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Mount Button Grayed out on Disk Utility when I try to connect an External Hard Drive

I have an Apple Hard Drive that I had taken out of my Imac when I upgraded it. I have used it as an external hard drive for the past few years. It works perfectly with my 2014 Imac, but I just bought a new Mac Mini M1 and it won't connect to it. It doesn't show in Finder, but does show in Disk Utility. I can click on the drive and all the buttons are available except for the mount button so I can't access the drive. My Imac is running Catalina and the new Mini is running Monterey.

Mac mini, macOS 12.2

Posted on May 25, 2022 7:52 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 26, 2022 7:45 AM

Maybe it's already mounted?

Does the external drive show up in Finder window sidebar?

Check Finder Preferences > General tab and see if there is a check-mark in the box for "External disks" under "Show these items on the desktop". Check also for a similar checkbox under the Sidebar tab.

6 replies

May 26, 2022 8:16 AM in response to bmwpgh

Check your drive connection method. You're using a usb-a/usb-c adapter of some sort, are you confident in the quality of that?

How about the quality of the drive's external enclosure?


Also suggest you run Disk Utility > First Aid on the drive.

Please see > How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility - Apple Support


Another great diagnostic tool is DriveDX from Binary Fruit.


You might consider using the iMac to mount the drive, copy the contents to another external, and then erase and reformat the problem device and try again.

May 26, 2022 8:30 AM in response to D.I. Johnson

The cable that I am using is the same one that works perfectly with my IMac. I did run First Aid and it said there is something with the partition, but again.....I can just plug and play with the IMac. I would just copy to the IMac, but I am away for a month and don't have access to it. Stupidly, I just assumed that the drive would automatically work with the MINI since it always works with the IMac.

May 26, 2022 9:03 AM in response to bmwpgh

The adapter, drive dock, or enclosure you are using with this old drive may not be compatible with an M1 Mac. I tend to purchase items which utilize the ASMedia USB chipset and so far I have not had any issues connecting external drives to my first gen M1 Mac. The version of a USB chipset can play an important role in compatibility as well since one user mentioned they had two Samsung external SSDs, but one would work fine on an M1 Mac, but the other one would not as the two drives utilized different versions of the USB chipset.


What file system is on the old drive?


Is the drive being connected directly to the M1 Mac? Perhaps the M1 Mac isn't able to provide enough power for the drive, so you may need to use an external power supply for the drive or a powered USB3 hub even if the old iMac drive is a 2.5" hard drive.

Mount Button Grayed out on Disk Utility when I try to connect an External Hard Drive

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