MacOS Sonoma (Studio) does not show external drives that are mounted

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Level 1

24 points

MacOS Sonoma (Studio) does not show external drives that are mounted

I have a recurring bug with external drives. They sometimes do not show up in finder - that while they are mounted and can be used by programs like Photoshop and CCC. An example.

To recap: Finder is not correct, a back-up task uses the drive anyway. And Lightroom sees it too.

It is part of a wider problem, that I have with other drives too, that either do not mount, are not seen, but when I detach the USB-C cable, the computer cries out loud.

Or drives that upon waking of the computer, are reported as missing such as mt WD-Blue sata time machine disk). While the Apple Support was not able to help me: good luck with your Orico/Hagebis etc drives. .

System: Studio 2022; Sonoma.

My question is: how can I tackle these problems, that I have so sparsely stated, I'm sorry, this is a longer problem, too many failure modes already for me to recap; and this keeps me from updating my computer to Sequoia; and IN FEW YEARS, replacing it . .

OK I'll try.

As regards the TM SSD, I had a SATA 2.5" in a Orico/Hagebis mini-format house. It stated to give problems in not being mounted. The disk and house are OK, I now use that drive on my wife's iMac. Maybe:: It is just that the Studio sends out commands that get a time-out, and processes are not finished, or something like that. Anyway, after sleeping the TM will not show up and is not there for the backup. Failure.
After finding it on my M3/Sequioa machine, I cannot run DU repair, nor reformat, nor add volume/partition, not on volume nor on disk nor anything.
On the old iMac ai can directly see it, I can change the name, but no - I cannot reformat the TM disk.

A WD Blue 2Tb disk of € 200 gone in thin air??

I hope you will not ask the error codes.

Mac Studio, macOS 14.7

Posted on Nov 17, 2024 6:49 AM

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Answer 1

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 22, 2024 6:05 AM in response to alberti-nl

About the nav column prefs. Today the 'show external disks' had gone from √ to - (so a bit greyed out, and that was a reversal from this remark of Nov 18, 2024 3:10 AM ), but this time, going from - to √ , my old TM disk still did not show up. It is in the back somewhere in protocol limbo.

I restarted just to check the TM prefs. And it stayed only on my new disk, not my old one. So it should at one moment release that disk.

I did change the cable a few times, even tried it on a SBB-2 cable but no real results.

I know the disk is not dead.

But I do not want to go to a neighbour with a windoz pc. That would be a big embarrassment. :-(

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Answer 2

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 22, 2024 4:29 AM in response to alberti-nl

It's a sad world. I get no responses.

But the Studio tries at least something. But no-one knows what.

So here my sad story of a former TM disk. When I bought a Macbook M3 with Sequoia on it, I decided to use the same TM disk. Why not?

Well, disaster. After that, the disk did not mount 'often' on the Studio/Sonoma. This is the disk that is referred to below. It is in the computer registry, somehow, in some status. I have it attached all the time because the Apple Support person told me to keep it attached - the process of getting the right status of the disk often takes very long.

So now every now and then it gives an error.

Note: in the past month I tried to tackle the problem of this TM disk by:

telling Time Machine preferences to forget the disk. But after a month yesterday I still saw that old TM-SSD (a 2Tb WD Blue disk) again pop up in the list of devices. So I deselected it (-). But if the comms with the disk is in a speed below 1 Baud then . . .
going with the disk to my M3/Sequoia machine, and there I could not delete the volume.
going to an iMac/Sierra and yes it popped up, I could even change the name of the disk (that gave me some hope) but I could not reformat the disk.
when I connected it again to the Studio/Sonoma, the old name was there.
And Sonoma still had it on the list of TM disks.

Well I told TM-prefs yesterday to 'forget it' well - forget it. We are just playing a game with the computer, or it with us, I'm not sure. The disk registry is not changed, the disk does not mount. It cannot be re-purposed.

Note: it is a modern 2Tb disk from 2023. That represents value. Economic and emotional.

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Answer 3

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 17, 2024 11:59 PM in response to alberti-nl

Better title could have been "Finder does not show external SSD's" but the problem is wider.

If I detach the not-showing SSD I get an error pop-up and when plug it in again it is still not there.
and TM disks are much more prone to this as they are on a continous live link it seems.

Repeated in/out might suffocate the device with status flags. Somehow they get slower and slower after mis-handling the protocol

(I say that as I once studied protocol handling in another domain, sorry, it is not being the wisecrack.)

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Answer 4

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 18, 2024 3:10 AM in response to alberti-nl

I solved [part of] the mystery.

I went to Finder/preferences, and saw that the box show 'external drives' was not on; selected it, and presto, it popped up in finder.

The SSD 'Steden' was a new Hagibis USB-C (4) high speed drive, added some two months ago (again because the old drive misbehaved in the same way too, could not be seen=opened, so I put the WD-NVMe drive in that new box).

Strange, as my other external drives were there in the navigation column. So this led to my confusion, and manually detaching/attaching unseen drives.

Now I hope this will also remedy other SSD's "not mounting at all", maybe it was all a nightmare; but notice I bought a new T9 and a new housing.

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