Two brand new Seagate 14tb drives became unaccessible by M1 MBA and Mac mini after 1st day

[Tozovac]

I have a real head-scratcher here...

Purchased a 14TB seagate external drive as a backup from Costco before Thanksgiving. Started copying files to it, then disconnected it. Next day I can't connect to it. Seagate is processing a trade.

Purchased a 2nd identical drive during the $150 Black Friday deal at Costco. Same exact thing...started filling it up. Disconnected. Reconnected later and I can't connect to it.

Disk Utility does not recognize it..when trying to call up Disk Utility, DU will float without even recognizing the Mac SSD until I unplug the drive from the Mac, then DU comes up.

Same results with my M1 MBA (using a Uni hub) and my M1 Mac mini (direct-in).

Has anyone else ever experienced this???

Running latest Sonoma 14.1.2.

 

[chabig]

How did you format the drives? What format? Did you make sure to use the GUID partition scheme? Did you use or install any Seagate software?

 

[Tozovac]

Used it straight up. No reformat. Since when you first mount it, you’re presented with a “Mac users click here” type of intro, I tried it and it said to just copy away to it. I dared to try that.

 

[chabig]

I’ll guess that is your problem. Always favor the operating system’s built in tools over a third party vendors, especially for something as important as data integrity.

Seagate likes to ship their drives with Seagate software on them. The best thing a Mac user can do is ignore it, fire up Disk Utility, and erase the drive using a GUID partition map and either APFS or Mac OS Extended. APFS is what all newer Macs use, but many say it’s not as good on rotating disks because it’s designed to get best performance on SSDs. I’ve had no problems with it.

If you start over and follow this advice, I’m sure your drive will be ok.

Initialize an external storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, you can initialize an external storage device you connected to your Mac.

support.apple.com

 

[Tozovac]

I’ll guess that is your problem. Always favor the operating system’s built in tools over a third party vendors, especially for something as important as data integrity.

Seagate likes to ship their drives with Seagate software on them. The best thing a Mac user can do is ignore it, fire up Disk Utility, and erase the drive using a GUID partition map and either APFS or Mac OS Extended. APFS is what all newer Macs use, but many say it’s not as good on rotating disks because it’s designed to get best performance on SSDs. I’ve had no problems with it.

If you start over and follow this advice, I’m sure your drive will be ok.

Initialize an external storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, you can initialize an external storage device you connected to your Mac.

support.apple.com

Thanks. Funny, just 30 mins ago I thought to try other computers in the house. My wife's 2014 MBA running a much earlier OS than current did not. But my son's pc running Windows 11 did. I reformatted it there to exFat, then formatted the drive via my M1 Mac mini to APFS.

But still, to me it's very unexpected that a drive supposedly set by Seagate to be readable by Macs was ultimately unreadable. I have 2 of these and will later retry the same thing with it. Do you happen to know how Seagate typically formats their external drives? I'll see if I can tell via my son's pc before reformatting that one.

 

[chabig]

Do you happen to know how Seagate typically formats their external drives?

I think they’re usually formatted for Windows, since there are more of them than Macs. But if it’s sold as a Mac drive, it’s probably formatted for Mac. Nevertheless, I always reformat any new drive myself, using native tools.

 

[pmiles]

Typically a new Seagate drive is formatted in the exFAT file system. This format allows it to be used with both Macs and PCs alike.

Ideally you would want to reformat the drive using the native file system that you intend to use it with, such as NTFS for PCs and HFS+ for MacOS. APFS file system is typically required for newer Macs.

You found the drive to mount on the PC because the exFAT file system favors the PC environment. Macs can have trouble mounting exFAT drives from time to time, but you attach it to a PC, and it mounts just fine.

You may have to reformat the drive on the PC using exFAT then once it mounts to the Mac, immediately format it to HFS+ or APFS (the latter if a newer Mac). After that, it should be fine.

exFAT is not bulletproof, even on the PC side. Which is why NTFS is still the preferred file system.

Good luck!

 

[Tozovac]

You may have to reformat the drive on the PC using exFAT then once it mounts to the Mac, immediately format it to HFS+ or APFS (the latter if a newer Mac).

Thanks a lot for your post and information. The above is exactly what I did about an hour ago and it seems to have done the trick. This instance is probably the first time I used an external drive without reformatting it, thinking it would be OK. Now I know better.

 

[Tozovac]

I think they’re usually formatted for Windows, since there are more of them than Macs. But if it’s sold as a Mac drive, it’s probably formatted for Mac. Nevertheless, I always reformat any new drive myself, using native tools.

Thank you for the help as well!