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

Custom Access means that there are Access Control entries set for that directory. ExFAT has no permission capability, so I'm not sure that you can apple ACLs to it, either.

Generally, when looking at Sharing & Permissions on a FAT drive, the information can be ignored as it has no permissions.

Copy/paste this command into Terminal, leave a space after, and drag the external volume into the Terminal window. It will fill in the path to the drive. Hit return.

ls -dle 

It should end up as

ls -dle /Volumes/drivename

It will return a line with the POSIX permissions and directory information and the ACLs on subsequent lines in the form:

0: <acl string>

Post the command and response, here.

Hey there! One of my coworkers is also having the same issue with her external G-Tech Raid. When mounted to her previous system running Big Sur she sees all files on the drive. When mounted on her system that has been updated to Sonoma she is missing more recent folders and files. We have tried multiple things to get it to work. But clearly, its an OS issue because everything was working on her new system prior to updating to Sonoma. The drive is also formatted in EX-FAT. Looks like the only option is to downgrade the OS

DaniMS wrote:

totally. Spent 2 hours yesterday with Apple support and was useful. I just realized that can mount the disks through disk utility in safe mode but can't in normal one. Apple asked me to reset from factory settings my mac but don't wanna do it because it'll be a nightmare to get everything back.

That would imply you may have a third-party system modification installed that is causing the problem. You wouldn’t need to reset it, but just uninstall the system modification. The only drive-related modifications I’m aware of are the NTFS drivers that come bundled on drives. It is well-documented here that they will prevent mounting of drives.

Use softwareupdate in Terminal.

To list available installers:

softwareupdate --list-full-installers

To download a specific version,

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer —-full-installer-version 13.6.2

You can create a boot usb stick from terminal, can you download the version of OS you need?

Im not sure what the full terminal command is but it’s not hard to find, asking it to fetch all the software updates should list those compatible versions with your mac.

When you are in recovery and you are asked to download the OS, I assume it only wants to give the last version of Ventura or perhaps the version you were shipped with.

So many updates…

I have an issue with an ExFat Lacie 6big drive on 14.2.1.

During a writing process I got an error, after this event copying files or creating folders became unreliable. Disk aid found and repaired errors, but this did not fix the issue. During backup some folders were unreadable, currently and seemingly non-existent (but formerly existing) folders causing reading errors.

I have been ignoring an error message from Lacie RAID manager software that it can not access removable volumes. When I first saw this I rebooted, reinstalled, rebooted, granted full disk access, rebooted, did everything again, no success, but since disk operations seemed successful I just clicked on “don’t show this message again”.

An even bigger irresponsible act from my side that I also ignored the “not initialised” status of my RAID. It was initialised when I got it 4 years ago, and again, operation seemed fine, initialisation would have removed all my data, and this was just one of a few storages where this data is kept.

I tried with my Macbook (which was never connected to this drive prior these events), same result.

I had no mounting issues. Some data was lost for sure, but maybe a few dozens of GB-s out of 18 TB, and nothing that has no backup.

Seagate/Lacie eventually replaced my drive, since it was under warranty. I just got my replacement, it mounted. It is formatted MacOS journaled, working fine at least for simple file write/read. It is initialised out from the box (the first one was scraping for a week when I started working with it).

The Lacie RAID manager software still throws the error that it can’t access the removable volume. And the same with my Macbook, so this is not device specific from either side.

Seagate blames Apple, Apple gave me an appointment with a senior advisor for tomorrow. Since my iMac Pro is now 5+ years old, well beyond any AppleCare, I think either they know very well that what is wrong, or they don’t exactly know what is wrong, but they are sure that they did something really bad, and they must sort it out.

My conclusion is that buying a 7k iMac Pro and a 6k Lacie 6big does not ensure safety for your professional digital possessions. I am working on genetic sequencing data, and also digital images and videos, that literally cost thousands of work-hours and hundreds of thousands of US dollars. This can be gone in one second on any device. And not just because of material fatigue or physical damage, but because of stupid management rushing software development, and trying to save money on testing and quality control.

I had to downgrade from Soonoma to Montrey surprisingly only thing those OS bring is the new apple silicone features.

if your looking to downgrade just copy your home folder to a external drive from time machine backup. and copy it to the home folder of your user in any mac os. should sync up everything.

Unfortunately this happened to me too, three days ago I've updated my iMac Intel 2021 to Sonoma and that broken my WD external hard disk, so it wasn't recognize anymore by any computer. By chance, after trying multiple time with SOS of utility Disk, I've run a recovery software with another Mac (Maverick) that forced to read the damaged HD and get it readable again. I'm now trying to downgrade the computer to the original Catalina. I've spent a lot of hours trying to figure out how to solve this mess and I'm disgusted that Apple released an update so harmful and they didn't fix the issue after months. I will buy a Windows for my next computer.

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

Henry, has Apple stepped up and solved your problem? Just wondering? I have a 2023 Mac Mini M2 came with Ventura and an 2T external SSD formatted APFS day 1. Blazing fast, faultless performance, until Sonoma came to town. I rebooted and my 2T external was no where to be found. Tried it all, nothing worked! Used repair console to clean install Ventura 13.6.3, rebooted, lo and behold, my lost but now found 2T SSD had appeared with my Time Machine backups, with which I restored all my personal stuff.

You can only create conspiracy theories and explain to yourself that it may be caused by a hardware defect of the new processors or for economic reasons, it is cheaper to create a new system than to improve it and correct its errors. But it cannot be denied that I have never experienced so many errors with the Apple operating system since 1994 when I use it. And Apple doesn't improve them at all.

As new FEATURES appear in 14.2.1 (and we certainly hope the updates DONT cause NEW ISSUES....

i have just had a solid Open Office document refuse to save due to Sonoma claiming the document was opened by an UNKNOWN USER...

i read and write to that document daily...

maybe its time for some Class Action towards Apple for the unbelievable grief so many of us are being served all because we have been taught to believe UPDATES FIX THINGS ...when clearly , with Sonoma, they do not.

One Used to be able to rely on Apple products....

i am so very close to going UBUNTU!

I can no longer work with an external drive for my audio sample libraries. The library management program refuses to use any external drive to manage, add, or delete any samples or sample libraries. The management program now only wants to use Users>Shared as the only option. I bet you that a lot of software developers have complained to Apple already because of this.

Upon the addition of an external TB4 hub the external drives have become more stable. I am still in the process of reloading my audio samples libraries onto 2TB drive. I'll let everyone know what happens when I finish.

Having the same issue for an external drive formatted to exfat that was used on a Macbook Air that hasn't been updated in about a year. Recently tried using on a Macbook Pro updated to 14.3.1. Exfat can't be accessed through disk utility (greyed out). Have Windows 11 installed on it also. Windows recognizes it.