2012 Macbook Pro with retina display won't recognize my External Hard drive.

OK - I think I got it. Just bought a 3TB usb3 Seagate GoFlex and it wouldn't mount on my 2012 MBP 2.7 i7. Fired up Win 7 in Parallels, plugged it in again, and it showed up. Shut down parallels - no joy. Found the "MacBookProMid2012SoftwareUpd1.0" update and installed it - now the drive works fine. So, you may want to give that a try... Hope this helps!

psedog wrote:

USB3.0 works for me in Montain Lion, but not Lion. It's obviously a driver issue. Also, if you have a partition that is bootable, you can hold option on boot and you'll see your drive pop up there proving the hardware is fine.

When the bootable partition popped up in Startup Manager, did you actually try booting it, and if so, did it boot?

An update released today by Apple takes care of this problem. If you have a Macbook from Mid-June 2012 your USB 3.0 ports will now work.

hellyy wrote:

An update released today by Apple takes care of this problem. If you have a Macbook from Mid-June 2012 your USB 3.0 ports will now work.

With the update installed, is it possible to boot from a USB 3.0 bootable partition at USB 3.0 speeds?

I haven't tried it myself since my USB 3.0 port wasn't working until 5 minutes ago either 😉 but I do know that I have a Thunderbolt external hard drive and you can certainly boot at Thunderbolts speeds. I am guessing that you would certainly be able to once you have updated.

hellyy wrote:

...I am guessing that you would certainly be able to once you have updated.

The reason I'm asking as that I'd guess otherwise. The support for the USB port that allows booting at USB 3.0 speeds has to running before the software which appears to be installed by the update gets loaded as part of the OS booting process; that is, it needs to be in firmware. I've been raising the question of USB 3.0 booting on a number of threads complaining about USB 3.0 problems and have yet to get an answer from someone who actually succeeded.

has this update worked for anybody else? my hard drive still doesn't appeard in finder or disk utility

it does show up in "about this mac" under super speed bus but gives very little details:

External USB 3.0:

Product ID: 0xa006

Vendor ID: 0x0480 (Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.)

Version: 0.01

Serial Number: 201109255XXXX

Speed: Up to 5 Gb/sec

Manufacturer: Toshiba

Location ID: 0x14a00000 / 19

Current Available (mA): 900

Current Required (mA): 224

The update certainly helped me i just updated my macbook pro today and try my 1TB Seagate HDD and it works perfectly.

FatMac\>MacPro wrote:

When the bootable partition popped up in Startup Manager, did you actually try booting it, and if so, did it boot?

Yes, it did boot, but it didn't complete the boot as the drive was a backup of Snow Leopard from my 08 Macbook.

All seems to be fine in Snow Leopard now, though. Even before I applied this update my 3.0 drive just magically started working (at SS speeds as well).

Solorboy123 wrote:

has this update worked for anybody else? my hard drive still doesn't appeard in finder or disk utility

it does show up in "about this mac" under super speed bus but gives very little details:

External USB 3.0:

Product ID: 0xa006

Vendor ID: 0x0480 (Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.)

Version: 0.01

Serial Number: 201109255XXXX

Speed: Up to 5 Gb/sec

Manufacturer: Toshiba

Location ID: 0x14a00000 / 19

Current Available (mA): 900

Current Required (mA): 224

Have you check Disk Utility yet? If it's in System Profiler then it should pop up in Disk Utility and maybe just needs to be mounted. Your drive could be having mounting issues. If the drive is corrupt, then OSX won't mount it when you plug it in.

As i mentioned before my drive works if i use a Micro USB cable but does not work if i use the new Micro USB 3.0 cable so i doubt the drive is corrupt. my laptop does recognize other 3.0 drives that i tried at work such as Western Digital My passport drives (USB powered/FAT32) and a seagate agent(wall powered/MAC journal) drive but not the tosiba(USB powered/FAT32).

i've read before that Toshiba drives require more Amp than standard external Hdd but the Mac system profiller that i posted above says the opposite. oh well i guess i just have to use turtle speeds or hope that mt. lion fixes everything

yeah so just updated to mountain lion and this drive still doesnt work on my Mac computer using USB3.0 cable.

i'm pretty sure this issue is with Toshiba so just to warn everyone out there DO NOT BUY TOSHIBA CANVIO 3.0 hdd it wont work on the new macs

Sorry - there are just some models of drives that just don't seem to play nice with Macs. If I were in the market for a new USB 3.0 external drive for 2012 Macs, I'd probably check out LaCie first. Or even one of heir Thunderbolt drives.

Clinton

clintonfrombirmingham wrote:

Sorry - there are just some models of drives that just don't seem to play nice with Macs. If I were in the market for a new USB 3.0 external drive for 2012 Macs, I'd probably check out LaCie first. Or even one of heir Thunderbolt drives.

Clinton

hahahaha not to be mean but thunderbolt drives are too crazy expensive wih the cheapest i have seen is 200 dollars(buffalo tech). curious if i can complain to toshiba for a refund since the box mentions it works with mac and windows without any drivers.

thanks anyways clinton