External ExFAT Drives Not Mounting Ventura 13.0.1

[CocktailHour]

Hi. Long time Mac user. I make videos & upgraded to Ventura 13.0.1. I format external drives in exFAT so I can use them with Windows when necessary. The new system says "allow to connect" with drives plugged in, and I say yes. Should be fine.

But now on my Intel Mac & my M1 Mac, plugging in a drive does nothing. Disk Utility shows that it sees the drive but will not mount it. Disk Repair fails to do anything. Booting into safe mode/recovery mode does nothing. I saw a post in which the drive is mounting invisibly, but that's not what's happening here.

After several attempts, I got the drive to mount in read-only mode on the M1 Mac.

I finally got another drive to mount on the Intel Mac, but had to reformat it.

Now, I'm able to copy data from the drive that only mounts read-only. Am I going to back up and reformat EVERY drive I have? I have lots of them, since video takes up lots of space. Sounds bad.

Thanks in advance!

 

[CocktailHour]

Hi. Long time Mac user. I make videos & upgraded to Ventura 13.0.1. I format external drives in exFAT so I can use them with Windows when necessary. The new system says "allow to connect" with drives plugged in, and I say yes. Should be fine.

But now on my Intel Mac & my M1 Mac, plugging in a drive does nothing. Disk Utility shows that it sees the drive but will not mount it. Disk Repair fails to do anything. Booting into safe mode/recovery mode does nothing. I saw a post in which the drive is mounting invisibly, but that's not what's happening here.

After several attempts, I got the drive to mount in read-only mode on the M1 Mac.

I finally got another drive to mount on the Intel Mac, but had to reformat it.

Now, I'm able to copy data from the drive that only mounts read-only. Am I going to back up and reformat EVERY drive I have? I have lots of them, since video takes up lots of space. Sounds bad.

Thanks in advance!

Haha! I joined Aug 4, 2014, but the forum has me listed as a "Newbie". OK, I guess.

 

[gilby101]

Did you format the drives on a Mac or was it Windows? Macs have always been picky about the exFAT block size and this may have got worse with Ventura 13.0.1.

 

[CocktailHour]

Did you format the drives on a Mac or was it Windows? Macs have always been picky about the exFAT block size and this may have got worse with Ventura 13.0.1.

Thanks! I don't own any Windows machines, so they were both formatted on my Mac. I can't fully remember, but I think I may have let the OWC utilities format it on one of the drives, so you may be right. I'll contact their support, but I'm sure I didn't do that on more than one drive. So, the question is still open.

My guess is, that new security that tells you to confirm it's OK to connect may be buggy. I always click, "yes", but maybe that doesn't work well with exFAT. Again, just a guess though.

 

[nileshc]

Hi. Long time Mac user. I make videos & upgraded to Ventura 13.0.1. I format external drives in exFAT so I can use them with Windows when necessary. The new system says "allow to connect" with drives plugged in, and I say yes. Should be fine.

But now on my Intel Mac & my M1 Mac, plugging in a drive does nothing. Disk Utility shows that it sees the drive but will not mount it. Disk Repair fails to do anything. Booting into safe mode/recovery mode does nothing. I saw a post in which the drive is mounting invisibly, but that's not what's happening here.

After several attempts, I got the drive to mount in read-only mode on the M1 Mac.

I finally got another drive to mount on the Intel Mac, but had to reformat it.

Now, I'm able to copy data from the drive that only mounts read-only. Am I going to back up and reformat EVERY drive I have? I have lots of them, since video takes up lots of space. Sounds bad.

Thanks in advance!

I faced the same issue and inserted the ExFAT drive in the other USB ports. It worked there.

 

[jeroenvh]

Thanks! I don't own any Windows machines, so they were both formatted on my Mac. I can't fully remember, but I think I may have let the OWC utilities format it on one of the drives, so you may be right. I'll contact their support, but I'm sure I didn't do that on more than one drive. So, the question is still open.

My guess is, that new security that tells you to confirm it's OK to connect may be buggy. I always click, "yes", but maybe that doesn't work well with exFAT. Again, just a guess though.

Did you ever find a fix for this issue? My OWC worked perfect at Ventura 13.0, but 13.0.1 it doesn't mount. At all. How did you get read-only to work? Just like you I can see the drives in the drive utility and in the system report. Thanks!

 

[enterthemerdaverse]

This is still buggy in 13.1. It looks like a permissions problem. Like it won’t let me delete some folders on an exfat drive. I move them to the trash but can’t empty the trash. So I have to delete those folders and files using another system.

 

[auzzieb53]

I'm having a similar issue, I'm not sure if it's 13.0.1 or if it started when I updated to Ventura originally. I can't get any hard-drive to mount. I've tried about six different thumb drives (USB connected to my macbook with a dongle that used to work fine) or a USB-C external hard-drive plugged directly into all the ports. I can't imagine that all the drives are formatted the same or that they all failed, but I get the same "the disk you attached is not readable" error for all devices.

 

[nowwatch]

I have been hampered wby my exFat external drives continuously disconnecting on my M1 Max since the Ventura update. I have run first aid on them as well and it shows no problems. The drives either fail to mount, even though they show up (greyed out) in the disk utility, or they disconnect every 3-4 minutes, making it impossible to work on a project. They work fine on the PC, and worked fine on mac before Ventura. Please Apple! Address this issue and find a resolution.

 

[eddysep]

All my external backups are formatted ExFat and since Ventura 13.01, I started experiencing problems as Ventura - MacBook Pro M1, recognises the ExFat drive but it does not mount them. Tried all usual stuff to fix the problem – disk repair, change ports, change cables, etc., but to no avail.

I’m not sure whether the problem is with Ventura or the external disk BUT I decided to try to read the disk using a Windows PC. Windows detected some errors with the disk and recommended to Scan and Repair. After repairing the problem, I reconnected the drive to the M1, and the disk was mounted OK.

The problem can also be “fixed” using a Windows emulator. I have Parallels Desktop 18 for Mac installed on my M1 … select Windows to open the disk & the message to scan and repair will be displayed, etc.

 

[Megafauna]

...I format external drives in exFAT ...now on my Intel Mac & my M1 Mac, plugging in a drive does nothing. Disk Utility shows that it sees the drive but will not mount it. Disk Repair fails to do anything. Booting into safe mode/recovery mode does nothing. I saw a post in which the drive is mounting invisibly, but that's not what's happening here...

When this happened to me (2018 MBP, Ventura, preformatted external SSD) I tried it on a 2017 MBP (also Ventura) and it mounted. I renamed it there and after that it mounted on my first MBP. Until it didn't. Now it doesn't show up on MY MBP and only shows up read-only on the other.

I've read advice that suggests using a Mac exfat-formatted disk if you need exfat, and avoiding Windows-formatted exfat. Seems you did that, OP, so... Idunno.

Dear Apple, think "basic functionalality"!