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

I was able to access my external drives by using ports other than Firewire. In my case, I used USB 3.0 and eSATA > USB C.

Updated to Sonoma on my MacBook Pro M1 and things seemed ok. Then I plugged in both my 'big' RAID drives. exFAT formatted, one is 88TB and the other is 60TB.

I can see them, I can 'open' them but it's missing a couple of main/large folders 14TB worth of data files. The folder just doesn't show. However, the remaining space on the drives 'seem' ok i.e. the 60TB shows 15TB free which is about right so something is there, and the 88TB drive shows ~37TB free, again, it seems thats the right amount of free space. But hitting the > on each folder just drops down and doesn't expand.

Nothing is readable on the Sonoma MacBook M1. and I doubt when My M3 arrives it'll read them either.

I plugged the 88TB drive into my wife's PC and did a 'Scan and Repair' even though Windows said there was no need. Ran it and it said it was ok and I could access everything on my drives.

So, Sonoma, as people have said, has ruined the ability to use these drives until I get another drive,

I'd need one 88TB to copy the 88TB data to, then format the OLD exFAT 88TB and copy the 60TB to that, and then I can format the OLD 60TB and have that for when the other drives fill up.

Oh, follow the link and 'downgrade' back to Ventura and wait to see if Napa? is a better macOS...

/Disappointed in Cupertino...

M1 MBA 2TB NVME SSD is not supported by macOS Sonoma, its mount once and when eject again its impossible to detect by OS, if its connected with some other OS like android in mobile then again connecting with Sonoma.

If I tried to copy large file its stoped and crashed and stoped working after around 25GB but this drive worked before without any issues in Ventura, after several updates in Sonoma upto 14.3 wont fix the issue, So I installed Ventura again drive working perfectly fine, I'm back to Ventura but when compare to Sonoma I felt my MBA M1 works speed and I think Sonoma limit the speed of M1

Here’s what tech support had me do. Unplug all external drives. Reboot in safe mode. All of a sudden disk utility opened and we did first aid on the Mac hard drive. I think we did first aid on one of the external hard drives too. Everything works now. Hope this helps

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.

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.

I have a 16TB WD enterprise-class external drive, I connect it to the Sonoma system via an external USB 3.2 casing, the drive is often not recognized by the system and the disk utility application hangs while reading and scanning it. The only thing that helps is connecting to a PC and a system, e.g. WIN 11, and scanning and repairing the disk. And then I connect it to the MAC computer and the disk is visible. I have the impression that it is the Sanoma system's fault and that it somehow damages the disk, but repairing it under Windows helps. The disk is then visible for several connections and then it is invisible to the Sanoma system again. This relationship occurs on my AIr with M1 and iMac 27 2019. EXFAT file system

I had to buy data recovery software called EaseUS for one month, about $100 w taxes etc. It could then look into my unmountable drive.Took about 10 hours to scan 10 TB. I could then see the files and pull them out to copy onto another drive (that I had formatted APFS). Once I have all the file transferred I could do clean erase on the old ExFAT drive to reformat into APFS.

The solution with the brand-new lacie rugged, 4 TB external was to;

1. delete and remove the “useless seagate” tool kit.

1. With apple utilities , partition the drive in to 2 partitions. It would not allow me to just directly erase and reformat in to APFS.

3 Now I could erase and reformat the new partition into any APFS.

4 restarted computer

5 now I could erase and format other portion too.

6 restarted and merged the two partitions.

7 erased and reformatted the partition again into APFS encrypted.

No logic but now it mounts and works as it should.

no more disappearing files… it seems

🤞

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.

THIS WORKED FOR ME!

Here is what I did to get my 4TB LaCie mechanical drive to be recognized by Sonoma 14.2.1. I call out my mechanical drive because I also had an SSD drive not mount, but I think it just bit the dust.

When I got my mechanical drive, I formatted it Mac OS Extended (Journaled). To my understanding, this is fine formatting for a drive that will be used solely on a Mac and is compatible with most versions of Mac OS.

For this explanation, I will speak to what I did for the mechanical 4TB drive because my SSD drive never mounted on anything—it's a goner.

I started by finding a machine running a much older version of Mac OS. I happened to have an old laptop running Mojave. After it took ten years to boot up, I hooked up the drive and it mounted, but it wouldn't index the drive. I could see root folders but nothing inside. I opened Disk Utility and saw data on the drive because it showed how much space was occupied on the drive (in my case, 612 GB). I didn't attempt to repair the drive.

I then closed Disk Utility, right-clicked the drive icon, selected Get Info, went to the bottom of the window, and toggled the Sharing & Permissions carrot. From there I clicked the lock icon and unlocked the sharing and permission preferences. I then check the box next to Ignore ownership on this volume. I then clicked the lock and locked the setting.

After that, I restarted the laptop. Once it fully rebooted, I went in to double check that the box was still checked next to Ignore ownership on this volume. I had to perform this step (check the box and restart the laptop) a couple of times, but it finally took and remained checked. Once the setting was retained, I shut down the laptop running Mojave and moved over to my machine running Sonoma.

On the laptop running Sonoma, I made sure to remove items launching at login. I didn' want anything impeading the mount of my hard drive at startup. I then hooked up my drive and it mounted.

I hope this helps information is helpful for you.

A FEW NOTES:

I came to this realization becasue ALL of my current and old Time Machine drives ignore ownership and they had no issue mounting on my Sonoma laptop. So, I figured if form follows funtion, I replcated the same settings on the drive not mounting and it worked.

I am seeing a lot of callouts regarding ExFat drives, APFS and other sorts of drive formats...I can't speak to those specifics, but I would attempt to perform the simple (althought it took me hours of trial and error to figure out) process above and hopefully you'll be up and running in no time.

Cheers!

I now don't know what to do... I have had two USB-C Crucial 2TB SSDs corrupted by Sonoma 14.1.1 - possibly recoverable but I have lost all confidence in using them on my MacBook Air - these were being used to try to recover a SanDisk 128GB MicroSD card from a Nextbase Dashcam - I wasted hours trying to figure out what had happened to that - I now suspect it was Sonoma that corrupted it too. I've had cases where this and the Crucial's would show as unmounted but then find First Aid/fsck would be needed on next mount... 

we need to know when it is safe to use exFAT on Sonoma else at least for me I am going to have to switch to a W11 laptop for anything I need to do with exFAT... something I never thought I'd say that W11 would be a better and more reliable option... please be upfront and explain what is happening and when it will be fixed - I see many others with the same issue. Thanks

I saw in the release notes for 14 this:

• The implementations of the exfat and msdos file systems on macOS have changed; these file systems are now provided by services running in user-space instead of by kernel extensions. If the application has explicit checks or support for either the exfat or msdos file systems, validate the applications with those file systems and report any issues. (110421802)

[Edited by Moderator]

to the people who have lost recognition of their external hard drives when using Sonoma OS: this also happened to me, and neither apple care or the apple store could help. they both told me the HD was fried. Fortunately, I have a friend who suggested hooking the HD to his computer using Linux OS, and there was my HD on the screen, with all it's contents. I emptied that HD into another, then reformatted it, and when I plugged it in to my new mac mini 2, it was again recognized and works perfectly. hope that helps--if you can find someone who has Linux and knows how to use it.

Hi All.

Seems like MacOs Sonoma comes with the new security that can block the external Drive if the user missed to click the allow button in the beginning or sometime the external drive has been encrypted with the time machine backup from previous MacOs or the drive has NTFS bit locker from Windows OS, and there is no option to unlock because the drive already disappear from disk utility.

We found the simple solutions that might help.

Try to open : System Settings --> Privacy & Security --> Allow accessories to connect --> and change the option from : ask for new accessories to be : always

Good Luck everyone.

All the Best.

MR & MRS FIX

Sydney Australia.

Update - I just formatted my Kingston SSD on Android (because only there it behaved well and worked normally with files, on Windows I had problems reading this SSD), and then connected it to MacOS Sonoma 14.4.1 after Android - it finally recognized it and allowed me to format it to exFAT - and now it works and connects instantly.