Post Sierra Upgrade Internal storage SSD won't mount

[hcgaron]

After updating to Sierra my internal storage SSD (which I use to hold all of my audio samples for production) will no longer mount. All of my libraries are on this drive (although they are backed up somewhere I believe) so I can't point my software to the libraries.

I have tried to repair the disk and I get an error. I have tried to run fsck command to no avail. The drive hasn't been altered and there's no reason to believe it would be corrupted (I knot it can happen still).

I did clear NVRAM when installing the new Sierra drive (because of a mistake I made during installation it was required). Doing that made me have to re-install windows in order to have the MBR recognize the windows installation. Could this have caused an issue with this drive as well? It's only for storage - not a boot drive.

 

[Bob_the_Tomato]

Hi, let's see if we can solve this issue with a little more information...

1) Was the drive installed and available during your reinstall of Win? Any and All os updates should be performed with ONLY the one drive installed. Pull the plugs on any drive other than the one you need.

2) Is the drive visible in Windows? Does it get a drive letter assigned with Windows? If it does, then Windows has loaded the correct drivers for that format. Speaking of format... how is the drive formatted? HFS+ or NTFS or any one of those pesky Linux options? Since you say that you ran fsck, the drive is probably in HFS+ and Windows should not recognize it (unless you installed special third party drivers.)

3) What messages did you get when you ran fsck?

 

[kiiroaka]

Is it NTFS, EXT, ZFS, FAT32? MBR or UEFI?

What happens if you try to mount it externally, from a docking station, or external enclosure, for example?

 

[hcgaron]

Hi, let's see if we can solve this issue with a little more information...

1) Was the drive installed and available during your reinstall of Win? Any and All os updates should be performed with ONLY the one drive installed. Pull the plugs on any drive other than the one you need.

2) Is the drive visible in Windows? Does it get a drive letter assigned with Windows? If it does, then Windows has loaded the correct drivers for that format. Speaking of format... how is the drive formatted? HFS+ or NTFS or any one of those pesky Linux options? Since you say that you ran fsck, the drive is probably in HFS+ and Windows should not recognize it (unless you installed special third party drivers.)

3) What messages did you get when you ran fsck?

Thanks for your reply - I'll check on all those things today and update.

I can tell you the following information right now:

1) I believe the drive was not connected during the windows install. While I can't remember 100% , I do recall pulling all othe drives to make sure I could locate the correct windows drive. While I beilieve it was unplugged, I'm willing to work under the assumption it was connected just in case that leads me to a solution.

2) The drive does NOT show up in windows and does NOT get a letter assigned to it (it's entirely absent in windows). I believe it's formatted / partitioned just as you would format a Mac boot drive, MAC OS (extended, journaled) - GUID partition table.

I have to run fsck when I'm back at the rig and I'll post the output to you later today. Thanks for the help!

Edit: I should also note that the NAME of the partition has disappeared as well, and I am unable to rename it. When I click "get info" it says it's "read only" but I can't actually see any of the files on it. When I try to mount it from disk utility I don't even get an error, simply nothing happens. I believe it does say something when I try to run diskutil mount from terminal, will update with more specifics as I can.

 

[hcgaron]

Is it NTFS, EXT, ZFS, FAT32? MBR or UEFI?

What happens if you try to mount it externally, from a docking station, or external enclosure, for example?

I'll check those things today and reply - I haven't yet put it in an external enclosure but I have access to one. I'll try shortly and update.

 

[kiiroaka]

2) The drive does NOT show up in windows and does NOT get a letter assigned to it (it's entirely absent in windows). I believe it's formatted / partitioned just as you would format a Mac boot drive, MAC OS (extended, journaled) - GUID partition table.

In Windows you would Control Panel -> Administrator Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and see if it is even detected.

Maybe it won't detect it because it may be HFS+ formatted?

I should also note that the NAME of the partition has disappeared as well.

That may not be a good sign. Kind of reminds me of when I formatted an Edge M.2 drive and the firmware number disappeared. The m.2 drive was trashed and with a lot of sweat in Linux I was able to bring it back to life. Barely. It was totally unreliable so I trash canned it.

Maybe this will give you some ideas: https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...recognized-or-mounted-on-el-capitan-or-sierra

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7678771?start=0&tstart=0

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...ing-4k-advanced-format-in-osx-thanks.1568878/ Note how some external devices can have problems due to their interface chips.

Just for future reference, if you want to know how to tell what block sizes are being used in OSX you would issue the commands

diskutil info / | grep "Block Size"
stat -f %k.

Although the stat command may have changed and may no longer be applicable.

 

[hcgaron]

In Windows you would Control Panel -> Administrator Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and see if it is even detected.

Maybe it won't detect it because it may be HFS+ formatted?



That may not be a good sign. Kind of reminds me of when I formatted an Edge M.2 drive and the firmware number disappeared. The m.2 drive was trashed and with a lot of sweat in Linux I was able to bring it back to life. Barely. It was totally unreliable so I trash canned it.

Maybe this will give you some ideas: https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...recognized-or-mounted-on-el-capitan-or-sierra

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7678771?start=0&tstart=0

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...ing-4k-advanced-format-in-osx-thanks.1568878/ Note how some external devices can have problems due to their interface chips.

Just for future reference, if you want to know how to tell what block sizes are being used in OSX you would issue the commands

diskutil info / | grep "Block Size"
stat -f %k.

Although the stat command may have changed and may no longer be applicable.

Thanks for that; when I click on "more info" for the drive (or use the terminal command diskutil list) it does confirm the file format is hfs. (I believe hfs+ but I can't recall).

I should note that it's a storage drive for the Mac, not the windows OS. I wasn't totally clear about that before but I'm looking to have it mounted in Sierra.

I used the TestDisk utility which says it can recover / restore file systems to drives where the files are present but the file tree / system has gotten messed up. My first attempt was no success, but I'll try again. I really appreciate your help!

 

[kiiroaka]

Does OSX disk utility recognize the disk?

What other disks do you have in the system? m.2? What ports are the drives connected to? When you use Clover to get into UEFI does it show the drive and GUID?

 

[Bob_the_Tomato]

This is not looking good... The only drive failure I've ever had was a recent Seagate 3TB HDD. Those drives had insanely high failure numbers. My experience with SSDs is limited and I've never tried to diagnose a problem with them.
I'm out of ideas, sorry.

 

[kiiroaka]

With SSDs you probably should keep it under 80% of capacity. I hope you have backups. Me, I'm sticking with 1GB HDDs. Yeah, I heard that the 3TB drives had a high failure rate. When I was looking at MLC SSDs I could buy siz 1TB drives for the price of a Samsung 512GB Pro. A year later I was all set to buy my first SSD and was looking at the Zoltac 480 Premium Edition and the Scandisk 480 Extreme Pro. I waited too long. Prices went up before Christmas and now stock is zilch, and I just can't see paying $200 for a 480GB SSD, not when I can buy four 1TB WD Blues for $200. Yeah, SSDs are fast but I'm not impressed at work because the network slows it down. (Ever notice how long it takes Windows to scan/update the Control Panel?)