4TB External HDD not mounting

[Jzeds]

Hi Guys
I have a 4tb Toshiba external drive which is brand new and working normal on windows 11. its formatted in exFAT and GPT disk type.
When the disk is connected to my MB it doesnt mount at all. I tried running FirstAid and manually mounting it from DiskUtility but "Could not mount “TOSHIBA”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49223.)" error shows up and DiskUtility leaves no option but formatting...
(also tried mounting from terminal:

user@users-MacBook ~ % diskutil mount /dev/disk3s1
Volume on disk3s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option
user@users-MacBook ~ %

)
-What can i do to resolve this? seen some tips on disabling "fsck" but im not sure if its safe.
p.s. Drive is Half-full and i have no free space to temporary put file there for formatting drive safely.
Macos Bigsur, MacBook retina 2015

 

[Bigwaff]

It's common for large hard drives formatted to exFAT in Windows to be unreadable on macOS.

When Windows formats a large-capacity drive in exFAT, it will default to formatting it using a 1024k allocation unit size - this is incompatible with macOS which uses a 128k allocation unit size for exFAT.

Good news is your data is probably fine, but your only option is to connect the drive to a PC w/ Windows/Linux and copy the data off the drive. Then reformat the drive in exFAT w/ the Mac. Connect to the PC and copy the data back.

If you are going this route, it probably makes more sense to use a drive utility for Mac that supports NTFS or a drive utility for Windows which supports HFS+. Reformat either HFS+ or NTFS and then you can reliably use the drive across both platforms. exFAT is notorious for file system corruption.

 

[Jzeds]

It's common for large hard drives formatted to exFAT in Windows to be unreadable on macOS.

When Windows formats a large-capacity drive in exFAT, it will default to formatting it using a 1024k allocation unit size - this is incompatible with macOS which uses a 128k allocation unit size for exFAT.

Good news is your data is probably fine, but your only option is to connect the drive to a PC w/ Windows/Linux and copy the data off the drive. Then reformat the drive in exFAT w/ the Mac. Connect to the PC and copy the data back.

If you are going this route, it probably makes more sense to use a drive utility for Mac that supports NTFS or a drive utility for Windows which supports HFS+. Reformat either HFS+ or NTFS and then you can reliably use the drive across both platforms. exFAT is notorious for file system corruption.

Oh okay, it leaves me to reformatting it . so what about APFS file system comparing to HFS+. any benefits ?

 

[Bigwaff]

what about APFS file system comparing to HFS+. any benefits ?

On macOS but I don’t think there is Windows disk utility which supports APFS.. if you plan to move the drive between.