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My MacBook Pro (2017, 13", 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5, Mojave) suddenly stopped seeing my external hard drive.

I was working on it when the laptop lost power. The battery is dead and the power cable disconnected momentarily as I moved the computer.) I rebooted, and everything seemed okay. I started working on the files from the external drive, editing one, then rearranging some, when suddenly I got a pop up saying "disk wasn't ejected properly," and it vanished.

I tried to remount it but no luck. I confirmed that the disk is in fact okay because I could work on it on another MacBook Pro running Mojave. And yet I can't get my Mac to even see it. I restarted several times, changed the USB port, nothing. I normally use it through a Thunderbolt port on one of those adapters that connect to the two Thunderbolt ports; another hub plus an external monitor are also routed through there. I also tried it through USB2 through both the adapter and a powered hub. The light on the drive comes up but doesn't blink as it normally does when working.

It's not showing in Terminal, either. I now tried other external drives, and none will show. They get power, but the computer doesn't see them at all (no external drives show up in Terminal under diskutil list).

My MacBook Pro is running super low on memory, both system and working. At the time I was working on heavy Photoshop files, and I think the MacBook Pro just choked. After I closed all programs, restarted, and connected the drive directly to the MacBook Pro, it mounted. The problem hasn't gone away entirely as I can't mount other drives (USB 2 connection via adapter or hub). But at least I can see them now in Terminal or Disc Utility even if they won't mount. Does it seem right that the issue was with memory?

What happened? How can I fix it? Help!

(system_profiler SPUSBDataType output in the images. Lots of stuff connected and functioning, no drive.)

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I think I solved it: the issue must have been overloaded memory.

I've done some massive purging getting some free space, and then the MacBook Pro started seeing the external drives, even if I still couldn't mount them (they showed up in disc utility and in terminal).

After more cleaning I was able to mount the drive. Now, after even more cleaning and then updating to Monterey, everything works again.

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  • Yikes. That's an indirect workaround for a yet-to-be-root-caused issue. I hope you have a good data backup system in place and are always working under the assumption that your data may disappear at any moment!
    – pion
    Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 9:23
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    It was on a laptop I was about to ditch, so I'm now a bit less worried. Just migrated to Mac Studio.
    – Hamletta
    Commented Apr 7, 2022 at 17:54

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