External HD not shown in system settings Ventura

[TimWellens]

Hello, I have a Western Digital MyBook 8TB external HD for my timemachine hourly backups. In Catalina,Big Sur and later Monterey,when I press on system settings-storage I could see both the internal SSD and the external HD.
Since I updated to Ventura system settings-storage only shows my internal SSD,not my external WD MyBook.
The external HD still shows on my desktop and in the sidebar of Finder. It also still back ups hourly ,as intended. It just doesn’t show in my system settings anymore,very strange.
I already restarted,repair disk thru disk Utility etc…
What am I’m missing?

 

[MacInWin]

How do you know it is making backups hourly, if you can't see the drive?

Does it appear in Disk Utility? (Make sure you have "Show all Devices" as the View option.)

Is the entire 8GB dedicated to Time Machine? TM wants the entire Volume for itself, so having a HUGE drive like that might be a waste, unless you are backing up 4 TB of internal storage.

How is the external formatted?

 

[TimWellens]

*** do you know it is making backups hourly, if you can't see the drive?

Does it appear in Disk Utility? (Make sure you have "Show all Devices" as the View option.)

Is the entire 8GB dedicated to Time Machine? TM wants the entire Volume for itself, so having a HUGE drive like that might be a waste, unless you are backing up 4 TB of internal storage.

How is the external formatted?

Yes it works perfect,it just doesn’t show in System Settings-Storage

-It also shows on my desktop and in the sidebar of finder. When I enter time.machine I can access previous days etc…It works the same as it did under Monterey,Big Sur,Catalina since 2020. It also shows in System Information-Storage (formatted Journaled HFS+) .Yes it has 8TB for timemachine but worked perfect for the last 3 years.(35%full)
It just doesn’t show up (like before) if you press Apple-About this Mac-More Info-General-Storage (pic1) (Monterey showed me the internal AND external HD)
It does show up in General-Time Machine (pic2)

 

[MacInWin]

Yes it works perfect,it just doesn’t show in System Settings-Storage

My word got blocked, I asked "HOW" do you know it's working if the drive isn't there? Sorry about that.

System Settings-Storage only shows the internal storage in Sonoma by default. There should be a button labelled "All Volumes..." in the upper right corner of that pane to show all externals if there are any. It's not there in your image, which tells me the drive is NOT mounted. Here is what I mean:



The other image, of TM, is not of any use, either, sorry.

What shows in Disk Utility?

 

[TimWellens]

Strange,I don’t have the All Volumes button.
I assume the drive is working because once an hour it starts to spin and write the gigabytes,I see (and hear) the progression until it cleans up. When I enter Time Machine I see everything is backed up correctly. (I can jump back hours,days,months…)
I attach the pic of disk Utility
PS: Maybe I’m just confused,you state that by default System Settings-Storage only shows the internal HD? (Ventura) and maybe Monterey was the last OS to show internal+external?

 

[MacInWin]

Monterey was the last OS to show internal+external?

I don't know when the presentation changed, but I do know how Sonoma works, and by default, you get what I uploaded. Clicking on "All Volumes..." yields another display with the externals. Like this (I'm not showing all, just that it works...)



However, at the moment I am not using TM, so I don't have a TM drive, so I don't know if it shows up in the list or not. TM is a different animal in how it "takes over" the drive.

When I just made that screenshot, the "All Volumes..." button took a second or so to appear. I have a large copy action underway, so it could be that the system is busy with that copy process right now, but it was noticeable in the delay.

Maybe someone with Sonoma and currently using TM can check if the TM volume appears? Once my big copy process is done, I can start TM again and check, but it might be faster is someone is already there and can check.

 

[ferrarr]

Here's what it shows on my system;

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks, Bob. That is what I expected. Not sure why it's not happening for @TimWellens.

 

[Rod]

I get the same results as Bob and Jake on my M1 MBP when I look under the Apple Menu > Settings > General > Storage > All Volumes or About this Mac > Storage > Storage Settings > All Volumes. A slight difference but in both cases the All Volumes button shows after a few seconds and Time Machine is listed when connected.

I think we are all running macOS Sonoma here so TimWellins may be seeing a different result in macOS Ventura. I seem to recall all connected drives were displayed under storage without an All Volumes button but that's not what Apple suggests in this article for Ventura; See used and available storage space on your Mac

I have read some articles that suggest macOS Ventura may have problems displaying volumes not in APFS format.

 

[MacInWin]

I have read some articles that suggest macOS Ventura may have problems displaying volumes not in APFS format.

I have not seen that, or the articles. I have a mix of HFS+ and APFS externals and they all are visible just fine. Maybe I dodged a bullet?

 

[Rod]

Hmm, I came across it in another forum and in my experience does not hold true but everything I have now in the form of external HD's is APFS with the exception of a few ExFat thumb drives.

 

[M915 Driver]

Just my 2 cents

This is an older MacBook Pro with macOS Monterey looking at the system report.
My time external Time Machine is connected via USB. So, on the system report page I click on USB in the sidebar and SSK Storage is listed. This is my external drive.
I may have misunderstood the original post, If so ignore this
Ken

 

[TimWellens]

I get the same results as Bob and Jake on my M1 MBP when I look under the Apple Menu > Settings > General > Storage > All Volumes or About this Mac > Storage > Storage Settings > All Volumes. A slight difference but in both cases the All Volumes button shows after a few seconds and Time Machine is listed when connected.

I think we are all running macOS Sonoma here so TimWellins may be seeing a different result in macOS Ventura. I seem to recall all connected drives were displayed under storage without an All Volumes button but that's not what Apple suggests in this article for Ventura; See used and available storage space on your Mac

I have read some articles that suggest macOS Ventura may have problems displaying volumes not in APFS format.

This could be the problem. As my external drive for Time Machine is a mechanical HD (WD MyBook) it is formatted in Journaled HFS+.
I read somewhere that volumes created in an older macOS (Catalina in my case) can cause these problems and the only solution is to reformat the drive but then I will lose all my backups starting from late 2020.
Maybe I should try to start the iMac in recovery mode? Could that help?

 

[TimWellens]

Just my 2 cents

This is an older MacBook Pro with macOS Monterey looking at the system report.
My time external Time Machine is connected via USB. So, on the system report page I click on USB in the sidebar and SSK Storage is listed. This is my external drive.
I may have misunderstood the original post, If so ignore this
Ken View attachment 38883

My external HD shows in System info too like yours,no problem there. It also shows in the sidebar of Finder and the icon also shows on the Desktop.
It just doesn’t show in System Settings-Storage (and no ‘show all volumes’ tab appearing,also not after waiting a long time)

I’m lost here :/

 

[MacInWin]

I read somewhere that volumes created in an older macOS (Catalina in my case) can cause these problems and the only solution is to reformat the drive but then I will lose all my backups starting from late 2020.

Time Machine is not meant to be an archive. It's a backup. The difference is that TM is intended for that "oops, I deleted the wrong file," or "My drive died and I had to replace it," or "I need that file like it was yesterday" moments. So, having backups back to 2020 is an overkill for what TM is intended to be. If there is a need for "archiving" files, a better approach is to get a dedicated archive drive and periodically copy things you want archived to it. You would also need to periodically test and refresh that archive, as stored data is subject to atrophy over time. You might also want to store the archive someplace other than where the source drive is, just in case of a disaster larger than normally expected.

The bottom line is that it's not a disaster to have to restart TM, unless that file you need from yesterday is really critical. If you are content that what you currently have on the source drive is what you want, start a new TM process.

Given that you have that HUGE 8TB drive, why not get a smaller drive to be the TM target and use that 8GB for both archive and other external storage? The TM drive only needs to be about twice the size of the source drive, and can even be smaller, given that it really only need to be about twice the size of the DATA being backed up. In your case you have a 2TB source, about 1.1TB used, .9 free. That means you need about 3TB for a backup drive. And 2TB might well do as well, given that you are closer to 1 TB than to 1.5TB. In addition, if that huge amount of "documents" is fairly static, you could archive them to the 8TB drive and probably get well below 1 TB used, making a 2TB backup work very well for a long tiime.

 

[TimWellens]

Thanks for you answer! I was also slowly coming to this : just reformat the external HD and try again. I would format it to AFPS this time.(what AFPS should I use? Encrypted?)
If that doesn’t work satisfactory then I will buy a new external HD. I read SSD would be overkill so maybe I will look into a ‘mechanical’ HD.
And yes you are right….It’s meant for that ‘oops I deleted a file I shouldn’t’ moment and to be honest : I use timemachine since 2009 (MacPro snow leopard) and I don’t recall I ever had to retrieve a file
It’s just my nature : I make music (Logic Pro) and I’m very secure before I update.Thus if a problem occurs I truly want it fixed.
But sometime you just have to let it go…
Thanks

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks for you answer! I was also slowly coming to this : just reformat the external HD and try again. I would format it to AFPS this time.(what AFPS should I use? Encrypted?)

APFS is sufficient. If you want Case Sensitive and/or Encrypted, you can add that, it's your choice. If you then let TM use it, it will reformat it to APFS Case Sensitive, and if the internal drive has FileVault on, Encrypted as well. But I don't recommend that huge drive for TM, as TM doesn't like sharing the volume. Use that big drive for your archived music, and look into a second copy of that drive somewhere as the "archive for the archive" if you really want to be secure. I lost a ton of images a few years ago when my internal drive died and the TM backup drive also failed on the same day. They were gone, not recoverable. So now I have four copies on four different drives in three different locations. Yes, I'm paranoid about it, but if you've actually lost valuable files, you get that way.

 

[TimWellens]

APFS is sufficient. If you want Case Sensitive and/or Encrypted, you can add that, it's your choice. If you then let TM use it, it will reformat it to APFS Case Sensitive, and if the internal drive has FileVault on, Encrypted as well. But I don't recommend that huge drive for TM, as TM doesn't like sharing the volume. Use that big drive for your archived music, and look into a second copy of that drive somewhere as the "archive for the archive" if you really want to be secure. I lost a ton of images a few years ago when my internal drive died and the TM backup drive also failed on the same day. They were gone, not recoverable. So now I have four copies on four different drives in three different locations. Yes, I'm paranoid about it, but if you've actually lost valuable files, you get that way.

I understand you are paranoid about it.
I make music since 1988 (Atari MegaST)…I used samplers like Akai and E-mu. I transferred all samples from the samplers to HD so I have EVERYTHING still on my current iMac (all sounds I gathered since I was young).
It’s ok to be paranoid about that
So thank you for your help. Plan is to buy a 3 or 4 TB external HD (SSD not needed for backup) and to use the 8TB HD as extra backup .
thnx!!