My i7 Mini won't mount external drive

[Giuanniello]

Have no clue why it won't mount the disk even tho the enclosure is recognised by MacOS, here a screenshot showing enclosure being seen:

Any clue?

Grazie

p.s. actually after quite a while being connected it mounts onto the desktop but if computer goes in stop, even tho I have disabled the sleep for hard drives, it gets unmounted and as such, being a backup drive, the backup process gets interrupted

 

[Bigwaff]

An ExFAT disk formatted by a Mac or PC?

 

[Giuanniello]

An ExFAT disk formatted by a Mac or PC?

A Mac!

I can format it again as it's a backup drive and, fingers crossed, I have the whole content onto both the Mini's HD and the external drive serving as a photo archive, how should I format it like for max compatibility and considering I only use Mac so no need for FAT or NTFS?

Grazie

 

[Bigwaff]

how should I format it like for max compatibility and considering I only use Mac so no need for FAT or NTFS?

Erase and reformat APFS

 

[Fishrrman]

IF this is a platter-based hard drive, it ought to be formatted HFS+ ("Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format").

EXCEPTION: if you're going to use it for a time machine backup, it MUST be formatted in APFS.

If the drive is an SSD, it can be in either APFS or HFS+.

If it's just being used as a photo "archive" (not tm backup), I would format it in HFS+.
REASON WHY:
A drive in HFS+ can be "seen" by 3rd party Mac utilities and recovery software.
But if it's in APFS, almost nothing can "touch it" (other than disk utility).

 

[Giuanniello]

It's a WD RED 4TB with spinning disks and I won't use with TimeMachine but with another backup software, if I get it right HFS+ is the way, I repeat, it's a backup disk where I save content from the MacMini, the external drive (a raid1 array) serving as a photo archive and another external drive (also a raid1 array) where I store various stuff

 

[Fishrrman]

What backup software will you use?
It depends on the version of the OS you use.

I believe that if you use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner for backing up newer versions of the OS, it will require that the backup drive be in APFS.

 

[Giuanniello]

I use SyncFolders, basically it makes a specular copy of what I have on the built in drive and external archive drive to the external one we are discussing about (actually it also copies computer drive selected folders onto the same raid1 array I use to store the photo archive as to have redundancy and then everything from raid1 array to external backup disk), I am ready to go and format if that helps solve the issue, the computer won't mind copying some 3TB+ stuff on a Sunday, APFS or HFS+? Which other parameters once I decide to format?

Grazie