WD Elements External Hard Drive will not mount on M2 Mac Mini

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WD Elements External Hard Drive will not mount on M2 Mac Mini

My WD Elements External Hard Drive 18TB will not mount to my M2 Mac Mini. I have reset my Mac, unplugged all cables, reset, etc. and tried a bunch of combinations with no success. It’s a new drive and I formatted it as exFat on a windows pc and can confirm it continues to load up and work appropriately on the windows pc. The WD drive is detected by my Mac mini and is shown in the Disk Utility and in the WD Discovery software, but it says it is not mounted. When I attempt to mount it and even have waited a long time, it doesn’t mount. I have a feeling this is the result of the latest Sonoma update, I’ve had other problem with USB devices not working properly and then resetting the Mac seems to get them to work again. Any suggestions on how to get this to work? This is my first Mac and it’s a bit concerning that I seem to continue to have random USB issues and others seem to as well after recent Sonoma updates.

Mac mini, macOS 14.5

Posted on Jul 7, 2024 4:36 PM

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Answer 1

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Brian-3 Author

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Jul 8, 2024 1:28 PM in response to BDAqua

Yep I formatted to NTFS on Windows and then it was recognized on the Mac. I think formatted it as exFat on the Mac and it now works for both. Thanks! I would have never thought of that. I would assume the same file system would be formatted the same way regardless, but apparently I’m missing something. It’s stranger because I’ve formatted my other external HDs on my windows computer and they worked fine on the Mac.

Well it’s working and I’ve noted that for future use. Thanks!

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Answer 2

BDAqua

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Jul 7, 2024 6:44 PM in response to Brian-3

In System Report>Hardware>USB, how much power is it drawing?

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Answer 3

BDAqua

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Jul 8, 2024 11:23 AM in response to Brian-3

I think you're going to have to Reformat it on the Mac to ExFAT or another formatthen back.

Did Windows® use GPR or GUID?

If I go to partition it appears to be able to partition a portion of the drive into some other format (not sure how that’s possible if it won’t mount.

It has to unmount it to Erase or Format it.

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Answer 4

Brian-3 Author

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Jul 8, 2024 10:02 AM in response to BDAqua

I can hear it spin up originally when it’s first plugged in and then I can still hear clicks as though it’s spinning/doing something in the background. I plugged in another external hard drive into that port and it loaded up (see below picture). I’ve tried plugging this into other ports including a thunderbolt one with an adapter with the same results. I know the drive works on windows and it’s formatted and clearly the Mac is recognizing those things, it’s just not mounting. I’ve used “first aid” and it doesn’t detect any problems. When I click “mount” in Disk Utility it doesn’t change anything.

If I go to partition it appears to be able to partition a portion of the drive into some other format (not sure how that’s possible if it won’t mount.)

I want to keep it as an exFat drive some that I can use it for Windows or Mac.

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Answer 5

Brian-3 Author

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Jul 8, 2024 10:16 AM in response to BDAqua

Yep I tried it with another external hard drive and the port works. (See below picture.)

I even tried the hard drive in a thunderbolt port with an adapter just now with same results.

I know the drive works (on windows) and it’s formatted as exFat, the Mac is recognizing those things too. It just doesn’t mount even when I try to manually using Disk Utility. I’ve tried “first aid” as well and it doesn’t find any errors with the drive.

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Answer 6

Brian-3 Author

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Jul 8, 2024 11:40 AM in response to BDAqua

Okay I’ll try and reformat it. I am unsure of the method Windows used to format it, I just used the typical properties option to do that. So if I format it to NTFS then I should in theory be able to format it on the Mac to exFat and hopefully it’ll work? Is that the route you’re suggesting?

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Answer 7

BDAqua

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Jul 8, 2024 2:12 PM in response to Brian-3

Great news my friend! :) 👍

I agree they should, but as always "Standards" are open to interpretation.

Another thing is I think some manufacturers put a special block or two on the HDDs that throw MacOS for a loop, until they get overwritten by some other Format.

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