeared and I could access as normal.

I guess I was just too impatient, or maybe I'm just fortunate, that my drives are now all loading normally as long I give them time.

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.

FIX FOUND! I wondered if the issue was power to the ext drive. ( OWC Elite Pro ) I have an iMac M1 2021 with 4 USB sockets. Since I had my keyboard plugged into socket 1 ( looking from the back left to right ) I had been plugging the drive into socket 3 as I have another device into socket 2. I disconnected the keyboard and plugged the drive into socket1. VOILA! the drive showed up on my desktop and in Disk Utility. As an experiment I plugged the device ( an integrated amplifier ) that had been in socket 2 into socket 4 and it no longer showed up on my computer as it had before! I tried to find information about the power to the ports but didn't find anything useful in a cursory look. Hope this helps.

A friend of mine suggested that I use a powered usb hub and that seemed to do the trick.

Nothing fancy, I had an Atolla USB-3 Hub with 5 ports and a cable which attaches to the computer.

I now see any device attached to the hub on my Mac Mini.

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.

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.

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!

For me in solving this issue on a MacBookPro M1 was:

System settings > Privacy & Security > Scroll to "Security"

"Allow Accessories to connect" to "always"

That's all

Best regards and good luck :-)

Ingo

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?

Yep this is happening on my M1 mac pro which is running Sonoma. It loads the external harddrive and then removes it. Doesn’t even unmount so it gives itself the warning of unplugging devices without unmounting it first. Anyways logged in through Safemode and had no issues being able to see and access the external drive. Note its a WD box with a straight usb-c interface. Ran the disk utility and even reformatted it to be apple files system to be sure. Nope still forcefully ejects the drive if it’s plugged in before log in and doesn’t see it if I try to plug it in. But safe mode has no issues detecting and loading ext hd.

Photographer here! I had the exact same issue when I upgrade to Sonoma. I would HIGHLY recommend download NTFS for Mac. It's a free program that has at least allowed me to be able to mount my externals and work off them in Lightroom and Photoshop. I'm unable to create new folders or move things around on some of my externals when mounted, however, it does allow me to move the files onto new externals so the data is not lost.

[Edited by Moderator]

If it helps sparks any ideas, using 'log stream | grep 'IOUSBHostFamily', managed to get this log which happens as soon as I connect an external ssd that """is not working""".

2024-05-30 11:34:01.970375+0200 0x115a7  Default   0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) usb-drd0-port-ss@00200000: AppleUSBHostPort::enumerateDeviceComplete_block_invoke: enumerated 0x152d/0583/3108 (USB Storage Device / 1) at 10 Gbps

2024-05-30 11:34:01.973966+0200 0x11c41  Default   0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC@(null): AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC::allocateDownstreamBusCurrentGated: Client <private> is requesting 896mA wake and 0mA sleep for port 1

2024-05-30 11:34:01.973989+0200 0x11c41  Default   0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC@(null): AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC::allocateDownstreamBusCurrentGated: Client <private> port 1 has EDT current overrides of 3000mA wake and 3000mA sleep

2024-05-30 11:34:01.973996+0200 0x11c41  Default   0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC@(null): AppleUSBHostResourcesTypeC::allocateDownstreamBusCurrentGated: Granting 896mA wake and 0mA sleep based on override for port 1

2024-05-30 11:34:01.974201+0200 0x11c41  Default   0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) USB Storage Device@00200000: IOUSBHostDevice::setConfigurationGated: AppleUSBHostCompositeDevice selected configuration 1

2024-05-30 11:34:01.980203+0200 0x885   Error    0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBIORequest: AppleUSBIORequest::complete: device 1 (USB Storage Device@00200000) endpoint 0x81: status 0xe0005000 (pipe stalled): 0 bytes transferred

2024-05-30 11:34:01.984139+0200 0x11c43  Error    0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleT6000USBXHCI@00000000: AppleUSBHostController::createStream: device <private> pipe <private> streamID 32 completed with 0x0

2024-05-30 11:34:01.985216+0200 0x11c43  Error    0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleT6000USBXHCI@00000000: AppleUSBHostController::createStream: device <private> pipe <private> streamID 32 completed with 0x0

2024-05-30 11:34:01.986539+0200 0x11c43  Error    0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleT6000USBXHCI@00000000: AppleUSBHostController::createStream: device <private> pipe <private> streamID 32 completed with 0x0

2024-05-30 11:34:10.261640+0200 0x6be   Error    0x0         0   0  kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBXHCIStream: IOUSBHostStream::abortGated: device 1 (USB Storage Device@00200000) endpoint 0x83 stream 31: aborting 1 requests