Seagate External Hard Drive not mounting on El Capitan Dev Beta

I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive and recently it stopped mounting on my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2012), currently running El Capitan Beta 5. It refuses to show up in Finder or Disk Utility, but the drive itself lights up like it is connected. I have another drive that I use for Time Machine, which shows up just fine.


It works, however, on Windows PCs and OS X Yosemite latest version. I plan to submit a bug on this but I thought I'd get some community help on this issue as well, to see if there is anything else I can do to make it work.


Thanks!

Accepted Reply

So I just solved this problem on my own...However, my solution actually didn't solve the inherent still-remaining problem of NTFS support in OS X El Capitan Beta.


The Problem: My Seagate hard drive would not be recognized by my Mac. I had all the NTFS drivers etc. so it should have worked just fine.

My solution: Since I had another Seagate drive that I needed to reformat anyways, I did a little research and found that the exFAT format works better for Mac/PC interop. As soon as the format was done on my Windows machine, I ran back to my Mac and plugged that drive in and -- what do you know -- it worked!!


For Future Reference: Advice to anyone who buys a Seagate NTFS-based ext. hard drive and plans to use it with a Mac, first thing before you put any data on it -- REFORMAT it to exFAT - it will save you a lot of trouble later.


This doesn't solve the issue that El Capitan, especially with the later betas, seems to refuse to show any NTFS drives anymore. This may be a bug, and I'll keep my issue open, but it's worth taking note that there's a better way to do file systems on ext. hard drives.

Replies

Try a SMC Reset - a glitch in the controller is normally the cause of the symptoms you describe:


  • Shut down the computer.
  • Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
  • On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift, Control, and Option keys and the power button at the same time.
  • Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
  • Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Sadly, this did not work. I tried it both with all my connections plugged in and with all connections unplugged (except MagSafe like you said); but thanks for the helpful suggestion.


It seems that my mac just does not want to work with this drive! Weird, huh?

So I just solved this problem on my own...However, my solution actually didn't solve the inherent still-remaining problem of NTFS support in OS X El Capitan Beta.


The Problem: My Seagate hard drive would not be recognized by my Mac. I had all the NTFS drivers etc. so it should have worked just fine.

My solution: Since I had another Seagate drive that I needed to reformat anyways, I did a little research and found that the exFAT format works better for Mac/PC interop. As soon as the format was done on my Windows machine, I ran back to my Mac and plugged that drive in and -- what do you know -- it worked!!


For Future Reference: Advice to anyone who buys a Seagate NTFS-based ext. hard drive and plans to use it with a Mac, first thing before you put any data on it -- REFORMAT it to exFAT - it will save you a lot of trouble later.


This doesn't solve the issue that El Capitan, especially with the later betas, seems to refuse to show any NTFS drives anymore. This may be a bug, and I'll keep my issue open, but it's worth taking note that there's a better way to do file systems on ext. hard drives.

For Future Reference: Advice to anyone who buys a Seagate NTFS-based ext. hard drive and plans to use it with a Mac, first thing before you put any data on it -- REFORMAT it to exFAT - it will save you a lot of trouble later.


Why the Windows committment?


Why not just format it using OS X's Disk Utility, like the rest of us, setting it up as bootable (GUID Partition Table), just in case.

That's because the whole point of this issue is the drive was not recognized by the Mac OS X El Capitan in the first place. It's like it didn't exist from the system's point of view. Even in Disk Utility. So reformatting from Disk Utility didn't help. So, I turned to my Windows computer, which did recognize the existence of the drive, and reformatted it to exFAT. If you want easy interop between systems, exFAT is the way to go.

this is the scenario.


0. in the previoius version of mac os i had installed "paragon NTFS for mac os x "

which i got directly from seagate at http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/


1. upgraded to el capitan

2. inserted seagate freeagent go 320 gb

3. i was able to mount and browse but not create new folders in the directories

4. i had to reinstall the driver from step 0.

5. eject correctly my seagate drive

6. restart machine

7. inserted drive

8. now i am able to have full access to the drive and create my directories.


i looked at other drivers which cost mucho $$$ but i am glad this free driver from seagate and paragon worked. i hope this works for you.