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Cannot mount LaCie external hard drive to MBP

Intel MBP running Ventura 13.7.2


I have an older Lacie external drive I'm trying to mount/connect to retrieve archived files.

Using original power cord and NEW cable (printer USB to USB C). Original cable required an adapter so I replaced hoping that was the cause of the problem.


The drive has mounted without issue until recent system upgrade. It powers on and blue light flickers.

Drive is not password protected.


Finder settings have all locations checked. The drive appears in USB Device Tree/USB 3.0 Bus/d2 Quadra (button). The drive DOES NOT appear in Disk Utility or Terminal diskutil list.


I have reset NVRAM and PRAM, started in recovery mode, and connected to a PC without success.


I have searched multiple discussions and have not located a solution...seems this may be a common problem and I'm hopeful someone has found a solution. Please help!




MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.7

Posted on Jan 21, 2025 3:00 PM

Reply
3 replies

Jan 21, 2025 8:25 PM in response to boilerfan

If the drive doesn't appear in Disk Utility when you have toggled "view all devices" (not "view Volumes"), and it doesn't appear in the output from diskutil, then the device isn't connected at all to the computer. Forget mounting a Volume - there is no disk. That leaves three options:

  1. Bad cable;
  2. Bad enclosure; or
  3. The disk itself is dead.


The fact it appears in the USB device tree actually suggests #3 to me, since a d2 Quadra is a fairly complicated enclosure with its own micro-electronics.

Jan 22, 2025 6:03 PM in response to boilerfan

Like I said, the d2 Quadra is a fairly advanced enclosure with electronics to manage multiple ports and allow them to all be used with the disk in the device. A power light may only mean the enclosure has power to it's main board.


What I would do is remove the disk from the enclosure and stick it in a drive dock (something like this: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-drives/owc-drive-dock) - but I already have a dock lying around.. If you can power up the disk and read it in a dock, then pull your data off of it - ad your problem was actually something else in the enclosure, so you could get a different one in theory (might not be worth it though).


If the disk is still dead - then for data recovery you are looking at specialist data recovery. It could be expensive - in the $500 - $1000+ USD range (in the higher end especially if clean-room recovery to directly access the platters is required).

Cannot mount LaCie external hard drive to MBP

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