External USB Hard Drive not showing up, after Yosemite update

Had the same problem with 4GB pen drive. In my case connecting it via USB hub helped. Good luck!

I have Toshiba and WD Element USB drives that will not mount on my new Apple Air running 10.10.3. Both are visible in the Disk Utility and running disk repair does not correct the problem. It is unlikely that it is the drives or cables since both will mount on an older Apple Air running 10.7.9. I have gone to the Toshiba and WD websites to look for driver updates and they don't seem to have any. So I'm left with the impression that it has something to do with the OS 10.10.3.

Help. Thanks.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)

Processor: 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB

IOS 10.10.3

Since upgrading to Yosemite from Mavericks, I have encountered numerous issues. The most pressing one is the random force-ejection of my external hard drives. I have encountered this problem only when using my 1-3 TB external WD Passport drives (I have tried several, some brand new!) connected to a USB3 drive on my Macbook. The problem does not exist when using 8 GB and 16 GB thumb drives.

After the macbook force-ejects my external hard drive, it occasionally attempts to automatically re-mount only to again be immediately force-ejected. Oftentimes following a force eject, the external harddrive image is still present in the finder and on the desktop, but when I click them I receive a message that I do not have permission to view them. I cannot eject the drive using the 'eject' button next to drive icon in Finder, dragging the icon from desktop into trashcan, nor by CNTRL+Right Clicking the icon on the desktop and choosing 'Eject', nor by choosing the eject option from Finder's File menu! Even if I have completely unplugged the drive from the computer, the icon persists and shows the folder size if I choose 'Get Info' by right clicking the icon. When this happens, if I try to shut down the computer through the apple menu, it can take anywhere from 10-30 minutes to complete the shut down (during this time, a black screen with spinning white lines appears). Following this excruciatingly long shutdown process, it can take upwards of 10 minutes to start up again, lingering on the grey apple screen with a bar showing progress at about 30%. Upon startup, the disks automatically force eject again and the cycle is repeated.

I have tried several things to fix this unacceptable issue, which I have listed below:

1) In Energy Saver, I have unchecked the 'Put hard drives to sleep whenever possible' button for both Battery and Power Adapter.

2) I have completely disabled spotlight for all hard drives, including the ones that I am having trouble with. This helped somewhat so that now I can occasionally access the hard drive for 10-40 minutes before it force ejects at random, but the problem persists.

3) In the event that my external hard drive force ejects itself and still shows the icon on the desktop and in Finder, I follow these steps, which has a pretty good success rate for me, although the drives continue to be force ejected at random:

-Unplug the external hard drive

-Hard shut down by holding down power key

-Reset PRAM & SMC

-Restart computer with external hard drive plugged in

I followed another workaround that was listed here: Unplug external hard drive and hard shut down. Reset SMC. Replace the USB3 cord on the external hard drive with a USB2 cord, plug USB2 cord into USB2 port, plug USB2 port into computer's USB3 drive. Restart computer.

This has worked for me so far, but the transfer rate is still extremely slow as I am now using USB2. Hopefully this will solve random force eject problems. I will update, either way.

This problem has persisted for weeks, and while these workarounds helped me when I was in a pinch and needed to access the files immediately for a project, I can no longer work with this system as it impedes my ability to complete my work. For this reason, I am considering downgrading to Mavericks which did not give me this issue.

Before I do so, I wanted to check and see if there is any advice from other users in the forum. I have just downloaded 'Mountain', and have not yet had success with that.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and (hopefully!) provide some feedback on this issue.

(I am forwarding this from another thread (External hard drive ejects randomly) that I had started before I found this one)

After following the steps listed in my previous post (and downloading + running Mountain) , everything seems to be working fine. I have been able to mount/unmount my hard drive without problem several times in a row. I no longer need to hard shut down or reset the SMC and can use the computer like normal.

Will post again if I encounter additional problems in the future. Hopefully Mac fixes this issue in the next update so we don't have to waste our time like this again.

I could not see my WD/My passport in finder, but in disk utility. It had a superDuper backup (bootable).

And it was not recoverable in disk utility, kept getting errors.

I then booted directly from the USB drive (option key to select the drive), and it booted up. OK. it took a real long time though.

Next time when I re-booted from Mac HD (system disk), again, it appeared in finder.

So relieved.

Yeah, I had the same issue with a older Media Tank HDD/DVDROM/Cardreader unit.

Plugged in the back of a 2008 iMac - Dead.
Plugged into keyboard - Alive and well.

REALLY WEIRD.

The good news is that OS X El Capitan, out in Beta, seems to have resolved the problem. The potential bad news is that other users have reported that this connectivity issue did not occur in Yosemite Beta; it only occurred with the official release. We have to hold our collective breaths until El Capitan is official. --Having to hold my breath to see if Apple is competent enough to fix a major bug makes me very sad.

Hi all.

Have just joined the forum as a result of having similar problems connecting an external 4TB Seagate drive to an iMac running Yosemite 10.10.3. The power indicator on the Seagate was flickering continuously but no sign of the unit on the desktop or in Disk Utility. Tried various combinations and resets mentioned in the forum without any results; then swapped the AC adaptor with another one I was using successfully for a 2TB Seagate. Bingo - the 4TB worked and the 2TB didn't. Not sure if the problems discussed are the same is what I had, but if my solution helps just one member, I've made 2 of us happy.

Good luck!!

I was having this problem too when I updated (but not necessarily upgraded) to Yosemite. I didn't read through the whole forum so I don't know if anybody else already said this but I fixed the problem by opening disk utility -> click on your internal hdd -> click repair disk. (Note: I had to click repair disk twice before everything came back correctly.) Then I plugged my external disk in and it mounted without problem. I hope this helps anyone else who's experiencing this frustrating issue.

I had a very similar situation. Today, I finally had a break-thru. Here's the synopsis of my situation and what I did to resolve it.

ISSUE: Inability to mount NTFS-formatted volumes on my MacBook Pro ((13-inch, Mid 2012) running MacOS X 10.10.xDETAILS: Although NTFS-formatted volumes mount on my iMac and on an older MacBook, the same volume wouldn’t mount on my MacBook Pro. I have Bootcamp installed on my new MacBook Pro and my iMac, and the same NTFS volume mounts on those, as well.

ANALYSIS: I have owned several MacBooks over the years, going back to 2001. As I have upgraded from older ones to new ones, I have used Apple’s “Migration Assistant” to move all of the files to the new MacBook. However, over those same years, I have installed and deleted several tools and Virtual Machines so that I could either use Windows on my MacBooks, or access NTFS volumes. These included:

• MacFuse
• Paragon NTFS
• Parallels
• VMware Fusion

My best hunch had been that when these were un-installed, remnants related to NTFS support were left behind, and they remained embedded in the O/S.Using Terminal, I did some deep-diving, and I located the following remnants of long-uninstalled software:

• /sbin/mount_ufsd (dated from 2008)
• /sbin/newfs_ufsd (dated from 2008)
• /Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs ) (note, this file is common between MacFuse and OSX Fuse)
• /System/Library/Filesystems/ufsd.fs

After deleting these, I subsequently restarted my MacBook Pro from its Recovery Partition, and performed a re-installation of Mac OS X as a precaution, so that any files that were native to MacOS would be re-created, if necessary.

NOTE: none of the above files were re-installed following the Mac OS X reinstallation process.

After this was completed, I restarted one more time, booting my MBP from my usual account, and used Disk Utility to repair permissions. Upon completion, I restarted one last time and found that I was finally able to mount NTFS-formatted volumes on my MacBook Pro.

I hope that this information will be useful to other Mac Users who have trouble mounting NTFS volumes on their systems.

I was wrong. In El Capitan, the drive shows up as read only with no lock/unlock option given. Obviously this is a major step in the right direction--at least I can get to the files--but if they don't come through and fix this in Beta, it'll be a major setback for Apple users.

A new $5 USB3 cable from Amazon solved this for me.

For those struggling with this issues, this community thread was the most robust of many I used trying to figure out why my WD MyPassport USB3 HD would not mount on my new 13" Retina MBP -

Along with a range of restarts, and working with an AppleCare L2 engineer, here's what I:

• Reinstalled OS three times - issue persisted
• Verified and Repaired External HD (twice actually) - issue persisted
• Reset NVRAM and SMC - issue persisted
• Tried running Kext_Utility.app.v2.6.1 - issue persisted
• Tried to see drive using Terminal commands - failed
• Tried running Onyx - issue persisted
• Tried running Cocktail scripts - issue persisted
• Ran the Apple Diagnostics, and it returned "No Issues Found ADP000"

I also followed a closed thread on the Western Digital site ( (http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/WD-my-passport-not-mounting-o n-macbook/td-p/812515/page/2) that ended with:

After the all the investigation done with users, and devices that didn't appear to work, we found that there was not anything requiring a firmware update to fix.

What we found was:

- Remounting the drive through disk utilities fix most of the issues

- Replacing cables fixed a few others

- But only a couple of drives needed to be replaced

If following the first two fixes doesn't work for you, contact support for further help, before replacing the drive.

Several entries on the Apple Support thread noted how they could connect the drive when connecting through the USB2 port on an iMac keyboard. I happen to have an older Kensington USB keypad with 2 USB ports, and when I daisy-chained my HD using one of the ports the MBP saw it, but prompted me to connect to a powered port. Then inserted USB thumb drive - and it mounted in a flash. Also confirmed my Apple USB SuperDrive connected and launched a DVD. This suggested strongly that the external drive was not the source of the failure - but it seemed likely to be either the physical port or the OSX USB3 drivers.

In posting on this thread by "Aboozar2010" I found something that allowed me to see the drive - "Try using a USB2 cable (micro USB just like an android charger cable that plugs in half of the slot on your hard drive) and it will work." I was able to mount the disk and transfer data - a decent if slower workaround to move data onto my new MBP, but not an acceptable solution for a newly purchased MBP that is supposed to have 2 working USB3 ports.

Following up some of the entries in the Apple Support Community thread referenced in my long note, I connected a powered USB2 IOGear hub to my MBP and connected the USB3 drive to the hub - drive mounted instantly on the MBP. I thought that would have ruled out any issue with the USB3 cable - even repeated the connection with another entirely new 13" Retina MBP from my work - and same failure to connect occurred.

So, thinking I was stuck with a drive that would never connect at USB3, I took a flyer on a generic $5 USB3 cable from Amazon - plugged it in to find, lo and behold, the drive mounted in moments and ran my Carbon Copy Cloner backup in a matter of minutes.

Thanks to all those who shared their learnings on this thread - hope mine helps the next person who finds themselves here.

Excellent report. Do you happen to have a link to the cable on Amazon? Thanks!

Yes - the item name is "Superspeed USB 3.0 Type A Male to Micro B Male 24/28AWG Cable 1 Feet, Blue" -

and here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TZVKIS?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_deta ilpage_o06_s00

Correction on price - actually paid $2.24 with free (albeit slow) shipping.

Thanks so much for the detailed response!! I tried with an existing USB 2.0 to micro USB to USB 2 mac machine as well as new iMac usb3 machine with no luck so I'm not super sure the Amazon cable will help but it's so cheap I may be able to on a future order. Thanks again!!