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 this message when the volume format is not natively recognized 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 optimized 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 optimized 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 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 showing your user, staff, and everyone. Make sure that Read & Write is set for your user and see if that resolves the issue. If it doesn’t, try setting everyone as 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?.
