Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!
Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >
Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >
I have an external ssd drive that I used for 2 years with my MacBook Pro. When that computer died and I switched to a MacBook air, it no longer recognizes the drive, and gives the helpful solution advice: reformat the drive and lose my 1 terabyte of pictures.
MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
Since your new Mac is an Apple-Silicon-based Mac notebook, it may be blocking accessories to which you haven't given permission.
If your Mac asks you to allow an accessory to connect - Apple Support
Allow accessories to connect to Mac - Apple Support
I doubt if this is the problem based on the statement that the computer is suggesting that you reformat the drive. I don't think it would get to that point unless you had already permitted a data connection.
It could be that the drive is damaged, have you always ejcected it properly?
Try and connect the drive to your new Mac and type disk utility in launchpad. Is the drive readable there? You can try and perform disk first aid to see if you can repair the disk without having to re-format it
the SSD works perfectly fine with android and windows machines. when I plug it into the MacBook Air some sort of a window opens for about 1/20th of a second and then closes again before I can get any indication of what it might say. the disk utility doesn't register that there is anything other than the Mac hard drive
Libby101a wrote:
If it works with windows and Android devices that means it's formatted for X Fat and not APFS for your Mac. You would need to reformat it to work with macOS.
macOS can read from, and write to, exFAT-formatted volumes, out of the box. If you were planning on using a drive mostly or exclusively with Macs, you might prefer to format it using APFS or HFS+, but having the volume being an exFAT one wouldn't keep it from working properly in the Finder.
macOS can also read from NTFS volumes (though it cannot write to them with the aid of third-party filesystem drivers).
That suggests that if this drive is completely unreadable, there is more than just exFAT or NTFS formatting going on.
the "allow accessories to connect" instructions worked. I assume the permissions bubble is what was popping up and disappearing in a fraction of a second...making it useless.
thank you for your help
Be sure there is no SSD security software on the drive from the supplier. Also if the drive is not formatted to APFS it may not be recognized as reported by some users.
If it works with windows and Android devices that means it's formatted for X Fat and not APFS for your Mac. You would need to reformat it to work with macOS.
MacBook Air will not recognize external ssd drive
