I bought a new external SSD, but when I connected it to my MBP (14" 2021 Ventura 13.0.1, Apple M1 Pro), it did not show up in the Finder (sidebar or anywhere else).
How I can make it show up?
What I did so far:
I googled around a bit and was suggested to use disk utility. Indeed, the SSD showed up there in ExFAT format. However, first aid and erase (for reformatting) failed with error messages. So I resorted to terminal. When I typed diskutil list, I saw:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: Apple_APFS_ISC Container disk1 524.3 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 994.7 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_APFS_Recovery Container disk2 5.4 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +994.7 GB disk3
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 11.7 GB disk3s1
2: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 11.7 GB disk3s1s1
3: APFS Volume Preboot 9.4 GB disk3s2
4: APFS Volume Recovery 1.5 GB disk3s3
5: APFS Volume Data 596.8 GB disk3s5
6: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk3s6
/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *16.8 TB disk4
1: Microsoft Reserved 16.8 MB disk4s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data SSD 16.8 TB disk4s2
So I guess the disk4 was my external SSD (16TB). For reformatting, I then typed diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS SSD /dev/disk4, which got me
Started erase on disk4
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device
Apparently an error (which I don't really understand). But my diskutil list now looked like:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: Apple_APFS_ISC Container disk1 524.3 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 994.7 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_APFS_Recovery Container disk2 5.4 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +994.7 GB disk3
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 11.7 GB disk3s1
2: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 11.7 GB disk3s1s1
3: APFS Volume Preboot 9.4 GB disk3s2
4: APFS Volume Recovery 1.5 GB disk3s3
5: APFS Volume Data 596.8 GB disk3s5
6: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk3s6
/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: *16.8 TB disk4
And the disk now shows up in disk utility as "FSS SSD Media, not initialised". So something seems to have changed indeed. I then also tried running diskutil eraseDisk APFS SSD /dev/disk4 for a better format, which got me the same error message as above. I then mounted the disk using diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk4, which gave me Volume(s) mounted successfully, but still the disk does not show up in finder.
diskutil info /dev/disk4 shows:
Device Identifier: disk4
Device Node: /dev/disk4
Whole: Yes
Part of Whole: disk4
Device / Media Name: SSD
Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)
File System: None
Content (IOContent): None
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Allgemein
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported
Disk Size: 16.8 TB (16777216000000 Bytes) (exactly 32768000000 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size: 4096 Bytes
Media OS Use Only: No
Media Read-Only: No
Volume Read-Only: Not applicable (no file system)
Device Location: External
Removable Media: Fixed
Solid State: Info not available
Virtual: No
How can I make the disk show up in finder and use it?
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)