There are situations in which Toolkit may report a ‘No readable volumes’ status for a drive. Typical reasons include the drive’s format or permissions. Use the following troubleshooting information to address this issue.
Windows
Check the format of the drive
Toolkit will typically display a 'No readable volumes' status when the volume format is not natively recognised by Windows. Example, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) — Commonly referred to as HFS+.
To address formatting issues, please use the following article:
macOS
Check the format of the drive
Modern macOS versions support the following file systems:
- Mac OS Extended (Journaled) — Native Apple file system optimised for macOS 10.12 and earlier. Commonly referred to as HFS+.
- exFAT — A cross-platform file system compatible with both macOS and Windows.
- APFS — Apple file system optimised for solid state drives (SSDs) and flash-based storage systems. Available in macOS 10.13 and higher.
- MS-DOS (FAT) — Legacy file system designed for low capacity hard drives. Commonly referred to as FAT32.
- NTFS — Native file system for Windows. macOS can read an NTFS volume but cannot natively write to it. Toolkit displays an NTFS volume as “read-only”.
If the drive is formatted in something other than one of the file systems listed above, Toolkit may report a ‘No readable volumes’ status for the drive.
To address formatting issues, please use the following article:
Drive not mounted
There may be situations where the drive is formatted correctly, but the volume is unmounted (greyed out) in Disk Utility. Try clicking the mount button at the top of the Disk Utility screen to see if the volume can be mounted. If there is an error mounting the volume, then the volume may be corrupted, or if previously formatted on Windows, it may have the wrong allocation unit size (cluster size).
If the drive doesn't mount after formatting it exFAT on Windows, then reformat the drive on macOS if there is no data on the drive. If there is important data on the drive, then take the drive to a Windows machine and copy the data off the drive. Once the data has been copied, format the drive exFAT on macOS, which should resolve the issue and allow the drive to be used on both Mac and Windows.
If the drive is formatted exFAT, but wasn't previously formatted on Windows, then the volume may be corrupted. If you have access to a Windows machine, then connecting the drive to a Windows machine may give you access to the data. If the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, but doesn't mount, and you have a backup, then reformat the drive. If you don't have a backup, then contact support to explore your options.
Drive Permissions Issues
Use the macOS Get Info feature to check the permissions on a mounted volume in macOS.
- Locate the drive on the Desktop or in Finder.
- Control-click or right-click on the drive and select Get Info from the menu.
- In the General information section, note the format the of drive, for example, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), APFS, exFAT, etc.
- In the Sharing and Permissions section, note the type of permissions for the volume.
- The Sharing & Permissions information will vary depending on the format of the drive.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and APFS should provide you with a list Sharing & Permissions settings for the current user (you), 'staff' and 'everyone'. Make sure the current user is set to Read & Write and see if that resolves the issue. If it doesn't, try setting 'everyone' to Read & Write. If you are still having issues, try formatting the drive using one of the supported formats listed in the format section above.
For macOS computers running 10.15 (Catalina) or later, check your Mac’s Security and Privacy settings to make sure that Toolkit has permissions to access external volumes. See the following article to confirm that Toolkit can access the drive: Why is Toolkit prompting me for access?.
