hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems mac os x veracrypt
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I have been working on this for the past two weeks and have tried every solution I found online to no avail. I have an external USB drive that I encrypted using veracrypt on my macbook pro. I was able to encrypt it and mount it, write to it and dismount it for a long time. That is, until two weeks ago when all of a sudden it fails to moung. I get the following error: hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems. I know the password is correct as I wrote it down. I even upgraded to the latest version of veracrypt and still no go. Currently this is the specs I have:
Veracrypt 1.22
Max OS High Sierra 10.13.4
Fuse 3.7.1
I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could give me some direction. I really need the data on this drive. Thanks in advance for any help provided...
Hi Elsa,
did you ever find a solution for this?
did you get any assistance from the creators of VeraCrypt
I am having the exact same problem.
Hi Daniel,
This error happens if VeraCrypt is able to mount the disk but the disk content is corrupted is such a way that OSX is unable to identify its content. This is outside of control of VeraCrypt (one must not forget that disks always fail at some point and so backup is important.
That being said, VeraCrypt offer possibility to help salvage data when possible. When mounting the disk, click on "Options" button in the password dialog and then check "Do not mount" at the bottom, type your password and click OK (see screenshot below). The disk will be unlocked but it will not appear on Finder.
After that, you can use OSX Disk Utility to try to repair the unlocked disk image (and not the encrypted physical disk): once Disk Utility opens, look at the bottom of the disks list on the left and you should see the unlocked disk image by VeraCrypt at the bottom. Select it, check that its size is coherant what and then you can use the Repair option to see if it salvage your data (see https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/repair-a-disk-dskutl1040/mac)
There are also other Data Recovery applications for Mac OSX that you use but you should always point them to the unlocked disk image and not the encrypted physical drive.
Voilà voilà...I hope this will help you. Data recovery is not a guaranteed process because it depends on the how much the disk was corrupted. As I said in the beginning, disks can (and will) fail at some point and so having other encrypted backups is very important.
Hi, I'd like to add something to what Idrissi said. Although it is possible your file/disk is corrupted, I've made the file/disk on windows/linux, and used NTFS/exFAT/FAT32 as the filesystem type. It is possible that the filesystem is simply not compatible with MACOS. So before you try to recover things or say goodbye, try to mount the file/disk on windows or linux. It might work like in my case.
Just dropped in to say that this is a problem somewhere in the OSX/macFuse/VeraCyrpt stack and not necessarily with corrupted devices. I have the same issue on 2 year-old High Sierra installs that somehow stopped being able to read all 6 of my VeraCrypt devices, and I know these devices are healthy because I can still read them fine, mount, and use them with no issues on Ubuntu 20.04 and Fedora 33
The insane part is that they were working fine on my High Sierra machines until last week and then suddenly stopped. I remember it took quite a lot of fiddling when I originally installed these machines about a year ago, and ultimately I found only one good combination of macFuse (3.10.4) and VeraCrypt (1.24 update 7) that would not produce that error, but once I figured that out they ran flawlessly for a whole year. I typically keep 2 devices mounted simultaneously, swap in different ones every week or two, and have an rsync differential backup running into each one every hour or so... Then last week when I swapped devices normally, I started getting this message again.
I uninstalled, rebooted, and reinstalled the same versions, and this time nothing. I took the disks and ran fsck on them on the Fedora machine, then mounted them there and all was fine. Try again on the High Sierra machines, and again "no mountable filesystems". So I decided to remove the versions I had installed and let macPorts decide, so I installed from macPorts. This resulted in VeraCrypt 1.24 along with macFUSE 3.8, but the problem persists.
Hello,
I also began receiving the error (possibly after a Mac security update?) with a file confirmed to be valid on another operating system:
"hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems"
... last week (mid-April 2022) while running:
Are there logs that I could share to elucidate the issue?
Last edit: rehmke 2022-04-24
I have the same problem with Mac OS. I created the outer volume with exFAT and it mounts fine. The inner volume is also exFAT, but it won't mount with the no mountable file systems error.
I CAN mount the inner volume on Windows 10, so the volume itself doesn't seem to be corrupted. I just finished making it (took 42 hours to format/encrypt the USB stick).
Mac OS 11.6
Verycrypt 1.25.9
MacFUSE 4.2.5
EDIT: It might be related to disk/container size. I created a test file container of 16 GB for the outer and max size for the inner using the same settings as the USB disk that won't mount and the inner volume mounted without any problems.
The USB disk is 1 TB (976 GB according to veracrypt) and the inner container is 700 GB.
Last edit: John Clark 2022-06-08
It is sad that this technology is so unreliable. I mean, come on. You are talking about sensitive data. I know, I know, always have a back up. That is NOT the point. I shouldn't have to have 10 backup copies because I might lose one with every software upgrade.
I am a huge fan of open source but sometimes there isn't enough accountability behind it like you have with software you buy. Losing profits due to bad PR has a way of making people go that extra mile. That being said, of course store bought software has a ton of bugs too, but you would NEVER see Apple or Microsoft with such a catastrophic a bug like this that is 4 months old let alone 4 years!!!
I am shocked that this stuff is being used so ubiquitously given the unreliability and risks. I guess I will stick to "store bought" encryption solutions so to speak.
By the way, I am not a tech newbie. I have a Computer Science degree and over 10 years in IT. There should be better testing with this software (VeraCrypt -mainly- and MacFUSE on a Mac with the latest OS. At least the last 2-3 releases minimum. I was able to easily break this after creating a simple 200 MB extFat volume. It worked fine for the first 3 times and on the 4th. BAM! It can't recognize the file system. Easily repeatable.
I am shocked that this issue is 4 years old and no one has a solution. I guess if all the stars are aligned, and you are not on a Mac it might work until the 100th time you try to access it. VERY disappointing. God help you if you use this technology for full disk encryption.
Last edit: Bill Smith 2022-06-10
Update: my account cannot be taken as a good example. Turns out the flash drive I got was junk and seems to have been pulled by Amazon with all but one (probably bogus) reviews saying the same thing I saw - some corrupted files. The faulty flash drive may be why the hidden volume couldn't be mounted.