Most of the time, when you plug a Samsung T3, Crucial, Sony or Sandisk SSD into your MacBook or Mac Mini, it will be mounted in Disk Utility. However, sometimes, an external or internal SSD won't mount on Mac. It can be so frustrating if your Mac doesn't detect the SSD, especially when you need to transfer something right then.
• Definite Guide to hard drives not showing up/mounting issues
Joined Jul 31, 2017 Messages 169 Reaction score 5 Points 18 Location Toronto Your Mac's Specs Late 2013 13' MBP, 8 Gb, 256 SSD, early 2011 13' MBP, 8 GB, 256 SSD. If you bought a Mac with an SSD installed from the factory, then TRIM is enabled by default and you're all set—nothing to worry about. If, on the other hand, you later added a third-party SSD to your system, then TRIM will be disabled by default. If you aren't sure, the best thing to do is double-check. Step 1: Check TRIM. M.2 SSD to MacBook Pro Retina (A1425 A1398) Adapter (Amazon, DX) Combine these adapters with either a Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD or a Transcend M.2 SSD (respectively) and you could potentially upgrade the.
Don't worry, this passage will troubleshoot SSD not mounting on Mac issue.
Important: Back up important files
One essential thing you should know is that SSD data recovery is more difficult than hard drive data recovery. This is because SSDs use a new technology called TRIM. So when your SSD still won't mount due to disk corruption, your data stored on the SSD is so fragile and any operation will overwrite the original data.
In this situation, if you have important data on the drive, we suggest you back up files from the unmountable SSD first. As a free and professional data recovery tool,iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is highly recommended. It can recover lost data from unreadable SSD, recover lost data from formatted SSD, unmountable SSD, corrupted SSD, etc.
Aside from that, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can also recover lost data from unreadable USB flash drive, hard drive, external hard drive, SD card, etc. on macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Tutorial to recover lost data from unmountable SSD on Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
Step 1: Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 2: Select the unmountable SSD and click 'Scan' to search for lost files on the drive.
Step 3: Preview the scanning results, choose files we need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Step 4: Have a check to ensure we have got all lost files back.
Troubleshooting SSD not mounting issue on Mac
After you rescue files from the unmountable SSD, you can then fix the 'SSD no mounting' issue on Mac without worrying about data loss. Let's start with basic solutions.
1. War strategy games for mac. Check the cable. Try connecting the same device with a different cable.
Samsung Ssd Trim For Mac Osx
2. Check whether the SATA and USB port are damaged. If you've got another port or another SSD case, try connecting the device to that one.
3. Reboot your computer. Sometimes, an SSD is not mounting, there are problems with macOS system. Fortunately, some damages can be easily fixed by restarting. So restart your Mac computer to see if the SSD is mounted.
Solution 1: Mount SSD in Disk Utility
When an SSD won't mount, you can force mount it in Disk Utility at the very beginning. Launch Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility (or just search Spotlight for it). Disk Utility will list all connected disks as long as the disk is detected, with mounted or unmounted partitions listed below. If the SSD shows up in the list but one of partitions is not mounted, you can right-click the partition and choose Mount button.
Solution 2: Power cycle the drive
If you can't mount the SSD in Disk Utility or the SSD is not showing up in Disk Utility, restarting your Mac might help. It's called power cycle and you can have a try when Disk Utility doesn't see your SSD.
Step 1: Start your system, hold the OPTION key and let it sit there for 30 minutes.
Step 2: After the 30 minutes shut down the computer and wait 30 seconds.
Step 3: Turn the system back on and hold the OPTION key again and wait another 30 minutes.
After these steps are complete then you can try the SSD again to see if it will be mounted in Disk Utility.
Here's how.In Numbers, click on the File menu and move your cursor to 'Export to.'.A pop-up menu will appear. How to export Apple Numbers files as Microsoft Excel spreadsheetsIf you've been working in Numbers and will eventually return to Excel, you can export your spreadsheet as an Excel file. Download xls for mac windows 10. Select Excel.IDG.In the Export Your Spreadsheet window that appears next, you can opt to include a summary worksheet and require a password. There's always a chance that so much happened during the import that you can't use your spreadsheet.
Solution 3: Repair SSD with Disk Utility
If your SSD is still not mounting, it might be failed due to disk errors or corruption. You can try selecting First Aid to repair the disk.
Step 1: Go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility/, then click Continue.
Step 2: In the sidebar, select the SSD that is not recognized.
Step 3: Click the First Aid button.
Step 4: Click Run.
If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data as soon and as much as possible, and then replace the disk. Disk Utility can't repair the disk in the SSD disk enclosure.
Solution 4: Fix SSD not mounting on Mac by erasing
The last hope to fix the unmountable SSD is to reformat it, as reformatting will restructure this disk to fix corruption. However, it will remove all data on the SSD as well. Hence, you need to first back up useful files with iBoysoft Data Recovery to prevent further data loss.
• Learn how to erase external SSD & hard drive on Mac
If the SSD is still not detected on Mac, the drive might be physically damaged. You should send the drive to local technicians for reparation or replace it with a new one.
Bonus Part: How to mount SSD in the right way
For some reason like lack of space and frozen system, you bought a new Sandisk extreme or other portable SSD. But you just don't know how to mount it on your Mac to make it work. If you are facing such problems, this part will assistant you to mount the SSD easily.
How to mount a new external SSD on Mac?
- Connect the new SSD to your Mac. You need to prepare a USB-C to USB 3.0 adapter if you want to use the SSD on the latest models of MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Then plug the SSD into the USB-C hub of your MacBook to continue. Moreover, you need to buy a disk enclosure to hold the SSD if the manufacturer doesn't give you one.
- Open Disk Utility. The external SSD will be detected by Mac and then show it in Disk Utility, which can confirm if the SSD has any hardware problem or not.
- Erase to mount the SSD. A new SSD might not be verified and initialized at first. So, you need to format and partition the SSD in Disk Utility before you can use it on Mac. Go to Disk Utility > Select the SSD > Click on Erase tab > Name the SSD > Select a Format > Select a Scheme > Choose Erase button.
Then, the external SSD will be automatically mounted by the Mac, waiting for you to transfer content to and from your external SSD. Every time you finish your work on the SSD, you need to right-click the external SSD and choose Eject. It's going to unmount the SSD safely, which lowers the possibility of SSD not mounting issue on Mac.
What's more, you may want to fit an SSD internally to upgrade your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Its great speed and accessibility could lead you to replace the traditional hard drive. Then, you can also install the SSD to replace your old hard drive, and mount the SSD as a system drive.
Some SSD drives are crashing in Yosemite do to an issue with something called ‘TRIM'. Thankfully if you followed the method in my article entitled 'How to speed up your mac with a Solid State SSD Drive' you will not have this problem. But if you have used an SSD that needs TRIM, read on to find out about the problem and how to fix it.
What is TRIM?
Trim is a command your computer gives to your SSD hard disk to tell it to delete a very small amount of data.
If you think of data as papers in a filing cabinet, to remove an empty page (if you were an old hard drive) you would need to take out an entire folder of papers, then find and remove one page, and then put back the entire folder. This is because spinning hard disks deal with huge chunks of data called blocks, which are like a folder, and they can't deal with anything smaller than a block of data. They spin so fast and the blocks are so big that doing an entire folder at a time is the fastest way to do it.
With an SSD drive they are different and so it's much faster to do it 1 page at a time. In fact it's slow to deal with writing large chunks of data. TRIM is a command that allows an SSD drive to remove (delete) 1 page at a time instead of a whole folder at a time.
TRIM and no TRIM SSD's
In order for TRIM to work the SSD must have ‘TRIM' support, and the computer must have ‘TRIM' support.
Some SDD's are enabled to work with TRIM. Others have chosen to deal with deleting data in a different way. They have their own ‘filing' system. So the computer says ‘delete this page' and the SSD does it automatically. It's a bit like having your own personal secretary to do your filing. For those SSD's it's actually better to keep TRIM turned off and leaving it all to the secretary, so to speak.
For example this is what OWC say about TRIM:
If you have an OWC SSD, though, you don’t need TRIM. The SandForce controller in our SSDs takes care of this “garbage collectionâ€�… In fact, enabling TRIM could actually hurt the performance and reliability of your OWC SSD, rather than help it.
Apple and TRIM
Step 1: Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
Step 2: Select the unmountable SSD and click 'Scan' to search for lost files on the drive.
Step 3: Preview the scanning results, choose files we need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.
Step 4: Have a check to ensure we have got all lost files back.
Troubleshooting SSD not mounting issue on Mac
After you rescue files from the unmountable SSD, you can then fix the 'SSD no mounting' issue on Mac without worrying about data loss. Let's start with basic solutions.
1. War strategy games for mac. Check the cable. Try connecting the same device with a different cable.
Samsung Ssd Trim For Mac Osx
2. Check whether the SATA and USB port are damaged. If you've got another port or another SSD case, try connecting the device to that one.
3. Reboot your computer. Sometimes, an SSD is not mounting, there are problems with macOS system. Fortunately, some damages can be easily fixed by restarting. So restart your Mac computer to see if the SSD is mounted.
Solution 1: Mount SSD in Disk Utility
When an SSD won't mount, you can force mount it in Disk Utility at the very beginning. Launch Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility (or just search Spotlight for it). Disk Utility will list all connected disks as long as the disk is detected, with mounted or unmounted partitions listed below. If the SSD shows up in the list but one of partitions is not mounted, you can right-click the partition and choose Mount button.
Solution 2: Power cycle the drive
If you can't mount the SSD in Disk Utility or the SSD is not showing up in Disk Utility, restarting your Mac might help. It's called power cycle and you can have a try when Disk Utility doesn't see your SSD.
Step 1: Start your system, hold the OPTION key and let it sit there for 30 minutes.
Step 2: After the 30 minutes shut down the computer and wait 30 seconds.
Step 3: Turn the system back on and hold the OPTION key again and wait another 30 minutes.
After these steps are complete then you can try the SSD again to see if it will be mounted in Disk Utility.
Here's how.In Numbers, click on the File menu and move your cursor to 'Export to.'.A pop-up menu will appear. How to export Apple Numbers files as Microsoft Excel spreadsheetsIf you've been working in Numbers and will eventually return to Excel, you can export your spreadsheet as an Excel file. Download xls for mac windows 10. Select Excel.IDG.In the Export Your Spreadsheet window that appears next, you can opt to include a summary worksheet and require a password. There's always a chance that so much happened during the import that you can't use your spreadsheet.
Solution 3: Repair SSD with Disk Utility
If your SSD is still not mounting, it might be failed due to disk errors or corruption. You can try selecting First Aid to repair the disk.
Step 1: Go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility/, then click Continue.
Step 2: In the sidebar, select the SSD that is not recognized.
Step 3: Click the First Aid button.
Step 4: Click Run.
If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data as soon and as much as possible, and then replace the disk. Disk Utility can't repair the disk in the SSD disk enclosure.
Solution 4: Fix SSD not mounting on Mac by erasing
The last hope to fix the unmountable SSD is to reformat it, as reformatting will restructure this disk to fix corruption. However, it will remove all data on the SSD as well. Hence, you need to first back up useful files with iBoysoft Data Recovery to prevent further data loss.
• Learn how to erase external SSD & hard drive on Mac
If the SSD is still not detected on Mac, the drive might be physically damaged. You should send the drive to local technicians for reparation or replace it with a new one.
Bonus Part: How to mount SSD in the right way
For some reason like lack of space and frozen system, you bought a new Sandisk extreme or other portable SSD. But you just don't know how to mount it on your Mac to make it work. If you are facing such problems, this part will assistant you to mount the SSD easily.
How to mount a new external SSD on Mac?
- Connect the new SSD to your Mac. You need to prepare a USB-C to USB 3.0 adapter if you want to use the SSD on the latest models of MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Then plug the SSD into the USB-C hub of your MacBook to continue. Moreover, you need to buy a disk enclosure to hold the SSD if the manufacturer doesn't give you one.
- Open Disk Utility. The external SSD will be detected by Mac and then show it in Disk Utility, which can confirm if the SSD has any hardware problem or not.
- Erase to mount the SSD. A new SSD might not be verified and initialized at first. So, you need to format and partition the SSD in Disk Utility before you can use it on Mac. Go to Disk Utility > Select the SSD > Click on Erase tab > Name the SSD > Select a Format > Select a Scheme > Choose Erase button.
Then, the external SSD will be automatically mounted by the Mac, waiting for you to transfer content to and from your external SSD. Every time you finish your work on the SSD, you need to right-click the external SSD and choose Eject. It's going to unmount the SSD safely, which lowers the possibility of SSD not mounting issue on Mac.
What's more, you may want to fit an SSD internally to upgrade your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Its great speed and accessibility could lead you to replace the traditional hard drive. Then, you can also install the SSD to replace your old hard drive, and mount the SSD as a system drive.
Some SSD drives are crashing in Yosemite do to an issue with something called ‘TRIM'. Thankfully if you followed the method in my article entitled 'How to speed up your mac with a Solid State SSD Drive' you will not have this problem. But if you have used an SSD that needs TRIM, read on to find out about the problem and how to fix it.
What is TRIM?
Trim is a command your computer gives to your SSD hard disk to tell it to delete a very small amount of data.
If you think of data as papers in a filing cabinet, to remove an empty page (if you were an old hard drive) you would need to take out an entire folder of papers, then find and remove one page, and then put back the entire folder. This is because spinning hard disks deal with huge chunks of data called blocks, which are like a folder, and they can't deal with anything smaller than a block of data. They spin so fast and the blocks are so big that doing an entire folder at a time is the fastest way to do it.
With an SSD drive they are different and so it's much faster to do it 1 page at a time. In fact it's slow to deal with writing large chunks of data. TRIM is a command that allows an SSD drive to remove (delete) 1 page at a time instead of a whole folder at a time.
TRIM and no TRIM SSD's
In order for TRIM to work the SSD must have ‘TRIM' support, and the computer must have ‘TRIM' support.
Some SDD's are enabled to work with TRIM. Others have chosen to deal with deleting data in a different way. They have their own ‘filing' system. So the computer says ‘delete this page' and the SSD does it automatically. It's a bit like having your own personal secretary to do your filing. For those SSD's it's actually better to keep TRIM turned off and leaving it all to the secretary, so to speak.
For example this is what OWC say about TRIM:
If you have an OWC SSD, though, you don’t need TRIM. The SandForce controller in our SSDs takes care of this “garbage collectionâ€�… In fact, enabling TRIM could actually hurt the performance and reliability of your OWC SSD, rather than help it.
Apple and TRIM
Apple have not allowed TRIM support unless you have an Apple installed SSD Drive. That means if you want to install your own SSD into a mac, you have 2 options.
(1) Install an SSD that doesn't need TRIM.
Here are some SSD's that work better without TRIM:
– any SSD with a Sandforce controller.
– All OWC Mercury Drives. (read this)
– Crucial M4
Ssd Trim Mac Os
– Samsung 840
(2) Use an SSD that needs TRIM but run a hack that turns on trim support in OS X.
Here are 2 such hacks:
http://www.cindori.org/software/
http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.com
Disaster in Yosemite!
Many people chose option 2, to use an SSD with TRIM and run the hack, but in Yosemite all TRIM enablers/hacks were disabled by Apple. Anyone who did this now found their SSD would not boot in Yosemite. Nasty move by Apple. This was a disaster! (Thankfully, in my SSD article I recommended to use drives that did not need a TRIM enabler.)
The Fix
Samsung Ssd Trim For Mac Catalina
#1 PREVENTION is the best cure: use a drive that doesn't need TRIM.
Ssd Trim Software
#2 If you have a TRIM drive already, and use the TRIM hack, the writers of the TRIM enablers are trying to get around this.
#3 If you don't yet have Yosemite, grab a non-TRIM SSD and copy your data across to it before you upgrade to Yosemite.
#4 if you have already upgraded to Yosemite and are now getting a grey screen, go to this article and scroll down to the section called 'Recovering from stop sign on boot screen.' It has some steps to help.
