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It's formatted HPS+. Mounted fine yesterday (and for a long time before that). Now, the light on the drive blinks on-and-off and it sometimes briefly shows up in the output to diskutil list as /dev/disk3. I've tried diskutil eject disk3 and similar variants.

The drive automatically mounts on linux without issue.

I do not see fsck running (I checked with ps auxw and top from a terminal). I did not find any interesting log messages via the Console program.

We had trouble about a year ago. Apple support recommended upgrading the OS and I think that worked. We also bought a second cable for the external drive, but ended up not needing it. I just tried the second cable and it didn't make a difference. There was an upgrade OS available and we tried that after talking to Apple support this time, but it didn't make a difference. The drive mounts fine on a ~2016 Mac Air.

jrennie
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  • If your Mac isn't a M1 model, have you try do a SMC Reset? –  May 05 '21 at 05:57
  • Does the port on the Mac work for other devices? – benwiggy May 05 '21 at 10:18
  • @Jean_JD Yes, Apple support had us do an SMC reset. – jrennie May 05 '21 at 13:30
  • @benwiggy We have it connected via a usb hub that also connects a mouse and keyboard. We tried connecting the hub to a different usb-c port on the mac (swapping with an external monitor hookup). Same behavior as before. Thanks for the ideas! – jrennie May 05 '21 at 13:30
  • If you boot the Mac in Safe Mode, have you the same problem? –  May 05 '21 at 13:36
  • Sorry: it's not clear -- have you plugged the drive in directly to the Mac, or only through a hub? – benwiggy May 05 '21 at 13:55
  • @benwiggy Only through a hub. I just ordered a cable that can connect directly (w/o the hub). I'll report back once I can try connecting w/o the hub. Fwiw, on the 2016 Mac Air, we once had the opposite problem---it would connect/mount via the hub, but not directly... – jrennie May 05 '21 at 14:07
  • @Jean_JD Sorry for failing to mention this earlier. Apple support had us try safe mode---the drive (via the hub) connects/mounts perfectly fine in safe mode! – jrennie May 05 '21 at 18:31
  • Can you list kext non Apple on your system ? Terminal command : kextstat | grep -v com.apple maybe you have an System Extension not compatible??? –  May 05 '21 at 18:43
  • Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded No variant specified, falling back to release Index Refs Address Size Wired Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>``` – jrennie May 05 '21 at 21:35
  • I tried w/o the grep and it was only com.apple stuff – jrennie May 05 '21 at 21:35
  • Just got the new cable and the drive seems to work fine when directly connected to the laptop, so maybe the hub was misbehaving. Thanks for all the ideas! – jrennie May 06 '21 at 19:17

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A few days after posting this, we got a usb-c cable for the drive and had no trouble using the drive with a direct connection. A few days later, the hub that we were using to connect the drive completely died. So, the hub was clearly the problem.

jrennie
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