Use of LaCie SSD for backup to Time Machine

The first thing anyone should do with any external hard disk drive or SSD is to erase it with Disk Utility. It appears you did not do that, and installed some Seagate product that was bundled with that SSD. Those things are never required and can only cause trouble. Uninstall it in accordance with its instructions.

Joseo wrote:

Thank you, John.

But know that I have been using LaCie SSDs for years, this one from 2022, September. So, you are right - there was a bundled protection in it: an app to open it upon starting or reconnecting it. And of course, I had to format it as instructed before using it.

To me, that app is not 'working' with Sequoia, and upon attempting to open the SSD with Finder, the bundled protection attempts to start but gets wound up in the effort, unable to open the SSD.

Hope that adds information to the theme.

Thanks again,

If you are relying on 3rd party software to handle mounting and/or encryption of an external drive, it is up to the developer of that software (who in this case is also the hardware manufacturer) to update that software so it works on current versions of macOS.

Contact Seagate and ask that they update the app for compatibility.

Once you regain access to your drive, I strongly recommend that you follow the instructions from John Galt – remove your data from that drive (copy to your internal or another external drive), completely erase and reformat the drive (top level) using Disk Utility (GUID scheme, APFS format with encryption if you want it), then restore your data to the drive.

Joseo wrote:

HWTech,

i have a SID and. PSID.But how do I ‘contact’ the SSD If upon attempting to open it it goes haywire? That is how do I do what you describe : “that software (or any other third party software with the ability to issue a PSID reset) can be used to reset the SSD's encryption keys”? Thank you!

I did mention that you may need to use another computer, even a Windows computer. Or some other software that has the ability to utilize the PSID code to reset the SSD (it is an industry standard, not just for Lacie/Seagate drives).

Unfortunately I did forget to mention previously that you should check with Lacie for an updated version of the software which I see was the actual solution here.

Some of us use two different backup schemes instead of dual Time Machine destinations. On my mission-critical iMac I have two self-powered USB-3 enclosure with "prosumer" 3.5-inch, SATA 6, 7200rpm hard drives inside. One does a Time Machine backup every hour, and the other does Carbon Copy Cloner backups at 4AM daily.

Joseo wrote:

To me, that app is not 'working' with Sequoia, and upon attempting to open the SSD with Finder, the bundled protection attempts to start but gets wound up in the effort, unable to open the SSD.

Hope that adds information to the theme.

Yes it does. The first order of business is to uninstall that app. Refer to its instructions. Then, you may need to restart the Mac, after which you can erase the SSD. If you are unable to reformat it then restart your Mac in Recovery mode (below) and use Disk Utility to erase it while in Recovery:

How to start up from macOS Recovery - Apple Support

Recovery will preclude any the effect of any third party system modifications from preventing your ability to reformat it. However, if that SSD requires some third party utility to access it even in Recovery mode, then it may be a function of the SSD's firmware in which case you may need to ask Seagate for help. Perhaps their app requires an update for Sequoia (likely) or you may simply be out of luck.

John Galt wrote:

Joseo wrote:

To me, that app is not 'working' with Sequoia, and upon attempting to open the SSD with Finder, the bundled protection attempts to start but gets wound up in the effort, unable to open the SSD.

Hope that adds information to the theme.

Yes it does. The first order of business is to uninstall that app. Refer to its instructions.

FYI, actually the first order of business is to turn off the Lacie drive's built-in hardware encryption which I'm assuming is enabled, otherwise there is no way to use this Lacie lock & encrypted drive for anything than a paper weight. Only the physical drive will be seen with no way to interact or even see any partitions on a locked hardware encrypted drive.

This may involve updating the macOS app, or installing the app on a Windows PC so that the Lacie drive can have the hardware encryption turned off.

More than likely once this is done, the Lacie drive may work fine with TM without needing to wipe it.

If the Lacie software is unable to unlock & disable the Lacie hardware encryption, then that software (or any other third party software with the ability to issue a PSID reset) can be used to reset the SSD's encryption keys thereby unlocking the drive & destroying all existing data on the drive. There is usually a PSID number on the bottom of Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) which utilize built-in hardware encryption that can be controlled with a password.

Joseo wrote:

Right now the SSD is working, updating the Time Machine, backups - thank Universe, and All of You! Thank you!

Personally I would turn off the Lacie's built-in hardware encryption since Time Machine can encrypt the TM backup. By also using the Lacie/Seagate software, you are making things much more complicated in this regard since you must rely on Seagate/Lacie to provide updated software.....sometimes that could take weeks assuming Seagate/Lacie even acknowledge a problem.

Keep in mind whenever Apple provides even a simple update patch to macOS, it can break third party software such as Lacie/Seagate's drive management software. With a full macOS upgrade to a new major version, breaking of the Lacie/Seagate software is even more likely.

Besides, by relying on the Lacie software to manage the built-in hardware encryption, you lose out on being able to restore from a TM backup during initial setup of a clean OS or a new system since the Lacie software won't be available at that time. You would need to set up a new macOS admin user, install the Lacie software to unlock the encrypted drive, then use Migration Assistant to transfer your TM backup to the new/clean system.

Good. Now extract data from that device (if necessary), uninstall their useless "toolkit", reformat the drive, and add it to Time Machine.

TM's encryption is all you need.

You should just be able to drag the Toolkit app from the Applications folder to the trash then Empty the trash. It won’t really matter, though. If you erase/format the drive at the top level in Disk Utility, the Seagate app won’t recognize it anyway.

You cannot copy a TM backup (at least, not with functionality retained). Time Machine uses a specific structure for backups so that only changed data blocks are actually copied, that makes each backup as fast and as small as possible, but also means you really need to use the TM browser to access the files.

With just that one drive, you’ll need the scorched earth approach, erase and start the TM backup fresh.

Another option now that you have access would be to buy a new drive and hang onto the current one. You’ll start fresh with the new one, you can keep using the older one for a while (with the caveat that this may happen again with a future macOS update). It’s really best to have >1 backup anyway. After some time, you could then wipe the current drive and start fresh so you’d have two backups with neither relying on the 3rd party encryption.