Home > Questions

Time Machine backup drive not mounting on macOS Ventura?

Hi, I have split my Lacie Rugged 4TB external hard drive into two partitions. One for photos and another for daily backup of my Mac. The Photos partition is mounting fine but the Time Machine backup partition is not. They can both mount on my new MacBook Air that doesn't have Ventura. Is this a Ventura bug?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Jenny Zeng

Jenny Zeng

Answered on Thursday, March 9, 2023

Your Time Machine backup disk or partition should have no problem mounting on macOS Ventura or other versions. If it suddenly becomes grayed out in Disk Utility, you can try the following steps to fix it.

First, safely eject the external hard drive from your Mac and pull it out. Then reboot your Mac and reconnect the drive. Hopefully, the Time Machine backup partition is mounted now. If not, open Disk Utility, select the backup partition, and click the Mount button at the toolbar to manually mount it. 

What else you can try is to force mount the partition in Terminal. Here's how to do it:

  1. Open Terminal from your Applications/Utilities folder.
  2. Enter the following command and press the Enter key.diskutil list
  3. Note down the disk identifier of the backup partition, such as disk2s2.
  4. Execute the following command to force mount the partition. (Replace disk_identiifer)diskutil mount /dev/disk_identifier

Suppose it still doesn't do the trick, then you can select the partition and click First Aid to check and repair disk errors.

If Disk Utility can't repair it, the last straw is to reformat the backup partition, which will erase all data on it. That being said, you need to recover the important files beforehand. To retrieve files from the unmountable backup drive on Mac, you'll need a professional data recovery tool like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

Click the button below to scan your unmountable drive and preview files for free.

Read also:

External Hard Drive Not Mounting on Mac Computer, How to Fix?

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

Réparer le disque dur externe continue de se déconnecter sur Mac

[Ventura] Régler le problème du disque dur externe qui ne cesse de se déconnecter sur Mac

Pourquoi votre disque dur externe ne cesse de se déconnecter sur Mac? Réglez le problème du disque dur externe ou de la clé USB qui ne cesse de se déconnecter sur Ventura/Monterey/Big Sur/Catalina.

Comment copier des fichiers vers Windows NTFS sur Mac

Comment copier des fichiers vers Windows NTFS sur Mac (Guide complet 2023)

Comment copier des fichiers vers NTFS en lecture seule sur Mac, avec ou sans formatage. Réparez le problème 'impossible de copier des fichiers de Mac vers un disque dur externe'.

Astuces NTFS pour Mac

Tuxera NTFS for Mac

Tuxera NTFS for Mac Review, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac VS Tuxera

Tuxera NTFS for Mac review, about its features, macOS compatibility, Tuxera NTFS for VS iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, Tuxera NTFS for Mac VS Paragon NTFS for Mac.

NTFS for Mac Tips