4TB T7 Shield Stopped Mounting

My 4TB T7 Shield stopped mounting to my 2022 M2 MacBook Air (16GB, Ventura 13). I checked Disk Utility and I now see a "Container disk5" in which my SSD "AJ's Drive" is within. I have tried "First Aid" numerous times and it only passes on the main disk while failing on the container and volume. There is some very important data on here as I own a creative media agency; it includes wedding footage, business shoots, and so much more. I have also tried to use terminal to mount the disk and I had no luck (readOnly or not). Shipping it out to a repair shop is my last idea, so I wanted to see if anyone here knew anything about this issue. Down below are a few pictures and error messages.


USB External Physical Disk - First Aid Message:


APFS Container - First Aid Message:


APFS Volume - First Aid Message:


Pictures:


MacBook Air (M2, 2022)

Posted on Mar 4, 2024 1:24 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 5, 2024 10:20 AM

Unfortunately if First Aid is unable to repair those errors (warnings can usually be ignored) even after several attempts, then there is nothing else you can do to repair the volume since there are currently no third party utilities available which can repair an APFS volume (Disk Warrior is working on such support, but it will likely be some time before it is released with the ability to repair APFS volumes....they would be the only third party utility I would trust or pay for to repair a file system on a Mac). You can try using data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery to attempt to recover the files.


FYI, if you have critical files you don't want to lose, then you need to make sure you back them up. The more important the data, the more backup copies you should have. Apple includes Time Machine backup software with macOS, so there is no reason not to have a good backup. TM can even be configured to back up external drives.


Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 5, 2024 10:20 AM in response to Alex_Masterson

Unfortunately if First Aid is unable to repair those errors (warnings can usually be ignored) even after several attempts, then there is nothing else you can do to repair the volume since there are currently no third party utilities available which can repair an APFS volume (Disk Warrior is working on such support, but it will likely be some time before it is released with the ability to repair APFS volumes....they would be the only third party utility I would trust or pay for to repair a file system on a Mac). You can try using data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery to attempt to recover the files.


FYI, if you have critical files you don't want to lose, then you need to make sure you back them up. The more important the data, the more backup copies you should have. Apple includes Time Machine backup software with macOS, so there is no reason not to have a good backup. TM can even be configured to back up external drives.


Mar 6, 2024 5:21 AM in response to Alex_Masterson

It is also possible that the part of the drive that Disk Utility is trying to repair is actually a failure on that part of the drive. The fact that it will not mount would indicate that the damage is in a critical area. So, it could be possible that the drive has failed at that location that is trying to be accessed.


The other possibility is that the firmware in the SSD has been a bit over zealous (or has a bug) in its internal attempts to keep the drive optimized and wiped that region. The error "error: (oid 0x403f25) om: bt: found zeroed-out block" could be a likely indicator that that may be the case. I have not heard any wide spread issues of this on Samsung devices but has occurred on other manufacturers SSDs.


One note is that you will need a second drive large enough to copy all the data that was on that drive. Recovery on SSDs can be questionable since depending on what actually happened, the firmware on the SSD could be quite happily be zeroing out the files (need to be done before a location can be written to since unlike HDDs, you cannot simply overwrite an SSD location), so recovery could be limited.


And to re-iterate what @HWTech mentioned, any critical data needs a backup and in a business scenario multiple backups on different devices with at least one backup offsite.


This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

4TB T7 Shield Stopped Mounting

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.