USB Flash Drive Not Mounting After Mavericks Update

Quick temporary solution.

1. Open Finder

2. Select "Go" from the menu bar and look for your "Computer" [Shift-Command-C].

3. You will be 🙂 IF your USB flash drive is in here and IF NOT 😟.

4. IF 🙂 select and drag your USB drive to devices and it will appear there. Writing and reading to this device are resumed, IF NOT follow more elaborate procedure recommended by the other people in this post.

5. Solution is temporary for me, because I had to repeat this procedure, whenever USB flash drive was ejected.

I use 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3, Mackbook Pro, with OS X, Version 10.9.2 (Maverick)

Even I've the same problem where my USB flash drive doesn't mount on the system at all. The surprising part for me is that the system mounts almost all USB drives of brands like: Sony, HP, etc. and also external hard drives of WD, Seagat, but just doesnt mount USB of Strontium.

When I plugged the same USB flash drive of strontium in OS 10.8.2, it worked just fine, however in 10.9.2, it doesnt mount.

really baffled as to where the problem lies? Is it with Strontium USB or OSX Mavericks? if the problem is with Strontium USB, then it shouldnt even load on older OS and if the problem is with OSX Mavericks, it should not detect other brand USB drives or external HD.

I did same and it worked fine, but i cant write to the external drive anymore. i can copy documents from it but i cant write to it. any help on that?

Andre!! thanks a million. your solution worked fine. i can now mount and write to my ntfs drive. cheers

Hi AndreBatista!

Thanks for the idea. I almost gave up coz I couldn't find any solution to this problem. Yours helped me a lot. Most of the contributors here are using NTFS 3G. Thought of downloading it but decided to follow your procedure and just modify some. I'm using Tuxera NTFS. I uninstalled the program and installed it again. Simple! Now I can read and write on any of my external drive (Seagate) and usb thumb drives, as well as mount and use my scanner/printer!!! 🙂

Hi,

I upgraded to Mavericks late last year and my external hard drive (transcend sata) stopped working (other usbs work fine). I kept waiting for upgrades to fix it but now I really need to use it and it is still not working. It does appear on disk utility but not on finder. I have tried the verify and repair disk options on first aid but the mount option doesn't work. I have tried installing and uninstalling both paragon and tuxera but nothing so far. Any help would be appreciated!

Hi andll - sounds like you're experiencing the same thing as what I stated a few posts above.

Here's what fixed it for me (quoted from above):

As halavista said, this solved my problem:

I followed the instructions here to reset the System Management Controller (SMC):

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Note that the only indication that the SMC reset occurred is given in this hint:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4615991 -- the magsafe power adapter LED may blink. I'm not sure if mine did, I wasn't watching it at the time.

After booting back up, both of my USB flash drives are acting normally - I can read & write them, eject/re-mount and see the new contents.

System Preferences --> NTFS-3G --> Click "disable" NTFS-3G ? ? ?

I do not have a NTFS-3G when I go to system preferences.

I also have USB sticks that no longer show up on Finder nor on the Desktop. They are not appearing on my Disk Utilities either. It's like it does not detect it at all?

My macBook Pro updated(Big Mistake) to mavericks is capable of reading the USB stick.

Hello I had the same problem in a MacBook Pro 13" late 2012 (usb3 ports).

My NTFS WD "My Passport" USB3 disk disappeared after installin Mavericks.

I use Tuxera NTFS for writing into NTFS. I disabled Tuxera and the disk reappeared.

I ejected the disk. Then re-enabled Tuxera and reconnected the USB dis, but it would not be visibile any more.

So I just reinstalled Tuxera (downloaded from their web site, version 2013.2) and this fixed everything.

Alex

I have a workaround to this problem. I experienced the same on my 27" iMac (late 2013) with USB 3.0 ports running on OSX 10.9.2 and two WD external drives.

I have an older WD My Passport Essential SE 1TB (USB 3.0). I've been using this same drive for more than a year without any problems, be it on any other Macs with USB 2.0 and regardless of the OSX versions (particularly Leopard to Mountain Lion). Whenever I plug this drive to any ports at the back of the iMac, nothing happens, no drive mounted, not even in Disk Utility. But when I plug it from the WIRED Apple Keyboard (connected to one of the ports at the back), Voila! It's there completely, no missing files/folders. Then I took a USB extension cable [also a usb hub], plugged it to any USB ports at the back and connected the drive to the extension...it worked...without any glitch!

I also have a newer WD My Passport 1TB (USB 3.0) 4 months ago. This runs perfect on every USB ports...no extra cable/hub needed. All the drives I mentioned are HFS+ formatted. Although the newer one has an NTFS partition, it shows no problem at all.

In my opinion both the OSX Mavericks and WD Firmware has something to do with the problem that needs attention. They shouldn't work that way.

I'm still having this problem. For the last two months I've been unable to see any external drives of any kind. Both USB and my external thunderbolt drive. The funny thing is that running Parallels on the same machine I can mount the drives. Clearly it's a software issue. Apple has offered no solution other than trying to reinstall the OS, which did not help, and resetting the SMC multiple times. It's getting extremely aggravating because I can't even back up my data since time machine doesn't see any drives connected. HELP!!

Odds are good it's something you've installed that is causing the issue, and not specifically a problem with mavericks.

Boot into recovery by holding cmd and r. Click disk utility and then continue. Do any USB drives show?

Yes. All drives are visible both in recovery mode and during normal conditions in disk utility. However, when I try to verify the disks, disk utility freezes up. It's even causing havoc with my iPod Classic. When I plug it in, iTunes tells me it is corrupted, attempts to recover, and gets frozen.

All of these devices continue to to work on every other machine, Mac and Windows, with no problems at all. Like I said, including when I'm running windows 8 through Parallels on the same machine. I've ever tried erasing Parallels thinking that might be causing the issue.

Solved my issue. I was using Tuxera NTFS to mount my ntfs formatted flash drives before installing Mavericks. After installing Mavericks they wouldn't mount anymore. I went to Preferences > Tuxera NTFS and disabled it. That did the trick! Hope this helps!

I'd like to add that while the fix I proposed allowed me to see my drives it didn't let me copy to them, as it normally would before I installed Tuxera NTFS. I just downloaded the latest version of Tuxera, installed it and now everything is back to normal. Hope this helps 🙂