No access permissions on External SSD Drive after upgrading to Sequoia 15.4.1

Question

Level 1

8 points

No access permissions on External SSD Drive after upgrading to Sequoia 15.4.1

Since upgrading to Sequoia 15.4.1 today I have no access to an eternal SSD drive. My standard USB drives are all available. The external SSD drive has a minus symbol alongside it in the Finder window & when I click on the drive icon I get the message "The folder “Extreme SSD” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents. Extreme SSD is the name of the drive. When I check on permissions via Get Info, there is no padlock to unlock & just the message: "You have no access." I have restarted my McBook Pro (M2 Pro, 16"), I have plugged the SSD drive into another slot, I have reset the NVRAM/PRAM. HELP!!

Posted on Apr 24, 2025 10:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

bugman53

Level 1

8 points

Apr 27, 2025 9:55 PM in response to jfirst

Same issue. The drive has 2 partitions - one for Time Machine and another for general storage. The "storage" partition is readable without any issues on my iPad. Plugged into the Mac, no go. After about 3 hours of trying everything I reformatted the partition using Disk Utility "Erase". It was set to ExtFat. I set it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (but it probably doesn't matter what you choose, as long as it isn't the current format). Immediately fixed the problem. After it was fixed I changed it back to ExtFat. Works fine now.

I was able to copy the files that were on the drive to my iPad before I did the erase/reformat so nothing lost.

Reply

Answer 2

jfirst Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 27, 2025 10:45 PM in response to bugman53

My drive was formatted exFat. I was told by Apple that at some stage, the only format Apple will support is APFS & that my issue is likely that 15.4.1 no longer supports exFat. I copied data to another drive, reformatted the drive to APFS, copied data back & everything works fine. I was also advised that it would be advisable to reformat a coupled of other drives that currently are Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to APFS as well.

Reply

Answer 3

HWTech

Level 9

68,696 points

Apr 25, 2025 9:41 AM in response to jfirst

Sounds like you may be using the external SSD's manufacturer's proprietary software to manage the external SSD. Try updating that software to see what happens.

Reply