External Hard Drive Won’t Mount

disk-utilityhard drivemount

I've searched and tried a lot of stuff but still can't get it to work.

I was able to use my seagate HDD properly last week but now it doesn't mount. I tried plugging it to a PC & another mac, it works fine on both. The reasons could be

  1. Updating OS to macOS Sierra
  2. Not ejecting properly
  3. Installed sims4 with wineskin

Things I have tried.

  1. From disk utility clicking on mount & first aid.
    enter image description here
  2. From terminal writing: diskutil mount disk2s1 & diskutil mount readOnly disk2s1 both resulted with this
    Volume on disk2s1 failed to mount
    If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
  3. From terminal writing: diskutil repairDisk disk2s1 & diskutil repairVolume disk2s1.
  4. Restarted mac in normal mode & safe mode.
  5. /private/var/log/install.log from here found some logs but don't know what to do with them. enter image description here
  6. Switch USB ports & retry.
  7. A couple of other things.

Best Answer

I'd recommend checking if fsck is holding your disk hostage upon connection. This was it for me.

Running ps aux | grep fsck revealed:

root 2587 7.3 0.1 4363584 21780 ?? U 10:56PM 2:22.54 /System/Library/Filesystems/exfat.fs/Contents/Resources/./fsck_exfat -y /dev/rdisk2s1

So the solution was a sudo kill -9 2587 (insert your PID instead of 2587) (or sudo pkill -f fsck). As soon as that ran, my Volume immediately mounted.

Oh the irony of fsck being the problem...

Addendum (surfacing from comments): Ideally, you're better off letting fsck run its course. Otherwise, you'll run into this the next time too.

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