Cannot Mount an External Drive

Took the external drive to a friends Apple laptop yesterday. Downloaded some files. Now it won't recognise itself on my every day iMac in the studio.


Have tried running Disk Utility.

(here are the results from running the programme)


Running First Aid on “Scarlet TwoTerraDrive” (disk4s1)


Repairing file system.

Volume is already unmounted.

Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk4s1

Checking the container superblock.

warning: container has been mounted by APFS version 1934.141.2, which is newer than 1677.141.3.7.2

warning: disabling overallocation repairs by default; use -o to override

Checking the EFI jumpstart record.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

Checking the object map.

Checking volume.

Checking the APFS volume superblock.

Checking the object map.

error: (oid 0x23229f) om: btn: invalid o_oid (0x3be7c)

error: (oid 0x23229f) om: btn: invalid o_subtype (0xe, expected 0xb)

error: (oid 0x23229f) om: btn: invalid o_type (0x3, expected 0x40000003)

Object map is invalid.

The volume /dev/rdisk4s1 could not be verified completely.

File system check exit code is 8.

Restoring the original state found as unmounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)


Operation failed…




iMac 27″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Oct 8, 2025 4:01 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 9, 2025 12:51 PM

I'm guessing that your friend's Mac has a much newer version of macOS.


Plug it back into your friend's laptop. See if you can retrieve the files from it. You're going to have to erase and reformat the drive using your Mac to get it working again... oh, and don't plug it back into their Mac afterward.

5 replies

Oct 9, 2025 12:18 PM in response to Carey Marks

I had an Object Map error on a Mac I worked on recently & the only way to fix it was by erasing the disk followed by reinstalling macOS & restoring from a backup....assuming First Aid is unable to repair the hidden Container while booted from Recovery Mode. You must use Disk Utility to erase the disk since the other erase options in macOS do not reformat the APFS volume/Container.

Use Disk Utility to erase a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support


Cannot Mount an External Drive

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