Unable to mount a WD Elements External Drive formatted ExFat on Mac

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Level 1

5 points

Unable to mount a WD Elements External Drive formatted ExFat on Mac

I have a WD Elements external drive and all of a sudden, it's not visible on my Mac. When I go to Disk Utility, I can see the drive, but when I attempt to mount the drive, I get the message 'Could not mount "Elements". (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49244.)

The thing is, while I cannot do anything on my iMac when in MacOS Sonoma 14.2.1, when I take my iMac and boot into Windows, the drive works like a charm.

Other details... I formatted the drive on the iMac, exFAT so that seemingly eliminates the possibility that it was formatting wrong / incorrectly for the Mac.

Any suggestions?

iMac 27″

Posted on Jan 20, 2024 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

Ronasara

Level 6

15,531 points

Jan 21, 2024 2:26 PM in response to devensky

Sometimes when running Disk Utility, and receiving a report that the repair failed, it can be necessary to rerun Disk Utility multiple times before an ok report is received. One other thing, was the drive formatted using the vendor's maintenance app? If so, that could be the cause of your problem. Those maintenance apps almost always cause problems. We should only use Disk Utility to reformat a disk.

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Answer 2

devensky Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 21, 2024 1:27 PM in response to HWTech

First, thank you for responding...

1) I've tried running First Aid on the drive and I get a message File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

2) I ran DriveDx and there aren't any issues; I attached the log

DriveDx Log

Again, the strange thing is that if I boot my iMac in Windows, it works just fine. The only thing I can think of that possibly changed is I might have had a MacOS update to Sonoma v14.2.1

I'll try booting into Safe Mode.

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Answer 3

devensky Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 21, 2024 4:21 PM in response to Ronasara

I've run Disk Utility multiple times and the drive was formatted with Disk Utility originally. Again, it worked for me for about 1.5 weeks and then it just stopped being recognized. Aside from a potential macOS update, nothing happened that I'm aware. If it failed to work on Windows from the same iMac (using dual-boot), I'd say there's a problem. There's something in macOS that is preventing me from recognizing the drive that is recognized just fine on the same machine when booting up Windows.

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Answer 4

Jan 21, 2024 4:46 PM in response to devensky

devensky wrote:

2) I ran DriveDx and there aren't any issues; I attached the log

The external HD looks good.

I'll try booting into Safe Mode.

Let us know how this works out.

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Answer 5

Jan 21, 2024 12:41 PM in response to devensky

Have you tried running First Aid on it? Even if First Aid says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll through the report to see if there are any unfixed errors listed. Or used Windows to run a file system check on the drive?

You may want to check the health of the WD drive by running DriveDx (free trial period) and posting the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. You will need to install a special USB driver in order to attempt to access the health information on the external drive.

You may also want to try booting into Safe Mode to see if you can access the drive.

Make sure to disconnect all other external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.

Has anything recently changed?

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