"the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer"

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
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Hi everyone, I moved my computer and My Book external hard drive from one desk to another today and the My Book external drive suddenly gives me this message: “the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer”. This has happened once before and luckily I was able to reinitialize it and copy over the backed up files I have on a 2nd external hard drive. That took a super long time to do and I’m hoping that maybe there’s another solution.

I’ve tried restarting the computer, unplugging things, changing USB ports, nothing seems to be working. If I go in Disk Utility I can see the name of the volume but if I click on it there are no options to verify it or anything.

I’m working on an older 2007 iMac with OSX 10.9.5
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Many thanks in advance.
CDes

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Hello CinDes,

Please follow the troubleshooting steps mentioned in the below link:

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Now don’t click “Initialize” or format anything. The issue is almost certainly related to a glitched partition map from an improper unmount during the move, or a subtle hardware/power supply change at your new desk.

Here are some fixes:

1. Select the “Parent” Drive in Disk Utility

In OS X 10.9 Mavericks, if you click the indented volume name, the “First Aid” options are often grayed out.

• Look at the left sidebar of Disk Utility.

• Click the top-level physical drive name (e.g., WD My Book), not the indented partition name underneath it.

• Check if Verify Disk or Repair Disk become clickable on the right side. If so, run them.

2. Force a Repair via Terminal

If Disk Utility is completely locked up and won’t let you click anything, you can bypass the user interface and force OS X to look at the drive via Terminal:

1. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).

2. Type diskutil list and hit Enter.

3. Identify your drive’s identifier in the right-hand column (e.g., disk1 or disk2).

4. Force a repair by typing: diskutil repairDisk diskX (replace diskX with your exact identifier, like disk1).

If Terminal successfully patches the corrupted partition table, your drive should instantly mount on your desktop!

[ This related blog is also helpful to you - Fix The Disk You Attached Was Not Readable by This Computer ]