Solved: External SSD not visible in Disk Utility after 10.13.4 upgrade

[Overkill303]

Hi! This is an odd one.

I just updated to 10.13.4 using my usual method.. clone boot drive to external usb ssd, then update MacOS, Clover, Nvidia.

Everything went as usual, although I chose to use the Nvidia-update script instead of the usual latest driver thing so I'm actually at an older driver version.

The issue is that my SSD that I clone the drive to is no longer visible in Disk Utility or diskutil after the update. It is still seen in the BIOS, and its entries still show up in Clover. So this seems to be a MacOS issue. I have not tried booting into a different version of the OS to verify that the ssd is visible there.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?


Thanks,


Gerry

 

[P1LGRIM]

Does anyone have any ideas about this?

Did the upgrade convert the SSD to APFS and you don't have apfs.efi in /EFI/CLOVER/Drivers64UEFI ?

 

[Overkill303]

The ssd already had apfs partitions on it, and I already have apfs.efi there. However, you bring up a point that I'm unclear on. I think that someplace I saw instructions that when upgrading macOS the apfs.efi in this folder should be manually upgraded? I have never done that and maybe that's why?


thanks,

gerry

 

[P1LGRIM]

The ssd already had apfs partitions on it, and I already have apfs.efi there. However, you bring up a point that I'm unclear on. I think that someplace I saw instructions that when upgrading macOS the apfs.efi in this folder should be manually upgraded? I have never done that and maybe that's why?

See https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/how-to-update-current-and-past-apfs-efi-downloads.236103/

 

[Overkill303]

See https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/how-to-update-current-and-past-apfs-efi-downloads.236103/

Thank you! Unfortunately updating the afps.efi didn't solve this issue. Although I'll be sure to keep doing it with os upgrades. The interesting thing is that the hardware doesn't even show up in Disk Utility or diskutil list.

Any other ideas or steps I can take to provide more info?

Thank you!

 

[P1LGRIM]

Thank you! Unfortunately updating the afps.efi didn't solve this issue. Although I'll be sure to keep doing it with os upgrades. The interesting thing is that the hardware doesn't even show up in Disk Utility or diskutil list.

Any other ideas or steps I can take to provide more info?

Thank you!

Maybe it is somehow related to this :
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-8-2-and-macos-10-13-4-workaround.249081/

 

[Overkill303]

Maybe it is somehow related to this :
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-8-2-and-macos-10-13-4-workaround.249081/

Thanks! I'm not really clear where I would try to delete those files from though.

I got a little more info. The external SSD contains a Rescue Drive and a Clone of the main system drive in an encrypted partition. I booted into the Rescue Drive (10.13.2) from clover and opened up disk utility and took a picture (I don't know why its upside down sorry):

Next I booted back into the main drive (10.13.4) and opened up disk utility and took a picture:

I'm not sure if that helps, but I noticed that the device that contains Stuff is showing at the top of the list in the Rescue drive. I don't know if that makes a difference.

I also plugged in another external drive and my install usb's and none of them showed up. So it seems that all external usb devices are now broken.

I'm wondering if this has to do with the USB port limit patch? I never did the "proper" solution proposed by pastry chef, I'm just using the patch installed by multibeast. Maybe something changed there?


Thanks,


g

 

[P1LGRIM]

I got a little more info. The external SSD contains a Rescue Drive and a Clone of the main system drive in an encrypted partition.

In Disk Utility you should select View - Show all Devices.

 

[Overkill303]

In Disk Utility you should select View - Show all Devices.

OK, this is the result:

The external devices are still missing. I think its interesting that they are missing at a hardware level rather than at the logical volume level.

The only other thing that I can think that might be related is that I used to have an fstab file to prevent the external drives and Windows drive from mounting at boot, and to mount the Windows drive in read only. When I upgraded to High Sierra, the Windows part still worked, but the External drives still mounted. So I would unmount them manually upon boot instead. Super Duper used to be able to mount the external drive at a scheduled time, and since the High Sierra upgrade has been unable to. So maybe there is something funny going on with my particular configuration and High Sierra (which was a fresh install)

 

[originalmagneto]

I have problems with external USB drives too, however, it started a couple of days AFTER I installed 10.13.4 :/