Having a stressing hard time using my external SSD onto my 2021 Macbook Pro

[lawlietkm]

Hello, I'm in an emergency. Basically I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days away and I'll have work to do in the train and in the other city.

I own an intel iMac from august 2020 and I backup often on an external SSD (Samsung 1T T5).

Today, I tried to put my iMac save onto my recent Macbook Pro 2021 unfortunately… the Finder doesn't find the hardware, I can't explore the files etc and it's not usable in the Migration Assistant to try to restore from that iMac backup.

Now I'm stucked, I have tried following the advice a friend of mine gave me which is erasing the SSD, formatting to exFat (which is weirdly still showing AFPS case sensitive when I try to read informations about the SSD).

After hours making a new backup of about 500Gb of files from my iMac onto the freshly formatted SSD, it still doesn't show up on the MBP.

Now I'm really stressed and panicking because I really need my files, my set ups for softwares and the different sessions etc from various programs and applications.

I'm sorry for the bad english. I hope someone can help me, thanks a lot.

 

[anthonyd]

Check the cable. I had an SSD not show up due to cable issues. Different cable & problem solved

 

[throAU]

Migration assistant via wifi work for you?

 

[white7561]

Hello, I'm in an emergency. Basically I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days away and I'll have work to do in the train and in the other city.

I own an intel iMac from august 2020 and I backup often on an external SSD (Samsung 1T T5).

Today, I tried to put my iMac save onto my recent Macbook Pro 2021 unfortunately… the Finder doesn't find the hardware, I can't explore the files etc and it's not usable in the Migration Assistant to try to restore from that iMac backup.

Now I'm stucked, I have tried following the advice a friend of mine gave me which is erasing the SSD, formatting to exFat (which is weirdly still showing AFPS case sensitive when I try to read informations about the SSD).

After hours making a new backup of about 500Gb of files from my iMac onto the freshly formatted SSD, it still doesn't show up on the MBP.

Now I'm really stressed and panicking because I really need my files, my set ups for softwares and the different sessions etc from various programs and applications.

I'm sorry for the bad english. I hope someone can help me, thanks a lot.

I think T5 should work fine with the new macs afaik. Anyways if it was an UASP problem. You might be able to workaround it by connecting it using a USB 2 cable. Can your try that? Since usually the hardware incompatibilities are when they are in USB 3 modes especially with UASP. Hope you can fix your problem soon!

 

[lawlietkm]

Update : I formatted multiple times in a row again to exFat after experiencing issue formatting on the MBP, it worked when doing it multiple time after updating the main (iMac) to the latest OS, then I restored from the save on the MBP but unfortunately I don't know if I did something wrong or not but the user is like "deleted", all settings and every files are gone in a "deleted user" folder and I don't know how to fix that and now it's failing again to open the SSD onto the MBP for some reason…

2:19 am now there and I feel like the night will be long I hate myself

 

[mr_roboto]

I'm not sure why you're formatting to exFAT. That's a Windows file system; you should only format with it when setting up a drive to use to exchange data between a Mac and a PC running Windows.

You would be far better off formatting the T5 as APFS. Here's a couple screenshots showing how to do it in Monterey's Disk Utility. I'm using a SD card so the name of your media will be different.

Step 1: Make sure the View menu is set to "Show All Devices" and click on the device you want to reformat.

Step 2: Click the "Erase" button in the toolbar, set "Scheme" to "GUID Partition Map", then set Format to APFS, and use whatever name you like for the volume.

 

[lawlietkm]

I'm not sure why you're formatting to exFAT. That's a Windows file system; you should only format with it when setting up a drive to use to exchange data between a Mac and a PC running Windows.

You would be far better off formatting the T5 as APFS. Here's a couple screenshots showing how to do it in Monterey's Disk Utility. I'm using a SD card so the name of your media will be different.

Step 1: Make sure the View menu is set to "Show All Devices" and click on the device you want to reformat.
View attachment 1932668

Step 2: Click the "Erase" button in the toolbar, set "Scheme" to "GUID Partition Map", then set Format to APFS, and use whatever name you like for the volume.
View attachment 1932669

for some reason the MBP wouldn't let me erase and format in different ways, only the iMac was managing to do that.

Anyway I have plugged both computer together and do the migration between each one, it should be done I hope everything went well… I almost didn't sleep so far lol

 

[mr_roboto]

for some reason the MBP wouldn't let me erase and format in different ways, only the iMac was managing to do that.

Anyway I have plugged both computer together and do the migration between each one, it should be done I hope everything went well… I almost didn't sleep so far lol

Good luck, hope it goes well this time so you can take your trip with a working computer!

 

[Big Jobs]

macbook pro 2021 had similar issues when plugging in direct to macbook, if i plugged into a hub then plugged my drive into hub the macbook would then see it: its a big problem affecting many people with new macbook pros and a Mac OS Monterey related problem, hopefully apple fix this BS SOON - GET A HUB, good luck

 

[white7561]

I think T5 should work fine with the new macs afaik. Anyways if it was an UASP problem. You might be able to workaround it by connecting it using a USB 2 cable. Can your try that? Since usually the hardware incompatibilities are when they are in USB 3 modes especially with UASP. Hope you can fix your problem soon!

@lawlietkm