Trying to mount old external drive with USB B to USB A cable

What computer did you use this drive with before when you set it up? If this drive is partitioned & formatted from 2006 or before, then it may not be readable on the recent Macs. If that is the case, then I believe you would need a Mac running macOS 10.14 or earlier.

If your MBPro is an Apple Silicon Mac, then that adds even more complications since some older devices may not be compatible with an Apple Silicon Mac. I have personally encountered this with a device and have seen other reports on this forum which reported first gen Samsung T5 SSDs had issues (2nd gen work).

Would the drive be encrypted?

Do you know the file system that would be on this drive?

What is the exact model of your MBPro and version of macOS? You can get this information by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About This Mac".

Do you have any older Macs which work or a Windows PC? Or have access to one?

Of course this drive may have some issues after sitting all these years. I have encountered drives that won't spin up properly or have the drive heads move properly after sitting so long.

Do you see the physical drive in Disk Utility or the USB section of the Apple System Profiler? Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.

Edit: Also disconnect all other external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.

Hi,

USB-B to USB-C cable available at around $8, so you should get it and see if external drive works, since simpler connection is better than complicated connections.

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Printer-Braided-Compatible-Printers/dp/B086ZGYK6K/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BAT9W24UAWN&keywords=USB-B%2Bto%2BUSB-C%2Bcable&qid=1704449868&s=computers-intl-ship&sprefix=usb-b%2Bto%2Busb-c%2Bcable%2Ccomputers-intl-ship%2C236&sr=1-1&th=1

Keep in mind that Windows won't be able to read the drive without having the proper third party drivers installed so it won't show up in Windows File Explorer. Windows, however, should be able to see the physical drive and its partitions in the Disk Management app which at least tell you the drive is communicating properly.

With a drive that old, I don't know if it would support SMART which is a feature drives have which report on the drive's health. You can try checking the health of that drive using GSmartControl on Windows (it has a portable version of the app, so it can be run from the Downloads folder without installing anything). Feel free to post the complete health report if you would like me to review it.

I was actually thinking of using a bootable Knoppix USB stick to try to access the contents of this drive if you had a standard PC available (unfortunately Linux support on the 2016-2020 Intel Macs is very spotty which is why I did not suggest it). Knoppix usually has everything built in for being able to access older drives like this as I used it years ago for exactly this purpose.