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External Drives showing up as "Internal" in Disk Utility

VideoBeagle

VideoBeagle

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
823
18
App Q&A testing by request.
Several external Drives showing up as "Internal" in Disk Utility.
Screenshot 2016-07-17 14.37.20.png

These are connected to a new USB hub I just got on prime day...Sabrent Premium 4 Port Silver Aluminum USB 3.0 Hub

Should this be something I care about?
 
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No. As long as you can safely eject them, you should not need to worry about anything.
 
VideoBeagle said:
Well, they don't have the "eject" button in the sidebar. (though I can right click and do it).
And copying to it is requesting password authentication.
Click to expand...
Well, I guess your Mac is not fully compatible with this USB hub for some reason, as I never see this before even when I use a cheap USB 3.0 hub bought from China to connect my multiple HDD at the same time.
 
Are these drives encrypted?

For certain features including encryption, OS X converts disks to "Core Storage" volumes. It shouldn't affect using the drive day-to-day, but does make them appear as internal drives in certain places in OS X.

(It may also do this by default if you reformat the drive -- I am not 100% sure about that)
 
OP wrote:
"if i plug them into the imac directly or another hub, they mount normally."

There's your answer.
 
VideoBeagle said:
Well, they don't have the "eject" button in the sidebar. (though I can right click and do it).
And copying to it is requesting password authentication.
Click to expand...

Based on this comment, I'm wondering if they are encrypted and you did not realize it.

Try attaching and mounting all the drives, then run the following two commands in Terminal and tell us the output if each command.

Code: 
diskutil list

diskutil cs list
 
Nope. No encyrption..

And things work normally with those 2 drives plugged in to the hub plugged into the Macbook. (The iMac is now at the Apple Store to have it's hinge mechanism fixed).
 
OP wrote:
"Well, iMac is back from the store, brand new image on it, and this problem remains, so something about the hub and el capitan seems to be causing it."

See reply #7 above.

Solution:
Get another hub.
 
One of my external drives shows up normally in Mavericks, whereas in El Capitan it appears as internal. Go figure. Same hub, same everything. Always happening with USB, as I have FW800 drives as well that show up properly in both OSes.
 
I'm a bit late, but i'm here to help users of an older macbook pro. I plugged it into another port, and it showed up as external again. I'm using an early 2011 macbook pro.
 
iMattDaGreat said:
I'm a bit late, but i'm here to help users of an older macbook pro. I plugged it into another port, and it showed up as external again. I'm using an early 2011 macbook pro.
Click to expand...
Did you end up figuring out the fix for the other port? I have the same happening. One of my MBP ports works fine but the other shows it as Internal
 
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