Drives not mounting

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I have been having issues with external devices being mounted on my MacBook Pro that includes

External Drives
USB Pens

If they are connected when machine is first switched on they are fine and I can unmount and remount them, but if they are not connected on start up, I can still mount them if, and only if it is within 6 to 10 minutes after that I have to do a restart.

This includes powered drives and non powered drives.

If I turn SIP off then all works perfectly, I know it is not recommended but it is a magic button for me.
I have tried SMC Reset, and PRAM Reset and nothing will cure it.
 
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On Apple Discussions, this is a known issue that hasn't been fixed yet on 10.11.2.
 
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Rifles
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Thank you for the reply, for now I will leave SIP off so I can mount the drives, although I am not happy doing that, but I do not have a choice unless I keep restarting, let's hope the next update cures this issue.
 

pigoo3

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Member "gsahli" referred to OS 10.11.2. Are you actually running OS 10.11.2 on your MacBook Pro?

- Nick
 
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MacInWin

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Curious, I have 10.11.2, six external drives, one USB stick and an SD Card all attached and they all mount/dismount as expected. Can someone post a link to the specific discussion at the Apple forum?
 
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What I do not understand that turning SIP off every thing is back to normal
 
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MacInWin

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Have you installed anything by turning off SIP? Something that SIP originally blocked, or would have blocked? If so, it could be that whatever you installed is blocked with SIP turned back on. I'm sort of grasping at straws here, but worth asking.
 
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Rifles
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Not sure what you are saying, but I have not installed anything new, and I do know that some programs (applications) do require it to be turned off but I had no reason to do that, I just powered up holding CMD-R and selected Terminal and typed in "crstuil disable" then reboot.
 
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MacInWin

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I have no programs that require SIP to be off. And I have no problem with drives mounting. So, what I was trying to say was that IF you have an application that requires, or required, you to turn SIP off to run, it may be blocked when you turn SIP on and therefore block the mount action. So far I have seen zero reason to turn SIP off, ever. The one temptation was to continue using Total Finder, which I liked, but even the developer thinks it's not worth it and has stopped development of TF. His site was remarkably candid about that.
 
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Same here I used to use XtraFinder but decided against it on the new build as not worth the risk.
I have now turned SIP back on and IF my drives do not mount I will have to keep restarting which is a pain, hopefully I can find a solution as to why this is happening.
 
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MacInWin

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I searched the Apple Discussions that were called out in Post #2, found no threads on the topic. Some on DVD mounting issues, but not for regular drives. If gshali had given a reference, maybe we could find something for you to try. If this was a systemic problem the Apple Discussions would be ablaze with comments.
 
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chas_m

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Weird. No such issues here (2012 MBP running El Cap latest) -- USB thumb drives, Firewire drives, USB 3.0 and 2.0 drives ... everything mounts fine (SIP not turned off).


OOOH. Wait a second, I'm wondering if you have ANY sort of anti-virus, anti-malware, security or "cleanup" type programs running. Maybe that's the real issue.
 
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MacInWin

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Sorry I wasn't very explicit/helpful. This is just one:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7257572?start=30&tstart=0

I couldn't find the one where the OP said he contacted AppleCare and they told him Apple is working on it.

Another:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7257238?tstart=0
OK, neither of those threads really talk about any problem with mounting drives, except that in the first the drives that pull USB power and want more than the USB standard 500ma don't get that much power any more. So they don't mount because they aren't spinning. That problem is not really Apple's as the USB standard says no device should expect more than 500ma from the port. External drives with power supplies don't seem to have the problem. Ditto for drives plugged into well engineered powered hubs.

The second discussion is about drives unmounting while the machine is sleeping and not remounting when it wakes or doing so erratically. An SMC reset seems to fix that for most users. So the comment that, "On Apple Discussions, this is a known issue that hasn't been fixed yet on 10.11.2." was not really correct. I didn't see any reference to SIP being a problem at all in those threads.
 

Rod


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I have no problems with my multiple USB drives running 10.11.2 but formatting hasn't been mentioned. Are all these drives Mac formatted or FAT 32 or mixed?
 

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