Sequoia 15.0 bugs - external hard drives

Tinx_Lvs_JC wrote: "...Apple - please fix this bug!..."

Apple isn't here — use this form:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

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Can Disk Utility find it?

Privacy & Security>Allow Accessories To Connect

Perfect. I nearly went and bought another drive. Switching it for a hub to the socket at the rear of the Mac sorted my problem. Thanks.

All drives I'm using were formatted APFS by my MBP. The drives all mount on my MBP on Monterey (too old to update further). Drives that don't mount in Sequoia didn't mount in Sonoma either. The issue is with the OS, not the drives.

I had Raid Time Machine drives that worked fine with Ventura and Sonoma. Once I upgraded they would not mount and actually crashed the computer and forced a restart. Apple Store has been helping me with this issues with no luck. They’ve decided to reinstall Sonoma. Hopefully Apple figures out what’s wrong with Sequioa before I need to upgrade to it for other software reasons.

Hi it is depending of the puter you use!

The problem seem to be a re writing of Spotlight on the External Hard disk. That use a lot of space and block the process.

Apple , this afternoon, work on the problem !

So be patient !

Not so.

Time Machine still fails on my Mac as it does almost every year with new OS releases these or similar issues with my external drives and/or Time Machine, Disk Utility, Spotlight (and even 3rd party software like Carbon Copy Cloner) consistently reappear.

Year after year.

Yesterday, 12/19/24, 9to5Mac released an article that confirmed macOS bug(s) most-likely related to most (if not all) of the issues that we are reporting here.

Here’s my humble suggestion.

Demand Apple fix the issues once and for all. That’s the only solution.

Write excellent software like they did under Steve Jobs. We know they can, but will they? This from The Ghost of Christmases Past.

Merry Christmas!

Glad to know it’s not just me! Since Sequoia, I can’t access my photos on my external hard drive! I don’t know what to do because I need to make a video for my daughter’s wedding in Final Cut Pro X!!!

APPLE DO SOMETHING!

My Mac Mini M4 came with Sequoia pre-installed so there was never any other OS on it. Yet my external drives are still randomly disconnecting. It happens several times a day. It has nothing to do with how many previous versions of the OS you have had installed. Most people did not have this issue until updating to Sequoia.

Maggot wrote:

I want to add my voice to this.

Since updating to Sequoia in November, 2024, neither of my external USB-C drives have functioned normally: spontaneously unmounting; Photos (my library lives on an external drive) having to quit, rebuild or restore from iCloud; Time Machine backups via USB-C taking FOUR HOURS to complete, even when no files have been changed or added.

But the kicker is that since these problems began in December I've had EIGHT kernal panics, including three in the last 24 hours. I thought it might be an incompatability issue with the external drives' HFS+ journaled extended file systems vs. APFS, so I chucked five years of Time Machine backups, and erased and reformattted the Time Machine drive to to APFS—and halfway through the first backup the process simply quit, and then crashed my iMac simultaneously, too.

I've run Diagnositcs ("No issues found"), and started up in Safe mode. I've reset the SMC and zapped the PRAM. I ran EtreCheck, and it was clean. The only thing I can think of is that something is causing the OS to not play properly with USB-C. (FYI, the drives are both G Tech G-Drive mobile, 2TB and 4TB.) I've unmounted and put both drives aside to see if the panics continue.

I'm currently backing up—flawlessly—to an ancient Seagate USB 2.0 drive. I can't be sure, of course, but it seems that USB-C is the culprit.

iMac, late 2020 (last Intel model)

Sequoia 15.2

32G RAM

I think it is a power issue. My Mac Mini M4 doesn't have any legacy ports. They are all USB-C/Thunderbolt 4. So even my LaCie 1TB external drive, which I have to connect via a non-powered hub also sometimes disconnects, although not as often as my USB-C drive.

I am going to try a powered hub next and see if that helps but honestly, 2025 and Apple can't sort this out? Crazy!

A knock wood update:

Since I decomissioned both of my USB-C external drives (one exclusively for Photos, the other for Time Machine backups), I haven't had any kernal panics. None.

As I mentioned above, I am currently using an old Seagate USB 2.0 drive to do Time Machine's dirty work. It backs up hourly with no issues, and in under a minute and a half generally. In other words, it works.

This is, in my opinion, Apple's buggy implementation of USB-C in Sequoia/Sonoma. (Upon reflection, the Time Machine backups taking way too long may have begun in Sonoma.) Likely a software implementation issue, in my opinion. They need to fix this ASAP. (And yes, I have reported the issue to Apple.)

Running 2023 Studio M2. Things were working great until I "upgraded" to Suckquioa.

Now, my powered Insignia hub isn't recognized. I need a hub because I use multiple flash drives at the same time for my work. More importantly, I also need more because one of the USB ports is being used by my husband's pacemaker monitor. Because my hub isn't recognized any more, that monitor must be plugged into one of the Studio's ports directly.

If this IS a KNOWN issue with Apple, WHY the bloody .... are they not fixing it??? My case isn't just a work thing. It could mean a BIG issue with my husband's heart!

Since your problem is totally different from the Authors you should start your own topic with details of your Mac, system, drive, etc . as described in this Apple document: Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

That will get responses from those who will be more familiar with that problem then those coming here.

AlWeir wrote:

Was reading this morning that HFS+ volumes are not supported in Sequoia.

According to Apple's documentation, Sequoia supports HFS+.

File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

If it is an older HFS formatted drive or one formatted in some Linux filesystem (e.g. Btrfs, ext3, ext4) variant, then it won't be recognized by Sequoia.