Written by
Amanda Wong
Summary: If you manually mount the external hard drive on Mac, and receive the error 'Could not mount drive com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218', here are solutions. If any critical data is stored on the unmountable drive, try iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get it off ASAP.
Generally, the connected external hard drive can be detected and automatically mounted by the macOS. The drive icon may show up on the Desktop or in Finder's sidebar(if you set it this way) so that you can access the drive. Unexpectedly, the external hard drive is greyed out and unmounted in Disk Utility. You click the Mount button, but only see the error Could not mount "drive"(com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218).
Many Mac users have encountered this error when they attempted to mount an external hard drive on Mac after updating to macOS Monterey. However, this problem also occurs in other macOS versions like Sonoma, Ventura Big Sur, Catalina, etc. Relax, you will find proven solutions in this post to fix com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218.
| Proven Methods | Specific Steps |
| Restart Mac | Click the Apple menu > Restart |
| Check external drive's file system | 1. Open Disk Utility and select the unmounted drive 2. Check the file system under the drive name Only APFS, Mac OS Extended, FAT32, exFAT are compatible with macOS. If it is an NTFS drive, use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to mount the drive without formatting. |
| Repair drive with First Aid | Select the problematic drive and click First Aid in the toolbar |
| Force mount the drive using Terminal | 1. Launch Terminal from Finder > Applications > Utilities 2. Run command diskutil mount /dev/disk1s2. Replace disk1s2 with your unmountable drive's identifier. |
| Kill the fsck process | 1. Check the fsck process in Activity Monitor 2. Double-click the fsck process and tap Force Quit to kill it. |
| Change the disk allocation size | 1. Connect the unmountable drive to a Windows PC 2. Reformat the drive as exFAT and choose allocation size to 1024 |
| Log out and log back in | 1. Open the Apple menu > Log Out (username) 2. Choose your user account and enter the password to log in |
| Connect to another Mac with different macOS | Attempt to mount the drive on another healthy Mac running a different macOS version |
| Partition the external disk | Select the external drive in Disk Utility and click Partition |
| Reformat the drive | Open Disk Utility and choose the unmountable drive > click the Erase button |
Let more people who encounter the same problem see this article!
What causes com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218
com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 is a type of com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error that displays when you manually mount the external hard drive with the Mount button in Disk Utility but fails, it is When the external hard drive is not mounting on Mac, all your data is inaccessible.
The reasons behind the error com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 are various. Commonly, the could not mount drive issue results from system glitches, external drive corruption, file system incompatibility, problematic fsck process, etc.
Fix com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218
Quite a lot of Mac users are troubled with com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218, leaving messages in the forum. These Mac users receive this error after failing to manually mount the drive/volume in Disk Utility, some even see it when attempting to repair the drive with First Aid.
Whatever the case, you can't mount the drive on the Mac, and an unmountable drive won't show up on Desktop and Finder's sidebar, let alone access it. Therefore, this part will provide thorough methods to fix the error and make the drive mountable and usable again.
Any further steps to fix the could not mount drive error may pose a risk to your drive content, if you haven't created a backup, you can try iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get files off from the unmountable drive in the first step.
Steps to recover data from unmountable drive on Mac:
- Download, install, and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.
- Head to Data Recovery > Storage Device on the left side.
- Choose the unmountable drive and click Search for Lost Data.
- Filter and preview the scanned results.
- Select the wanted files and click Recover to save them to a different location.
Now, you can follow the methods below to fix com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 without data loss.
Method 1. Restart Mac
Temporary system glitches could lead to com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218. Restarting Mac can quickly eliminate such system errors to give your Mac a fresh start, then it will automatically mount the external hard drive again.
Method 2. Check external drive's file system
The incompatible file system may be the culprit when you are unable to mount a drive on Mac with com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218. macOS can read and write APFS, Mac OS Extended, exFAT, and FAT32, thus if the drive is formatted as NTFS, a Windows-exclusive file format, Mac may fail to mount it to use.
To know the file system of the external hard drive, you can open Disk Utility, select the target drive on the left sidebar, and check the file system info under the drive name on the right pane.
If it is an NTFS-formatted drive, to exclude the file system incompatibility, there are two choices, formatting the external hard drive for Mac at the expense of erasing data and using third-party NTFS drives for Mac without losing data. If you prefer the latter one, you can try iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to freely mount NTFS drive on Mac in read-write mode.
After launching iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, it should automatically mount NTFS drive on your Mac, just click the Open button, and you can access the NTFS drive on Mac with full privilege.
Method 3. Repair the drive with First Aid
Disk errors such as file system corruption could make the drive unmountable on Mac. You can run First Aid, a feature in Disk Utility, to check and repair the detected minor errors in the disk formatting and directory structure. Then, you may successfully mount the external hard drive on Mac.
- Head to Disk Utility from Launchpad.
- Click View > Show All Devices.
- Select the unmountable external drive on the left and click First Aid on the toolbar.
- Click Run to begin the process.
- Wait for the process to complete, and click Mount to mount the drive.
If First Aid fails to repair the unmountable drive or it returns the same message com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218, you can run First Aid repeatedly, as some Mac users find it works after multiple attempts.
Method 4. Force mount the drive using Terminal
When the drive is unmounted and you can't mount it manually in Disk Utility, you can still try to force mount the drive on Mac via Terminal. Here's how:
- Launch Terminal from Finder > Applications > Utilities.
- Type the following command and press Enter to find the identifier of the unmountable drive. diskutil list
- Type the command below to mount the drive(Replace the disk1s2 with the identifier of your unmountable drive).diskutil mount /dev/disk1s2
Method 5. Kill the fsck process
Fsck is a tool used to check the consistency of a file system. If the fsck process is stuck during the checking, it may cause the drive unmountable issue with com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 on your Mac. Then, killing the fsck process may help fix it.
You can open Activity Monitor and search for fsck to check whether it is running. If the fsck is working, you can double-click it and choose Force Quit to terminate the process, or run the command sudo pkill -f fsck in Terminal.
Have you fix the DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 with our methods? If you have, share with more people!
Method 6. Change the disk allocation size
The drive might not be able to be mounted on some older Macs if the allocation size is more than 1024. In this case, you may need to reformat the drive on a Windows computer in exFAT and select 1024 as the allocation size. exFAT on Mac is fully compatible, you can reconnect the drive to Mac, and it should be automatically mounted.
Method 7. Log out and log back in
When the com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 occurs to the external hard drive, you can try to log out of your user account and log back in, this is proven by Mac users. The steps are pretty simple, just give it a shot. You'd better save the working projects before logging out.
- Click the Apple menu and choose Log Out (username).
- Tap Log Out on the pop-up window to confirm.
- Select your user account and enter the password on the login screen.
Method 8. Connect to another Mac with different macOS
It is hard to say whether the com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 relates to the macOS as many Mac users have this issue after they update to macOS Monterey. You can simply verify this by connecting the external hard drive to another healthy Mac running a different macOS instead of downgrading macOS.
Method 9. Partition the external disk
Another possible fix for com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 is partitioning the external hard drive on Mac using the Partition button in Disk Utility. This operation shouldn't erase the drive data. But it is recommended to recover data from the unmountable drive before you take such a major operation.
Method 10. Reformat the drive on Mac
Unluckily, all of the above methods don't work to fix com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49218 on the external hard drive, and the drive is still unmountable, then there could be some serious errors on the drive. The last resort you can apply is to reformat the drive.
Reformatting will delete all drive content, therefore make sure you have already recovered wanted files from the unmountable external drive with professional data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. Then you can continue reformatting the drive without losing data.
Share the method that works to fix the DiskManagement.disenter error 49218!
