I have had the same problems mounting external disks and with the "spinning circle" when unlocking my Mac. The "spinning circle" issue is also detailed here,
. I followed what the other user did - I created a new user account. After that, I could unlock my Mac with my password. So it seems like if you only have 1 user account, then you could get the "spinning circle of death" when you try to unlock your account. Definitely another bug.
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Sonoma won't mount external drives
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Sorry, but creating a new user account is not really a “fix” for this. If the only account used on the device is the Apple ID, you’d have to create an entirely new Apple ID? That’s not realistic at all.
A workaround if you use local accounts to log in, yes. But if you're logging in with your Apple ID, no dice.
Not sure what Apple did with external drives in Sonoma. As I mentioned before, I’m migrating one of my external HDDs to an external SSD. I attached the SSD and formatted AFPS encrypted.
First off, what is with Apple switching the external disk owner from my user to System? Is that macOS doing that? Or is something like Carbon Copy Cloner causing it?
After formatting I restarted. Initially all drives mounted. Then I went to load CCC and suddenly my drive I’m migrating from unmounted. No reason why. After a shutdown and restart, things are now seemingly working. I’m copying about 2.5TB of data to the new SSD.
On one of the restarts, macOS even asked for the password for my old data drive, even though it’s stored in Keychain. During this time, a bunch of apps were beachballing. Again, no idea why. It was almost like, as long as the password entry box was on the screen, apps where hanging.
I notice my new SSD is again owned by System. I’m sure after I formatted it was owned by me, so something is changing it. I’ll have to wait until the clone process competes and then switch back to owned by me.
I do notice on a reboot, all external drives are slow to mount and show in Finder.
It’s almost like Apple never tested Sonoma with external drives attached?! Either that or there are just weird scenarios where the system decides to act up.
First off, what is with Apple switching the external disk owner from my user to System? Is that macOS doing that? Or is something like Carbon Copy Cloner causing it?
After formatting I restarted. Initially all drives mounted. Then I went to load CCC and suddenly my drive I’m migrating from unmounted. No reason why. After a shutdown and restart, things are now seemingly working. I’m copying about 2.5TB of data to the new SSD.
On one of the restarts, macOS even asked for the password for my old data drive, even though it’s stored in Keychain. During this time, a bunch of apps were beachballing. Again, no idea why. It was almost like, as long as the password entry box was on the screen, apps where hanging.
I notice my new SSD is again owned by System. I’m sure after I formatted it was owned by me, so something is changing it. I’ll have to wait until the clone process competes and then switch back to owned by me.
I do notice on a reboot, all external drives are slow to mount and show in Finder.
It’s almost like Apple never tested Sonoma with external drives attached?! Either that or there are just weird scenarios where the system decides to act up.
I seem to remember this last year when Ventura was released, that External Drives got all jacked up and had to be reformatted. And I honestly don't mind that again, but with all of the other issues I'm having and the impacted drives on my end being my Time Machine drives, I'm hesitant to rely on them after a full Restore at the moment.
UPDATE:
My case just keeps getting stranger.
I swapped the USB cables on my external drives, and the one that didn't mount seems to work as expected now, every time. However the other drive also still mounts. Switching the cable back once again results in the m2 external drive specifically not being recognized.
Has anyone else ever had anything like this happen, Sonoma or otherwise?
I need to rummage through some other cables and do a little more testing. This is still a problem for me as I'm not getting full 3.2 speeds since the cable isn't rated for that, but at least i can get it to mount I guess..
Intel Mac user here on latest Sonoma, and then on to 14.1 Beta (23B5056e) to see if the issue is fixed in the betas:
Issue is still there, so don't bother upgrading to the latest beta to see if it fixes the drives mounting issue. The only way to get my encrypted APFS drives to mount is to totally power off my 2020 iMac, disconnect my USB hubs where the drives are physically connected, power on the computer and log in, then plug the USB hubs back in with the drives. This is replicable on my local system every time and does not matter if the USB hub is used or if a direct connection.
Only workaround besides this that works for me is fully decrypting the drive, as unencrypted APFS drives seem to mount normally and as expected
Issue is still there, so don't bother upgrading to the latest beta to see if it fixes the drives mounting issue. The only way to get my encrypted APFS drives to mount is to totally power off my 2020 iMac, disconnect my USB hubs where the drives are physically connected, power on the computer and log in, then plug the USB hubs back in with the drives. This is replicable on my local system every time and does not matter if the USB hub is used or if a direct connection.
Only workaround besides this that works for me is fully decrypting the drive, as unencrypted APFS drives seem to mount normally and as expected
Moved my hub (to which my external drives were attached) from the USB-C port on my Mini to the hub using the regular USB 3, and things seem to have calmed down. No longer dread restarting (cold start / reboot) and seeing what drives it does and doesn't see - and for how long. Other external USB drives (as needed) and my printers all show up as well.
Technology, huh?
Technology, huh?
while i thought this issue was solved earlier with the terminal commands provided, i had a similar problem with unlocking my intel mac mini from sleep. i entered my password and the machine would beachball. i then had to manually reboot/restart by holding the power button on the mac mini. when the system came back online, my drives were still not mounted. so thus, i had to manually unlock the drives via terminal!!...
So far it seems there are multiple Sonoma upgraders who encounter this issue. I wonder if this is a universal crack for all Sonoma users or just partial users with specific Mac system or whatever reason? Disclosure: I am holding with Ventura (M2 Pro Mac Mini + 2 SSDs in Trebleet dock)...
A variant of this has been happening since monterey and happens when secure input is enabled (e.g. after typing in a password) and gets stuck on (often Safari is the culprit so restarting it tends to fix it)
You can replicate this behavior by opening terminal, enable secure input and apps open in the background when the app with secure input (terminal) is in the foreground.
I have another post on that bug here:
Seems for me and at least one other person, it's related to using multiple desktops and assigning apps to particular desktops.
Neither case applicable here. Bog standard Mini accessing one monitor, apps running in just that instance (unless you count the added 'features' Apple has added by iOS cross-pollination - and I try and avoid that as much as possible), and a powered hub that all worked perfectly fine before Sonoma. In fact, several OSs before Sonoma.
Do the drives mount instantly now, or is there still a delay before they mount?
For me, with about 10 drives, it takes about 1-3 minutes for all of them to mount after logging in, but this behavior is the same as how it was for me on Ventura and earlier OS's.
That's great news, thanks for the update!
I bit the bullet and installed macOS 14.1 b3 on my 2018 Intel Mac mini and all of my drives mounted correctly within a minute or so of being logged in for the first time after upgrading. Considering how consistent it's been for most of us here with drives not mounting unless you shut off and manually reconnected each drive after signing in again, having everything "just work" the first time is great news.
Same, thanks! I've never run betas, but this issue plus frequent Safari hangs prompted me to try. My external encrypted drives now mount automatically, consistently, and promptly. We'll see about the Safari side.
UPDATE: the Safari issues persist. I've never had an upgrade go anywhere near this poorly.
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Same thing happened on my 2018 Intel Mac Mini: 2 USB-C encrypted TimeMachine Backup drives stopped mounting on Sept 26th after upgrading to macOS Sonoma. I didn't notice until today, Oct 14th. Fortunately, I also have an online backup service that's working.
I tried booting into Recovery mode and mounting each drive in Disk Utility. They mounted fine there after entering each drive's encryption password, but the problem continued when restarting normally. I also tried unplugging the drives and plugging them back (but while the Mac remained on).
Someone here recommended shutting down the Mac, unplugging the external drive(s), turning on Mac and logging in normally, then plugging the drive(s) back in and that worked for me. Each drive mounted automatically with macOS using their stored encryption passwords in KeyChain.
What makes this problem extra bad TimeMachine didn't warn me that my backup hasn't happened in X days. It had been 18 days - yikes!
I tried booting into Recovery mode and mounting each drive in Disk Utility. They mounted fine there after entering each drive's encryption password, but the problem continued when restarting normally. I also tried unplugging the drives and plugging them back (but while the Mac remained on).
Someone here recommended shutting down the Mac, unplugging the external drive(s), turning on Mac and logging in normally, then plugging the drive(s) back in and that worked for me. Each drive mounted automatically with macOS using their stored encryption passwords in KeyChain.
What makes this problem extra bad TimeMachine didn't warn me that my backup hasn't happened in X days. It had been 18 days - yikes!
The problem recurs after restarting.
I have to shutdown the Mac Mini instead...
...then unplug both encrypted hard drives, turn the Mac on, then plug both drives back in for them to mount. (The pre-shutdown unplugging order doesn't matter.)
I'm having a similar issue, and I apologize if it's been covered in this thread already - whenever my M2 Mac Mini goes to sleep and I start the computer back up, my two SSDs connected via USB-C dock give me an error that they were not ejected correctly. They aren't mounting or unmounting, and no data on them seems to be corrupted or anything, I can use and access them just fine, but it does make me a little nervous. Any thoughts? Or are we all just troubleshooting the same kind of thing here?
This fixed it. Thank you. Hopefully it's a permanent fix.
- M1 Pro - MacBook Pro
- Sonoma 14.0
- Have two external hard drives (spinning disk)
- one APFS (Encrypted)
- other Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)