High Sierra / External HD Problems

So, after testing my drives on a friend's two i Macs with High Sierra installed and experiencing the same issues I eventually got tired of fighting with the High Sierra OS and did a clean install of El Capitan. All my drives are running smoothly again and I am able to transfer files effortlessly. Drastic times call for drastic measures,

Sorry, not sure if this is going to be helpful but just to say I have had no issues running WD My Cloud DL2100 with High Sierra. Running 10.13.1, but my connection to the drive is via the Ethernet and i have a 4Tb WD elements connected to that.

May be the issue is with how you connect the drives?

So to follow on with the plethora of problems I've had with my external drives, freeze issues relating to finder and reboot/shutdown hangs. I had also noticed issues regarding mounting dmg's when installing or updating programs. Some updates via the App Store would also freeze.

Well I think I've solved all the issues I had. I noticed my time capsule had not done a backup since upgrading to High Sierra. After some investigation and repeated failed attempts to back up, I succumbed and wiped my Time Machine backup file. I unlinked it from all computers that were using it for backups and removed any folders that were on its ignore list. After the wipe, I set it up again as my targeted backup, set it up as if a new device and waited overnight to do its first backup.

The following morning my computer was using the time capsule as intended, but it was the unintentional benefits that I noticed more. No more freezing of finder, no more hanging on shutdown, and every dmg tested opened as normal.

If any of you guys/gals have a Time Capsule connected, make sure it's operating correctly. If not, it may be whats causing all your problems.

Matthew,

I plugged in my new Buffalo HD-LCU3 disc six hours ago to see " this disc is not recognised"

I bought it to use with Time Machine.

And I have spent all day online-Firefox search ? may be new driver needed, or incompatibility having moved to

High Sierra recently ,or a faulty Buffalo HD or WHAT???

And then- I happened to find your piece of advice.

And you say "I hope this helps anyone"?It certainly DID.

I am so grateful to you,Matthew.Many,many thanks.

Les

Thank you for posting this...in all of the trouble shooting I hadn't thought of time machine. It would be helpful if others taking this thread could pitch in and let us know if you, also, have time machine on your network?

FWIW, time machine has been backing up as expected...yet maybe this gets us closer to a resolution.

Trying get a better level of confidence that a time machine while would fix everything before investing all that time.

Just upgraded to High Sierra and my external drive bay with 2 HDs will not mount.

It is a USB connection.

In Disk Utility the drives show up as 1.8TB (they are 4TB) and they show as mounted (they are not)

I cannot unmount them in DU and they are definitely not appearing on my desktop.

I have tried every tip and suggestion on this board and I have had zero success.

As a side not I was going to restore my system via Time Machine and while I can enter TM I cannot restore. Maybe this is common knowledge but not to me.

My next move will be to attempt to downgrade to Sierra or El Cap.

Hi shnyhd, read my post above. You may have the same issues as I did. Before you restore your system, sort out your time machine first.

Unlink your backup from your system, make sure you remove all rules as well including removing any folders excluded from your back ups. Once you have it complete unlinked from your mac, erase your backup file from the time capsule. When that is done you can again set up your time machine as before and do your first back up.

After your backup is done you can move on to investigating your external drive. In my case the time machine was causing conflicts in disk utility with seemed to freeze out any other external drives. Once my time machine was sorted, everything went back to normal.

Thanks TeeBee but I tried every last thing in this list and nothing worked.

Restored to my last good status and am just sweeping up the mess.

I am profoundly disappointed that Apple released this demonstrably unready OS. I had installed it on two other machines to road test it before putting it on my primary work machine. Yet here I am with a wasted afternoon and probably a wasted weekend.

WELL.....shnyhd,

After posting that msg on here I noticed an Apple Update. OS 10.13.2.

So what did I do? Updated.

So what did it do? F@CKED my drives again! Now I can't see my external Drobo AGAIN!

I am so fed up with apple. They have gone to **** since Jobs passed. I was once an Apple fanboi, telling everyone I knew to convert. These days I'm wondering if my next computer will be an Apple at all.

Yea it seemed to fix everything.

So anyway, basically I'm up and running again after the upgrade. I just did what I did before. Remove my time capsule as my backup, erased the backup file and started from scratch.

I shut down, unplugged the power from my drobbo (it didn't power down as it didn't know my computer had shut down). Plugged it back in, started up the mac and everything was back to normal.

Seriously, is this was we have become as apple users? Remember when we were told it "just works". It seems like we're the ones doing all the work. Frickn hours of troubleshooting after apple posts something new.

I opened an Apple Support Ticket weeks back which, after the usual painful steps of wipes and restores and updates to software, led to nothing. Unresolved.

End of last week I had the ticket reopened, resulting in no progress as the ticket gets moved offline to an engineering department who maintain the issues that I am experiencing are isolated, and point to Western Digital since my drives happen to all be WD.

A link to this forum thread has been included in the ticket.

I am having the same problem. One day all is well, next day I upgrade to OS 10.13.2 ("High Sierra") and trusty 6-month-old external hard drive won't mount, won't repair if Disk Utility, etc. *** Apple, you messed up--own it and please fix it, same standard I would be held to at my workplace.

Goodevening, i have a my book studio ii. I order a new iMac with high Sierra but i read a lot off problem with it. there are any tip? Like to not install wd drive manager? I tried to connect the wd to a macbook with 10.13.2 and it seems going crazy...with app open itself..

Thanks a lot for any suggest

PS. Soru for my bad english...

Try a new cable to rule out a damaged/bad cable as the culprit. Run Disk Utility on the drive and verify it is in good condition.

Also download and run Etrecheck. Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Hey Gang,

I'm having the same issue. One Old WD Elements 1TB, and one brand new one. As of yesterday afternoon, very suddenly – neither was recognized by either of my iMac and Macbook Pro, both running High Sierra.

I tried early suggestions in this thread (with no luck):

1. Use failed drive recovery softwares (doesn't work drive isn't recognized)

2. Try to run first aid on the failed drive(s) (fails)

3. Boot up in Safe Mode (drives still aren't recognized)

4. Add the drive to privacy mode of Spotlight (can't add it, the drive is not recognized)

5. I do not have the luxury of downgrading to El Capitan, and don't know anyone who can loan me their machine while I do a backup. Assuming this would have worked, it's not an option for me.

Here is my contribution to the issue:

- With Apple Support, I went through the whole series of tests, they haven't yet placed blame on the WD Elements drives (probably because the problem was reproducible on the out of box device on both machines).

During our tests one thing did help:

- we were able to get the new drive recognized by rebooting and clearing parameter RAM (restart and hold keys: [command option P R] until machines reboots again).

- After doing that I was at least able to use Disk Utility to erase and reformat the brand new drive.

- Unfortunately, the old drive (which presumably isn't actually damaged or failing) still doesn't appear after clearing parameter RAM. I assume this problem is where a lot of people are stuck right now.

I'm going to have an advanced support call in an hour, perhaps they can help me restore the old drive without losing anything.

Will post here again once we know more.