Please help me

[u/7isthatallthereis7]

My portable hard drive is all of sudden saying “The disk you attached was not readable by this computer.” I am using it on a Mac, it has only ever been used on a Mac, and only ever formatted for a Mac. It is a Crucial X10 Pro portable SSD. I have tried attaching it through a different cord, to a different port, and to a different Mac and it says the same thing regardless. I looked in Disk Utility, ran First Aid, and the smart status still says unsupported. Any help would be very much appreciated!

more details: the drive is not clicking, and I don’t think it is making any audible sound.

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• Make/brand and exact model number of your storage device(*), phone, camera, etc.
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[u/Jon_Hanson]

SSDs don’t make sounds even when failing. That’s for spinning hard drives.

[u/disturbed_android]

If you have a PC nearby show how (and if) it's detected in Disk Management.

I think you're going to need assistance of a data recovery lab though.

[u/No_Tale_3623]

What file system was on this SSD? These models are usually formatted as exFAT from the factory. If you didn’t reformat it in Disk Utility, this may be a typical exFAT filesystem corruption issue on macOS.

The best approach is to create a byte-to-byte backup of the entire SSD into an image file and scan that image with professional data recovery software. You’ll need at least a 5 TB drive for the image, plus additional space for the recovered files.

If you have access to a Windows PC, check the SMART status with CrystalDiskInfo. You can also check the SSD manufacturer’s website for their diagnostic utility; they may have a macOS version.
Getting SMART data from NVMe drives on macOS can be difficult, especially when the drive is connected through a USB/NVMe enclosure.