In case you havent tried and its a possibility, find a PC and try to access the drive through a piece of software that allows it to read the mac file system or clone it and see if you still have problems accessing the clone.
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Mac can see external drive but won't open it
- Thread starter Mildredop
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I'm not sure why you're attempting to insult someone who's very generously taking their time to try and assist you.
APFS is optimized for SSD. There is no advantage AT ALL to using it on a HDD and, in fact, Apple does not convert HDD to APFS when upgrading to High Sierra. Do you think there might be a reason for that?
This is not to mention the fact that you said you intend to use the drive for Time Machine. APFS drives CAN NOT BE USED as Time Machine destinations.
I assure you there's no confusion here whatsoever.
[doublepost=1515544020][/doublepost]Not sure why I'm still even bothering to try and help you but...
As I already told you a bunch of times above, if you intend to use the drive for Time Machine just choose it as a destination and it will automatically convert it to HFS+ since Time Machine does not support APFS.
If that doesn't work and Disk Utility doesn't work then you can always use DiskUtil. There are details at this page. That was written back when APFS was still in beta but the commands are still the same.
I'll admit that I was unaware that Disk Utility could not be used in such situations having never wasted my time converting external HDD to APFS.
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This is not to mention the fact that you said you intend to use the drive for Time Machine. APFS drives CAN NOT BE USED as Time Machine destinations.
I assure you there's no confusion here whatsoever.
There is a lot of confusion here. At no time have a said I intend to use the drive as a Time Machine.
You clearly have problems processing information.
And yet you still tried to give me (incorrect) advice on what to do.
I'm not sure that's the natural conclusion here.
Aside from the (incorrect) part you are exactly right and I completely agree that it was a mistake in hindsight.
Best of luck to you.
I had the exact same issue last semester. My professor described it to me. so with the new updates, the drive will only show up on that specific version of Mac, so if you have updated It since plugging in anything, you won't be able to see what you had unless it goes back to the version you had when you plugged it in for the first time. I dont remember why it won't do it, but it won't.
In any event, hopefully the lesson learned here one way or another is to always have at least TWO, if not more, backups...... Redundancy is key. It pays off when an external drive suddenly chokes and apparently bites the dust.