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Level 1

96 points

High Sierra / External HD Problems

I upgraded my iMac to High Sierra a couple days ago. Everything seemed to be good.

Today I plugged in a 6 TB WD My Book and it crapped out. I was able to see the drive in Disk Utilities but wasn't able to repair it or run a test on it. I then took the drive over to my MacBook running El Capitan and it won't even show up in Disk Utilities. Looks like I'll have to spend $100 on Disk Warrior and pray that it will fix it.

I then plugged in my Drobo to my iMac and one of the drives failed. So I went to Best Buy to buy a new external drive (so I could back up my Drobo, as my previous backup is on the 6 TB drive that borked), plugged in the new drive and it immediately crapped out too. I was able to see it in Disk Utilities but I wasn't able to format it or repartition it. I then took it to my MacBook and was able to partition it there.

THREE DRIVES FAILED IN LESS THAN 5 MINUTES.

Is there something going on with High Sierra and external drives, and if so, what can I do? I'm terrified of plugging in another drive for fear of losing all of my data!

Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Sep 29, 2017 6:06 PM

Best reply

Matthew T R

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Nov 19, 2017 5:38 PM

After hours and hours of research and testing I solved this for me.

When I plugged in my external hard drive it showed up in my drive in Disk Utility but it was grayed out.

I could not mount my hard drives and it would not let me repair, erase, nor partition them, an old and a new one.

I decided to click on the view button at the top right corner of my disk utility app and I had "Show Only Volumes" selected. So I clicked on "Show All Devices" and this showed me each device the volumes were on. I could now select my external hard drive and I was able to easily repair, erase, and partition my hard drives when I clicked on the device instead of just the volume.

I hope this helps anyone.

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136 replies

page86

Level 1

4 points

Aug 16, 2018 8:38 AM in response to Tim Gavin

Yep, and you can add a brand new G Drive with Thunderbolt 3 to that list!!! Crapped out within an hour of being plugged in to my iMac following install of High Sierra. What's going on?

High Sierra / External HD Problems