Can’t find all volumes on ext hard drive.

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Level 1

10 points

Can’t find all volumes on ext hard drive.

The mistake may have been made by making a bootable drive on an ssd external harddrive and then tried to store music files on it to play on my new Mac Mini u The drive shows up on the desktop but the drive was apparently partitioned and the music files are in a separate volume labeled as HD Data. That doesn’t appear when I look at the contents on the Mac Mini using OS 16. Does anyone have any suggestions how to get to that Data disc on the external drive. Or do I have to start from the ground again. Thanks for any suggestions. I was going to use the ssd external hard drive as the location for all music for the Mac Mini used as a music server.

Posted on May 29, 2025 02:42 PM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

66,686 points

May 31, 2025 07:09 PM in response to spinosaurus

Where on that external drive did you put those files?

Many times accessing the Data volume from another macOS installation can be tricky. Sometimes that Data volume won't be mounted automatically so you may need to mount it manually using Disk Utility. When the volume is mounted, then it should appear under "/Volumes".

Now, the second problem will be due to permissions issues. Unless the UserID for your current macOS user account matches the UserID for the macOS user account on the external, then you won't be able to access anything within the home user folder on the external drive. FYI, macOS user accounts on different systems may have different UserIDs....macOS mainly uses the UserIDs for permissions, the user name just makes it easier to manage everything for the average user.

FYI, It is never a good idea to use an OS boot drive for an external data drive unless you completely erase the whole physical drive. You will always run into issues unless you first erase it.

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,026 points

May 29, 2025 03:13 PM in response to spinosaurus

Please read Writing an effective Apple Support Communities Question and then please repost. You have provided no useful information, context or background information which we need in order to assist. We don't even know what Mac mini you own, the version of Mac OS installed or anything so how can you expect help?

Seems like you have dug yourself into a pretty good hole though.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,026 points

May 29, 2025 08:13 PM in response to spinosaurus

Okay, it seems like you created a pretty good mess! So let's start by you providing a report of what is installed. Please follow the steps below.

It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate towww.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again.

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Desktop.

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Answer 4

spinosaurus Author

Level 1

10 points

May 29, 2025 05:58 PM in response to rkaufmann87

OK, I don’t know what happened to the post but where it says "Mac Mini u”, the u was entered as M4 and later on it says using “Mac Mini using OS 16" when it was OS 15 entered. The context, I put my Music files on a 1TB ssd external hard drive but the hard drive also had a bootable copy of Mac OS Ventura on it. If I connect this hard drive to the Mac MIni M4, running OS 15, Disk Utilities shows the drive as 2 drives, one has the Ventura files on it with the same name as the hard drive and the other shows up as “Name of the hard drive” Data with the Music files on it. The desktop, however, only shows the Ventura segment and not the Data segment. So my question was, is there any way to get to that Data segment and use the music files stored on it?

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Answer 5

spinosaurus Author

Level 1

10 points

May 29, 2025 09:36 PM in response to spinosaurus

Not sure that would help, it is a brand new Mac Mini M4 and nothing was downloaded to it other than my information. I just checked the ssd hard drive and when I tried to boot from it, it said Ventura needed to be reloaded so I just wiped it out and will reload the music files on the bare drive overnight. Thanks for your help and I will remember the EtreCheck software for future use on my Apple devices and will include the report in future posts if necessary. I was trying to get a simple answer as a Mac user who is not a troubleshooter.

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Answer 6

spinosaurus Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 1, 2025 07:33 AM in response to HWTech

Thanks HWTech for your very polite reply to this problem. I tried to mount the Data segment in Disk Utility without any success but did not know about the user accounts. As I said in my last post, first aid said the disk was fine but when I tried to see if the files showed up by booting to that disk, it would not boot which suggested to me that something corrupted the bootable disk and your last statement may be the reason why. I wondered about using a bootable disk for a storage drive and loading the music files without booting up with the disk probably interfered with both disks being usable. At any rate, erasing it and reloading the music files on it overnight (lots of data) made it usable for this and in the future I will use flash drives for bootable OS which I tend to do to test if I want to update to a new OS or not. Thanks again to everyone for the help you offered. The forums are such an important resource for those of us who are use Apple products but are not techies at the level of so many helpers here.

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Can’t find all volumes on ext hard drive.

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